It’s my belief that in this post-Penguin/Panda (Google updates) world, it is of the upmost importance for website owners to monitor their backlink profile and also to remove harmful links on a semi-regular basis. Think of this as clearing up web confusion as it relates to your website to improve your online brand reputation, which can help ensure that your site is not being devalued in the eyes of Google and other major search engines.  Monitoring and cleaning your backlink profile for low quality links is something I think a lot of website owners and internet marketers tend to overlook, or maybe put on the backburner (just like spring cleaning).

Some websites are forced to clean up their backlink profile because they have been hit with an unnatural link penalty from Google.  Others choose to clean up their backlink profile because even if they haven’t been hit with a penalty from Google, cleaning up your backlink profile can only improve your site’s chances of having a positive online reputation, leading to higher rankings, more clicks, and hopefully more conversions.

Google uses this language to describe unnatural links:

Any links intended to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme. This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site, or outgoing links from your site. Manipulating these links may affect the quality of our search results, and as such is a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Common Reasons To Clean Up Your Backlink Profile:

• Remove harmful/unnatural links – Unnatural links (or spammy links) provide little to no ranking value for your website’s search ranking and are unlikely to lead to conversions or sales on your site.  Try to look through every link in your backlink profile using Google Webmaster Tools and ask yourself “Does this link provide value?” “Would someone use this link to make a purchase?”  “Does this link make sense to be located here?”  If you answer no to any of these, you should remove the link.
• Over-Optimized Anchor Text – Websites that have large quantities of sites linking to them using the same anchor text is a major cause of many sites facing manual penalties from Google.  This is seen as unnatural in the eyes of Google and is likely to hurt your ability to rank well in search engine results. For example, if ten sites linked back to your website, they might each naturally use different anchor text depending on what they were writing about you. Creating consistency in the anchor text used to link to your site used to be an effective way to rank, however Google now frowns upon over-optimized anchor text, and we can understand why. Natural links (links that occur without any effort on behalf of the brand) provide a high rate of anchor text diversification because most sites will use different anchor text to describe and link to your website.
• Update Business Listing Information (Address/Business Name/Phone #, etc..) Ensuring that sites where you have a business profile or listing provide consistent, accurate and up-to-date information is not only important for customers trying to locate or contact your business, but it also critical for local search rankings. Incorrect business listing information can appear if you change your location, business name, phone number, or website. Webmasters might also list your site incorrectly by cause of human error. One of most important factors for ranking well in local search engine rankings is having the same business address, phone number and business name across all your citation listings online. Small variants like street to St, avenue to ave, unit or suite number, can make a big difference in how well you rank locally.

*Note: If you change business location, it is absolutely crucial to make sure update your location, address, phone number, website, any relevant info on any listings of your site online.  The best ways to cross reference these listings to is to search your old business name with address and phone number in Google.  This should display all of your old business listing info that is indexed in Google. You can then contact each site and ask for them to update your business listing. (It’s just like notifying your business contacts when you change employers or have a new phone number.)

As you can see, there are many reasons why website owners should consider removing harmful links from their backlink profile. There is little harm in removing bad links as they aren’t likely to provide much value and they could be hurting your brand’s online reputation.  I’ve covered the important reasons for why you should remove harmful backlinks in this post.  Stay tuned for Part 2 to learn how to make sure your website’s backlink profile is so fresh and so clean.

1. Campaign Value Measurement Methods

• Ecommerce Businesses: The best way to see ROI is to have ecommerce tracking activated. This feature allows you to track data from your shopping cart and import it into Google Analytics to enable deeper reporting on transactions and how they relate to your campaign spend. It’s not the most simple task, so it’s advised to have your webmaster install the code, unless you’re confident in your development skills.
• Lead-Based Businesses: It’s advised that you estimate your average value per customer acquisition (or conversion) from your website. For example, if an average new client is worth $5,000 to your business, and you convert 1 in 10 online leads into a customer, then each lead is worth approximately $500. Set $500 as your goal value and you’ll be able to get additional insight, reports and have a very simple ROI calculation in Google Analytics.

2. Enabling communication between your paid search campaign and GA campaigns.

• AdWords – Because Google owns both AdWords and Google Analytics, integration between the two services is very seamless. After adjusting a couple quick settings, you can populate GA with all of your important data, including ad costs.
• Bing Ads, Facebook Ads and other PPC platforms – Since Google Analytics does not integrate as well with these other non-Google-based systems, you’ll need to tag your destination URLs (or add information to the end of a web page address) so that you can pass valuable data to GA. Use the Google URL Builder to send information such as source, medium, campaign and keyword driving your website traffic and compare your ROI by platform. Unfortunately, cost data will not populate in GA, but you should have the necessary pieces to calculate it.

Once you have everything set up and tagged appropriately, you can kick back and relax while you accrue data. Depending on the traffic volume to your website, your new reports may be available the day you set them up.

3. Adwords Reports.

It’s easy to start with AdWords since there is a report in GA built specifically to house AdWords Data. In GA, go to Traffic Sources > Advertising and you’ll be able to see a few different reports. Hit the “Clicks” button in the Explorer tab just above your data graph, and you’ll now see cost data, Click Through Rate (CTR), Average Cost Per Click (CPC), Revenue Per Click, ROI and Margin.  (It’s important to note here that GA’s margin is not true margin, as Google does not calculate the cost of your goods, labor or additional expenses).

This is an example of a Google Analytics Adwords ROI Report.

You can also calculate ROI yourself by knowing your costs and return. Since AdWords is the only PPC platform that allows you to directly import cost data, you’ll need to calculate ROI manually for your other online advertising initiatives. The basic equation is simply:

ROI = (Revenue Gained – Cost of Investment)/Cost of Investment

4. Multi-Channel Funnels.

Not all conversions are created equally, but with the help of multi-channel funnels in Google Analytics, we don’t have to live in an all or nothing world. By default, GA only reports a conversion and revenue resulting from the last touch. This means, that if someone finds your site through PPC, remembers your site and comes back as direct traffic, then finally comes back again through referral traffic (like from another site, a Facebook page, or even an email campaign), the final referral source would get credit for the conversion or sale. By accessing your multi-channel funnels reports, you can gain insight into how your various traffic sources play together and contribute to the conversion.

Example Multi-Channel Funnel report showing channels that contribute to a conversion.

Proving ROI is something we’re tasked with every day at DTC, but you don’t need to be a paid search professional to access the reports or methods that we use. Understanding where your dollars are going and what you’re gaining as a result is one of the most empowering and rewarding tasks an advertiser can perform. This analysis will inform your next marketing or sales move and help you increase return on your ad spend. Give it a try, I think you’ll return for more tips on managing PPC campaigns. Luckily, we’re here to help.

1. SEOmoz Blog – (@semoz)

SEOmoz combines user-submitted content and posts from some of the most authoritative link building experts in the industry. Applicable for both beginners and pro’s, there is a little something for everyone on this blog. If there is one community link builders should be active on, it is this one, covering all topics relevant to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) not just link building.  Their What Is Link Building Post is an informative read for anyone new to link building.

2. Linkbuildr – (@linkbuildr)

I know I’m not the only person in our industry who thinks Ryan Clark isn’t given enough credit in the link building community.  His expertise really shines with his creative ideas and straight forward approaches to organic link building. One post that really stood out to me was Link Building Beyond The Bullsh*t.  Not only was it published on my birthday, but it’s an honest reflection of the very real challenge to build links from strong sites and offers practical advice on how to do so.

3. Ontolo – (@ontolo)

Home to some of the best link building tools on the web, Ontolo’s blog is also a valued resource for link builders who want to scale their link building efforts.  Most of their blog posts revolve around their link building tools, but they also have some of the more comprehensive topical posts that I’ve read.  Their Complete Guide To Guest Posting is a go-to resource for anyone actively engaging in guest posting.

4. WIEP – (@wiep)

Wiep Knol is one of the most creative link builders sharing in depth knowledge and extremely actionable ideas. This blog is targeted towards more advanced link builders.  Although the blog is not updated as often as some of the sites on this list, the content quality is worth the wait. He covers Link Baiting probably better than anyone I’ve come across.

5. Search Engine Land – (@sengineland)

My favorite thing about Search Engine Land is the long list of regular guest contributors they feature on their blog. Search Engine Land provides contributions from some of the brightest minds in our industry. Danny Sullivan shares up-to-date information on search engine marketing and link building.  The post on How To Conduct A Link Audit is fundamental for any link builder.

6. SEER Interactive – (@SEERInteractive)

When it comes to building links from an agency’s perspective, SEER covers outreach extremely well.  A personal favorite of DTC.  Some of my favorite posts include Good Outeach VS Bad Outreach and also Be A Real Person with A Real Expert when Building Guest Contribution Links.

Non Blogs That Make The Cut

7. Link Moses Newsletter – (@ericward)

This is a paid newsletter that is delivered to your inbox.  Worth every penny of the $8/month you pay for Eric Ward’s Link Building advice. Eric provides the best advice endorsed by Google leaders on conducting link building the right away and provides linking opportunities in every newsletter. Eric might possibly be the most respected link builder.

8. Inbound Marketing Community

I discovered this site a few months ago and have literally visited their site every day since.  So much to read related to inbound marketing (versus traditional one-way outward-facing marketing) and such a cool community.  A melting pot for articles and blog posts related to marketing, SEO, link building and other related topics from around the web.

What are some of your trusted blogs and resources for link building? We’d love to add more to our list!

Related link building posts:

“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”

This quote comes from Mr. Schmidt’s new book, released on April 23, 2013, The New Digital Age. And while there are no definite conclusions to be drawn, we pay close attention to quotes like this. With the emphasis Google has placed on quality content, I would consider it a good bet to assume authorship, primarily through Google+, is going to make a big difference in search engine results moving into the rest of 2013 and beyond. This post should help clarify what authorship is and provide a step by step guide to help get you started.

How exactly does this affect search results?

Some of the impacts of authorship have been present in search results for some time now. And while the impact on rankings for those posts is still yet to be fully determined, there are clear visual cues, especially in Google search results, that place importance of authorship as a critical piece of any blog or content marketing strategy moving forward.

Most notably, you have probably seen the way blog posts with Google+ Authorship included are displayed in Google search listings:

A Digital Third Coast article shows our Director of Operations as the author of this blog post. Source: www.google.com

As shown above, blog posts with authorship attribution will display the Google+ photo of the author next to the search listings. The author’s name is also included with the number of people in that user’s Google+ circles , and a link to read more articles by that author. Not only does Google+ authorship make the content more personal, these new visual and engaging features in search results are powerful differentiators that could more likely result in a click to your particular article, rather than ones without any authorship attribution.

Additionally, when a user clicks either the Google+ image or “more by”, they are brought to a page which highlights all blog posts by an author (for articles with Google+ Authorship included). This is another level of added value by attributing authorship to blog posts and web content and is a great way to evaluate the real “expert” status a particular author may claim to have.

When Google+ authorship is included in blog posts and Google+ author profiles, web searchers can review all posts written by an author.

A Note about Author/Agent Rank

On July 21, 2009, Google was granted a patent for something called Agent Rank which has evolved into the current system of Author Rank, designed to penalize anonymous writers while rewarding verified authors with better visibility.  With the roll out of Google+ around the same time, there has been much speculation about how exactly Author Rank is calculated or determined and its exact impact on search results.

Based on industry information and reviews, we believe Author Rank to be calculated based on two basic parts:

1. The author’s online presence (quantity and Google+ Authorship enabled).
2. The quality of content the author creates.

As SEO’s, we want to be prepared for major changes like this, as it should be fairly safe to assume that Author/Agent Rank will become more important as Google+ and authorship become more ingrained in the web. More information should be available in the near future as the SEO community learns more about this metric.

Google+ Authorship: A Step By Step Guide

Preparing your Google+ Profile Page:

1. Profile Creation. Create a Google+ account (if you don’t have one already).

2. Profile Set Up. Add information that you are comfortable sharing on your Google+ profile and make sure to pay attention to privacy settings so you can keep information private, public, or customize what is viewable by whom. If you add a profile photo, it will display in search listings next to your attributed blog posts.

3. Establish yourself as a contributor. Log into your Google+ profile, click on the ‘About’ tab, then click ‘Edit’ at the bottom of the Links section. Under the ‘Contributor To’ heading, add the blog you are contributing to along with its corresponding URL (i.e. http://www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog). Be sure to add each blog you contribute to!

4. Add authorship tag to an article you’ve written. To create a link to display on your blog posts that will point back to your Google+ page and appear in Google search results, go to your Google+ profile, copy the profile URL and add the ‘rel=author’ tag. As an example, let’s use George Zlatin’s profile URL from our DTC team: https://plus.google.com/111579927142648245047.

Using this link, he built an authorship link for his blog post using the following structure, outlined from Google:

<a href=”[profile_url]?rel=author”>Google+</a>

Continuing with the above link, we need to now substitute George’s profile link in for [profile_url]. The final URL will then look like this:

<a href=”https://plus.google.com/111579927142648245047?rel=author”>Google</a>

or

https://plus.google.com/111579927142648245047?rel=author

5. The final step of the integration is to include the link as textual author attribution on your blog post, most likely near the bottom where authorship attribution generally lies, linking to the custom URL you created in step 4 above, like you would create an author byline on an article, as demonstrated in George’s post below:

At the end of each blog post he's written, George Zlatin links to his Google+ profile with the full authorship link we created above. Source: www.digitalthirdcoast.net/blog

WordPress Plugin

Since many blogs utilize WordPress as a content management system, I thought it would be helpful to include a link to a WordPress plugin that can help to automate this process. There are others, so find one that works with your website and meets the needs of your team of “authors”.

Using this plugin is simple. Just install the plugin, enter your Google+ profile URL, and be sure your Google+ account has you set up as a contributor to the blog. Once set up, your blog posts should now automatically show author attribution. Do a quick Google search to confirm it worked!

Other Helpful Links:

• Matt Cutts and Othar Hansson discuss how to connect authors with their content using authorship markup:
• Agent Rank/Author Rank (via SEO by the Sea)
• Official Google+ Authorship Page

We’re wondering if one day publishers/companies will have their logos appear as a thumbnail in search results or if we’re only focusing on personalization of businesses by acknowledging the personal profiles of those who work for an organization (authors). What do you think?

1. Plug In – Create profiles or accounts for services you want to learn to use – Facebook, Twitter, G+, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, Bit.ly, TweetDeck. Then, get to know the tool, notice what people are saying, sharing, how, and what is working. Learn by immersing yourself in areas you want to learn about.
2. Practice – The first time I Tweeted, I messed up and Tweeted the same person like 4 times. Her response was: “That’s okay, you had to start somewhere and that’s how you learn!” Try the tools you want to get to know. The more you use it, the more you’ll learn about new features, ways others are using it, and what you can do differently/better next time.
3. Take Offline Online – If you’re trying to build an online community, start with who you know. Who are you meeting with for business this week? Which businesses are near your office and in your neighborhood? If you interact with them in person, suggest connecting with them on social channels. If you mutually connected with every client, partner, or employee you knew on social channels, you would have a great place to start.
4. Join Groups of the Trade – Like any business, trade organizations are a way to get to know other professionals in digital marketing to learn from and share with them. Research professional marketing, social media, and media groups in your city or area. Visit a few meetings, get to know local industry leaders, hear speakers on the latest in marketing, and connect face-to-face, get and share contact information and connect on social media. Then continue to stay in touch after the initial exchange by sharing relevant news they may be interested in, re-post their news, or plan to meet at the next gathering. Struggle with attending events after work due to family or time constraints? Join Linkedin groups for digital marketing or social media professionals to see what topics are being discussed, ask questions, and pick up on the newest trends.
5. Ask for Resources – Ask those you respect in your industry which websites, publications, and thought leaders they follow and learn from to get ideas for resources to further your knowledge of the space. These resources can also give you content ideas for your own blog, newsletter, or social media engagement.
6. Write, Photograph, Film, Create – When you publish a blog post and share it on social channels, you’ll get a feel for your audience’s interest. Do they leave comments? What questions do they have? Who’s re-sharing it? What did you learn from writing the post? Pay attention to what kinds of content your audience is responding to – it may vary by channel. For example, our audience tends to interact more with our Facebook posts with news about our office or employees. However, our Twitter followers tend to interact with us when it comes to digital marketing news and SEO tips we share. Try, observe, refine.

What resources or tactics do YOU use to learn about the complex and fast-paced digital marketing space?

Big thanks to Lonelybrand for the feature and great blog post idea!

Our Director of Paid Search, Nathan, gets ready for Day 1 at the PPC HeroConf 2013 in Austin, TX.

1. A multi-screen world presents advertising challenges. We live in a multi-screen world, and attribution (the online tools and sites web users visit that contribute to clicks, actions, conversions) is going to get tricky. Like it or not, people are jumping from device to device to device. From phone to tablet to desktop. The problem for marketers? The cookies we use to track conversions and evaluate which online marketing activities are working to secure new customers and revenue do not transfer from device to device, even if there is only one core user. This means that there will be a black box of data that marketers will not be able to access.
2. Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns needs more enhancements. People are not pleased with Google AdWords Enhanced Campaigns. Since their announcement, Enhanced Campaigns have been met with resistance from the PPC community. Why is this? Well, while Enhanced Campaigns bring many great features to the table, ultimately they also strip advertisers of control of which ads to place on which devices. With an official rollout date of July 22nd around the corner, Enhanced Campaigns will put an end to an advertiser’s ability to target mobile devices and tablets specifically. After attending a conference of my peers, I can confidently say I’m not alone in not wanting to relinquish this control.
3. Context is king. Keynotes from Kevin Lee, Bryan Eisenberg, Paul Feng (Google’s Director of AdWords Product Management) and John Gagnon (Microsoft Bing) all meandered across this familiar territory – context matters in marketing. The needs of someone on a smart phone in one location at a certain time of day will be different than someone somewhere else on a desktop at another time and we can address these differences with online marketing strategies. While Enhanced Campaigns partially addresses this challenge, the removal of the ability to serve ads to specific devices through Google AdWords diminishes our strategic targeting options.
4. Data are getting larger. While I don’t think the term “big data” truly applies to the data sets PPC professionals work with, there is no doubt paid search advertising produces more measurable information than we rationally know what to do with. When faced with more data than our brains can make sense of, we’re going to have to let machines do the heavy lifting on that side of things and focus on our roots by becoming better marketers.

Nathan Pabich is the Director of Paid Search at Digital Third Coast, a PPC management company based in Chicago. You can find Nathan Google+.

Connect with Digital Third Coast on Google+.

This social media campaign was started by an athletic event, Tough Mudder, became viral and was shared over 27,000 times, initiating an in person movement.

Yesterday, when tragedy struck in Boston, I stayed up to date with information without leaving my desk.  There was an awful lot of misinformation too; news sources rushing to try to break a story first, individuals sharing concern and misinterpreting what they’d heard or read.  Twitter, Facebook, news sites – suddenly we were reading and sharing information just seconds after the explosions went off.  I remember just 12 years ago, when I sat glued to a TV during 9-11, never even thinking to turn on a computer. Yesterday, it didn’t even occur to me to turn on a TV.

The speed to information absolutely amazes me, but beyond that, I was struck with how quickly people came together with signs of solidarity.  The American Red Cross was able to meet needs of injured runners and bystanders immediately due to overwhelming public concern and blood donations. Social media became a place to share our shock, our bewilderment, and finally, our courage to move forward past this tragedy.

Tomorrow, I’ll be wearing an old race shirt, as a sign of solidarity to all those affected.  A simple, easy idea, shared on social media by Tough Mudder obstacle courses, then the women of the Senorita Century bike race and shared by La Bella Preme women’s cycling challenge, and spreading each time one more person announces, “I can do that too” and shares it with their friends.

As internet marketers, we spend so much time “inside” the web that we forget what life was like without it.  We see so much bickering, political ranting, and whining that we start complaining about the complaining. On days like April 15^th, 2013, when catastrophe hits, it’s beautiful to see how wonderfully and quickly it can unite us, from sea to shining sea.

In just 12 short months, Google has stopped rewarding many of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics that seemingly made it easier to influence search results.  The reason why so many SEO companies used these tactics? BECAUSE THEY USED TO WORK to help elevate brand search rankings and increase web traffic for businesses.A series of algorithm updates named “Panda” and “Penguin” addressed these SEO processes and shifted the industry. Now, instead of a traditional focus on marketing for search engines, Google has emphasized a focus on content marketing and in some cases, online public and media relations (PR) – traditional business practices that highlight brand promotion online.

PR agencies create buzz around content, events and company accomplishments.  PR agencies reach out to journalists and reporters.  PR agencies create relationships with media outlets to seek opportunities to highlight a brand, announce company news, or share an exciting story of interest with a broader audience.  This is exactly what search engine optimizers are doing now as well.

Link building these days is essentially PR with a link building hat on. When other sites link back to a brand website, this can be a positive trigger to a search engine – but they have to be the right sites, and have a good message.

Over the last few months, DTC has worked its own “PR” efforts with link building in mind and the results have been phenomenal.  In just two months, we’ve been able to get mentions in the following publications and links from most of them. But, beyond the link count, we’ve realized significant value from the relationships we’ve built, such as:

•   A monthly guest post spot on NBC Chicago’s Inc. Well business blog
•   Meeting publishers and career reporters
•   Presenting at a local marketing conference that already resulted in a networking coffee meeting for potential partnership
•   Mentions in global publications, one of which appears on the first page of Google search results when searching for ‘Digital Third Coast’ (without a link)

Here are some of the results of our new perspective of building relationships and tackling SEO with a public relations hat on:

• CEO Blog Nation
• NBC Chicago in February & NBC Chicago in March
• Crain’s Chicago – Handling Negative Customer Reviews
• Job Box Report
• Kelley Direct Marketing Conference panel
• CNN iReport/Mashable feature on games in the workplace
• Associated Press Interview About No Response with Communication Overload – featured by Yahoo!News, ABC News, Fox News

There are many different ways to establish these types of PR opportunities but i’m only going to highlight a few of them in this post.  There are 3 tools that can be used to leverage this type of link building and build online brand awareness.

1. HARO (Help A Reporter Out)

HARO is a free service for registered users that sends you emails (you can choose the frequency) with publicity opportunities from all types of media outlets (blogs, newspaper, magazines,etc.) All you have to do is stay on top of them and look for opportunities that match your expertise.  Once something comes along that you think you can contribute to as an expert, you respond to the request and try to answer the request as best as you can.  If a journalist picks you, they will respond and ask for any follow up questions.

2. #Journorequest on Twitter – Use this hashtag to find journalists looking for help with stories.  If you find something that you would be able to contribute to, tweet back at them for a possibly publicity opportunity. Here are some sample requests I found across a wide range of industries in 5 seconds.

3. ProfNet - An alternative to HARO offered for a small fee for experts (Sources), such as small business owners.  The upside of ProfNet is that it is highly trusted by mainstream news sources such as Reuters, Wall Street Journal, etc.  ProfNet is an email based model just like HARO sending emails to sources listing opportunities from journalists who are looking for experts to interview and/or contribute to their articles/news stories.

Of course one of our main goals with an SEO campaign is to get backlinks for our clients.  If you are able to build a relationship with online publishers and receive a guest blog post opportunity or a publicity mention, don’t forget to ask for a link back to your website if you can to extend the value of that reference to your site and possibly result in a website visit with one click (and maybe a new customer!). After the article is published, this may be more difficult to achieve. You can see how with a little bit of time, persistence, and relationship building, you can position yourself as an expert, receive brand recognition online, and get media mentions that can potentially lead to big links, big ranking improvements, and more website traffic.

Don’t forget to thank your publisher for featuring your business and share these links on your social media channels to drive traffic to their site as a thank you and share the good news about your business with even more supporters!

Related articles

• PR + SEO When Two Worlds Collide (stateofsearch.com)
• The 5 Golden Rules to HARO Success, as Shared by Real Users (everything-pr.com)
• 10 HARO-like Tools to Score Great Media Mentions for Your Business (everything-pr.com)

Digital Third Coast Outreach Manager Kyle learns the ins and outs of truffle making from Katherine Anne.

1. Not all flavors fit all.  Instead of learning to make truffle recipes already on the menu at Katherine Anne Confections, our team split up into smaller teams to decide on our own flavors. We got to pick the base chocolate type, filling, spices, and toppings that fit our interests and taste buds. Similarly, every business has a unique set of needs, products, services, and even company culture. When developing marketing strategies, it’s important to set goals unique to the stage of the business, location, offerings, and the team.
2. Healthy Competition is a Good Thing.  Even though we all work on the same team at Digital Third Coast with shared goals of helping our clients obtain the highest value from our work and increase revenue and web traffic, we were given a challenge to try new flavors and compete for the best one. And, we’d all be prize winners, getting to taste and take home all three flavors. Since Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Paid Search Advertising, and content and social media marketing are constantly evolving, trying new tools, testing different strategies (within reason and within budget), and challenging each other with shared goals gives us new knowledge to base future decisions on (like always put coffee in chocolate truffles with cookie dough spread) and stronger results in the end.
   

   Lindsay and Taylor work together on their new truffle flavor.

3. Take a Breather to Boost Creativity.  I recently overheard someone ask, “Why do people always come up with good ideas in the shower?” The same reason taking a break away from work to make chocolate truffles helped us think about flavor combinations, dessert textures, and even shapes and patterns. Sometimes breaking away from a project allows your mind to see marketing and business challenges in a new way and you may be inspired during that break to come up with a unique solution.
   

   Our Digital Third Coast team bonds over creativity in the kitchen at Katherine Anne Confections in Chicago.

4. Solidify Your Plan Before Rolling it Out.  When we were first tasked with creating our own truffle flavor combinations, we weighed the pros and cons of mixing ingredients and tried to envision which ingredients would work together for a successful and delicious end result. After choosing our ingredients and defining our end truffle goal, things got a bit messy when we melted the chocolate to just the right temperature, and added just the right proportion of each ingredient (bringing in expert Katherine Anne to help). Once the batter was complete, we put it in the refrigerator to cool it since it had to be a solid mixture before we could roll it into truffles and top it with the finishing touches (cocoa powder, dried rose petals, and graham cracker crumbs) to be ready to serve (and eat). Of course, we tasted along the way and could have eaten them before adding toppings, but the end result was three professional looking truffles that could be served even to shop patrons! Similarly, we find that the more research, testing, experience, and expertise we incorporate up front in a marketing strategy, the stronger and more polished our client work and results will be.
5. Taste As You Go.  As we were creating three brand new chocolate truffle flavors, and many of us were making truffles for the first time, Katherine gave us the opportunity to taste different chocolate options and ingredients from the start of our lesson. We also got to taste our batter combinations after they were made and we adjusted them depending on what we found – adding in more of an ingredient in some cases. In marketing, it’s important to record baseline statistics like web visits, clicks, traffic sources, follows, likes, and social posts at the beginning of a campaign and monitor throughout to determine what’s working and possibly repeat it, and identify areas for improvement or adjustment. This helps ensure your end results are successful and you won’t be surprised by the outcome since you’ve been keeping an eye on progress throughout. (Well, you may be pleasantly surprised if your results come out better than expected).

George and Tate taste their truffle batter to make sure it's on the right track.

Our final truffles were successful and tasty!

Has your office participated in any tasty or interactive team building activities that resulted in marketing ideas or lessons? We’re looking for ideas for our next team outing!

Check out our Facebook page for more photos of our team truffle making trip!

Connect with Digital Third Coast on Google+.

Understanding Recurring Demand

When first creating an approach for a seasonal SEO project, it’s important to understand the search volume and demand, and confirm that it does, in fact, have a highly seasonal type of interest. As an example, let’s take a look at Google news headlines for the term “NCAA Tournament” in Google Trends:

Source: www.google.com/trends

As you can see, “NCAA Tournament” searches peak on a yearly basis right around March, as expected, and fall in line with the release of brackets and the start of the tournament itself. As an example, sites like CBS Sports, Yahoo! Sports and ESPN should highly consider a strategy that allows them to take advantage of this expected demand. We know their general marketing tactics already take this into consideration, but what about SEO?

Creating Seasonal Content

Many business owners look at seasonal content as something to incorporate into a website (like a slider on the homepage or blog posts) only just before and during the actual event. This is not the approach I would recommend. As we know, it generally takes a good amount of time to build search rankings for new pages on a site.

The best strategy for this type of situation would be to find a permanent place for yearly/seasonal content to live on a site. For the example of the NCAA Tournament, let’s take a look at CBS Sports, as they have created a permanent location for NCAA Tournament coverage:

Source: www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/ncaa-tournament

As you can see, the URL remains the same, year round. After all, big basketball fans may refer to the site throughout the year, so keeping this section dedicated to the annual event can help provide photos, dates, and information whenever visitors are looking for it. This is the permanent location of the CBS Sports NCAA Tournament coverage. By utilizing this approach, CBS has created an environment where they can consistently focus on both their on-site and off-site SEO tactics. By simply adjusting content on this page to match what is currently happening with the tournament, they are providing visitors with the timely content that they are looking for.

Additionally, we know that SEO is set up to “catch” visitors at the point at which a search is made. So what becomes most important here is creating that landing page which will be set up to accept that traffic most effectively when the time of year comes for the seasonal peak. Business owners should not focus on off-peak metrics closely as the goal is to be ready when the large amount of search traffic hits and have an optimized site ready to go to accept that traffic.

Using our example from before, CBS Sportsline ranks in the 7^th position on page one in Google searches for “NCAA Tournament” (as of 3.19.13). Within this highly competitive search category, which is rich with fresh news content, this is a great result (especially considering that it ranks above Wikipedia, which is not easy to do!)

Source: www.google.com

Taking this approach may be a bit of a sell to some clients, especially since it can be common to allocate budget to what’s happening here and now. But if you can prove the benefits of creating a “permanent placeholder” for peak times, top products, or periodic events for seasonal businesses, this year-over-year, long-term tactic, will show results that are consistent with standard SEO approaches and expectations. Also notable, this is a great way to establish a lasting relationship with clients, create loyalty, and demonstrate brand value beyond increasing general website traffic and leads.

What seasonal SEO situations have you encountered? What was the approach?