Online Marketing Blog

Art of SEO: Best Search Engine Optimization Book in 2009

Lee Odden — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 03:49:04 +0000

Our recent reader poll of 14 books either focused on, or with significant content dedicated to, Search Engine Optimization has concluded with 174 votes. And the winner by one vote and 27% of the total votes is….

Art of SEO (Theory in Practice) by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin and Jessie C. Stricchiola.

Published by O’Reilly, this phone book sized bundle of SEO wisdom is chock-full of advice for marketers that want to leverage search engine optimization as a marketing channel. Congratulations on winning our Reader Poll!

Here are several reviews of Art of SEO to consider or you can take up O’Reilly’s offer to write one yourself.

Runners up for Best SEO book of 2009 were:

Search Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint for Effective Internet Marketing – Kristopher B. Jones (Published by Wiley)
Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day – Jennifer Grappone & Gradiva Couzin (Published by Wiley)

You can see all 14 books about SEO along with the voting distribution and non-affiliate links (in case that matters) to their pages on Amazon.com on the Best SEO Books Reader Poll.

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Happy Holidays & Happy 6th Birthday TopRankBlog

Lee Odden — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:36:32 +0000

After a much deserved blogging vacation last week, I thought I’d start this final week of 2009 with wishes of appreciation for the readers of TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog and the fantastic team of writers we have. It was 6 years ago today, that TopRank started an agency blog as a way to publicly save and comment on industry news.

We’ve been through and observed many, many changes in the internet marketing industry over the past 6 years. Of course, Online Marketing Blog isn’t the only internet and SEO focused blog celebrating a 6 year birthday this year. There are several others listed here including a few that are still very active: Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Journal and SEO Book.

The most popular content in 2009 (by page views and unique visitors) continued to be resources such as the BIGLIST of Search Marketing Blogs (watch for a HUGE upgrade in 2010) as well as the managed list of Blog and RSS Directories, the RSS Button and Social Bookmarking tools created by Thomas McMahon, tips articles “25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips” and “25 Tips For Marketing Your Blog“.

One of the biggest changes for Online Marketing Blog in 2009 has been the addition of Adam Singer and Michelle Bowles as regular contributors. Adam and Michelle’s posts earn hundreds of ReTweets on average as well as numerous comments, links and off site citations by influential industry blogs and online publications.

Many companies have shifted attention towards other social media channels and some have postulated the death of blogging due to the increasing popularity of Twitter and Facebook. The reality is, blogs are a tool like any other digital asset and will remain as effective as ever according to their usefulness and ability to meet the needs of customers.

As the owner and editor, I admit a great degree of bias, but I’d wager that TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog is one of the most successful agency blogs published. According to MajesticSEO we’ve attracted over 1,000,000 links from other web sites. We’re mentioned on top industry web sites and major news web sites on a regular basis.

From a PR perspective, Online Marketing Blog generates 20+ unsolicited citations each month from influential industry blogs and publications. We’ve estimated those placements and industry coverage to be equal to about a $10,000 per month PR agency retainer. Plus, there’s no additional content creation or interviews necessary outside of what we’re already doing. OMB also generates daily or weekly advertising requests, new consulting project requests, candidate inquiries and speaking opportunities.

The great work by TopRank’s blogging team has been recognized through inclusion in numerous “top” lists including:

#1 Content Marketing Blog Junta42
Top 10 marketing blog by Advertising Age
#1 Small Business Blog by Technorati

An effective agency blog does not work in a vacuum though. By serving as a destination for our participation in other social channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Forums and other niche social sites, this blog provides a useful resource for the TopRank community of readers, fans, prospects and clients.

I sincerely appreciate the comments that our readers leave, the links that other blogs post to our articles and the opportunity to be a media sponsor for major Search Marketing Conferences like Search Engine Strategies and WebmasterWorld Pubcon. The pre-show posts, interviews and promotions as well as the live blogging during those conferences has produced a tremendous amount of mutually beneficial content and exposure.

Our liveblogging efforts wouldn’t be as successful without TopRank team members like Jolina Pettice attending conferences and writing, taking photos and networking with other attendees. Even though we’re not a news blog, there have been over 2,500 posts published. Here’s a breakdown of posts by contributor over the past 4 years we’ve been running WordPress (out of the 6 we’ve been publishing):

Julie Brue – 3
Michelle Bowles- 17
Adam Singer- 27
Mike Yanke- 31
Jolina Pettice- 61
Thomas McMahon- 115
Lee Odden- 1916

The blog itself wouldn’t run as smoothly without the efforts of Thomas McMahon, who keeps the front end and the back end of Online Marketing Blog running smoothly. Our dedicated server hosting is provided by VISI, a first rate internet services and web hosting company based in Minneapolis. We’ve had flawless hosting service from them for over 3 years and highly recommend them for high demand and availability blogs and web sites.

Online Marketing Blog in 2010:

For the upcoming year we have a number of improvements planned to make Online Marketing Blog even more useful for readers and our partners. Some we cannot discuss just yet, but a few upcoming changes include:

All new BIGLIST – We’ve been developing a categorized, ranked list of the BIGLIST that will also offer additional information on each blog as well as regular content updates, sorting features and several new aggregation options.
More active participation off the blog – We’ve recently added a Online Marketing Blog Facebook Fan page that was originally started in 2007 but will now provide Online Marketing Blog readers a venue for continuing conversations from the blog as well as an opportunity for updates. The TopRank Twitter account has over 3,000 followers and will continue to aggregate TopRank’s content publishing and bookmarking of useful resources on the web. LinkedIn is another area we’ll grow along with niche forum and social network participation.
All new Online Marketing Blog design – We’ve been closely monitoring what our readers like on AND off the blog and will be updating both design and front end functionality to make it easier to find and interact with the content that interests you most.
Limited Advertising Opportunities - In 2010 TopRank will be offering selective advertising and co-promotion opportunities that will be content based both on the site and in the RSS feed. In the 6 years we’ve been blogging, TopRank has never taken on advertisers and the only ad displays we’ve ever had have been for media partners or for speaking events. As one of the most popular marketing blogs on the internet, TopRankBlog provides a very high standard for quality exposure to an audience of client side and agency internet marketers. More details to come with the launch of the new design.

We have an editorial calendar of topics and content objectives as part of our own content strategy and would also like to know what enhancements our readers would like to see? What kinds of posts do you find most useful? Liveblogging, articles, interviews, tips, how to’s? What topics are of most interest? SEO, Social Media, Online PR, PPC, Email, Mobile, Local, Industry Specific?

Thank you again to our readers and to the TopRank blogging team for rounding out a fantastic year!

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5 Near Free Social Media Monitoring Tools

Michelle Bowles — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:00:21 +0000

When it comes to businesses leveraging the social web to communicate with customers and improve brand awareness, there’s some good news and there’s some bad news.

The good news: 86% of professionals have adopted social media in some way, according to a recent survey by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education.

The bad news: A whopping 84% of survey respondents who’ve adopted social media don’t measure their social media programs.

Even worse: 40% weren’t even sure they could monitor social media ROI.

Thankfully, there are a host of free or low cost tools available to help companies and organizations track social media success. Use one or more of these 5 social media monitoring tools to gauge how well your efforts are working.

1. Trackur

This social media monitoring tool from ORM expert Andy Beal tracks nearly every element of online media, from blogs, RSS feeds and Tweets, to images and video. Trackur provides the ability to not only view conversations about a brand, but also view the increasing or decreasing volume of the conversation. That way, users can be alerted to any spikes in buzz from a product launch or a negative event. Plus, Trackur offers analysis of any website mentioning a term being monitored, allowing users to distinguish how influential that site is. Monthly subscriptions to Trackur start at $18 per month.

2. PostRank Analytics

PostRank provides engagement scores to gauge how well pieces of content (i.e., a blog post, a news article) convinced users to take action (i.e., re-Tweet, a blog post comment, an RSS view). But beyond that, this social media monitoring tool shows the messages and comments from other sites that are contributing to the engagement score. In addition to individual pieces of content, this free service also maps out engagement activity and number of page views for entire blogs or websites per day. PostRank also offers integration with Google Analytics. Cost is $9 per month to track 5 sites. The image below illustrates a single post analysis with both engagement metrics and pageviews.

3. Google Alerts

This free tool from Google provides email updates of the latest relevant Google search results. It’s as simple as choosing a search term, determining the type of search results to be tracked (news, blogs, web, video, etc.), selecting update frequency and entering an email address. Google Alerts is one of the easiest ways to monitor brand mentions for both company and product names. Plus, the tool can be leveraged to monitor competitor mentions.

4. Social Mention

Similar to Google Alerts, Social Mention – a real-time search engine – aggregates search results from blogs, microblogs, videos, bookmarks and other social sites. But this free monitoring tool goes a step beyond that. Social Mention provides a social ranking score based on popularity for every search (i.e., how often the search term is mentioned, if the sentiment is positive/neutral/negative). All of this data can even be compiled into a CVS or Excel spreadsheet.

5. TechrigySM2

SM2 is a software solution designed specifically for PR and Marketing Agencies to monitor and measure social media. The “freemium” version of this full featured social media monitoring service allows you to create up to 5 profiles and each query is limited to storing up to 1,000 search results. There are many features with setup and reports as you can see in the screen shot below. Along with standard help and FAQ resources, there’s a Ning powered Techrigy social network or Community of users that you can tap into and share information.

Incidentally, we did an interview with Connie Bensen, Director of Social Media and Community Strategy at Alterian, the company that owns TechrigySM2 earlier this month.

Whether you leverage one of these low cost or free tools to get started or other tools like Collective Intellect, Cymphony, Converseon, ScoutLabs or Radian6, it’s critical to track social media efforts and tie results back to the goals of your business. Because the scary truth is this: When cut-backs rear their ugly heads, the first programs to go are those that can’t illustrate measurable results and link them back to organizational goals. Don’t find yourself in that 84% of Mzinga and Babson Executive Education survey respondents who don’t measure the effect of social media.

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eMarketer: 12 Digital Marketing Predictions for 2010

Lee Odden — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:49:54 +0000

eMarketer is one of the most cited resources for internet marketing trends, so when I received some tasty predictions for 2010, I thought they were too useful to keep to myself. These insights include future monetization models, the effect of transparency on advertising, social and search, mobile, social commerce, public relations, social advertising, Twitter, video and mom/pop internet usage. Enjoy!

Hybrid Plans that Combine Subscription Fees with Advertising
More marketers will increasingly embrace online video advertising, supported by the twin boom of video streams and video ad networks.

Further support for video ad growth will come from sites that offer a deeper catalog of professional video content—such as whole seasons of TV shows (both present and past), exclusives of entire sports events and other premium content. Such offerings will attract larger audiences. But in order to maintain the costs of deep-catalog video, the sites and their studio and TV network partners will need to introduce hybrid plans that combine subscription fees with advertising.

More Transparency on Websites Could Undermine Online Ad Efforts
Effective ad targeting depends on fresh and abundant data about Website visitors—what they’re doing, where they’ve been, where they go. However, both consumers and politicians are increasingly concerned about privacy issues.

From consumers, that will mean greater use of ad-blocking software or browser add-ons and more deletion of cookies. Consumers will be most sensitive to data gathered on social network sites, because of their personal nature.

From the government, that potentially means federal legislation limiting Website tracking.

For publishers and search engines to get in front of these changes will require greater transparency than ever before, such as Google’s new Privacy Dashboard. In 2010, we will see more Websites let users know what data is being kept about them and give them options to remove data or prevent it from being accumulated. However, such transparency alone will undermine online advertising efforts. That means publishers will also increasingly need to make clear what the trade-offs are for accepting online advertising—the free content, the quality of the content, the basic value exchange.

Social Plus Search Will Equal Better Results, More Ad Opportunities
Search will get more social in several ways: by including real-time content in results (e.g., Twitter posts), adding information from social network friends to results, and using collective information from other Web users to hone search relevance. By using social data to filter search queries, search engines will hope to deliver even more relevant results and more effective advertising. These trends will yield new ad formats that may incorporate friends’ viewpoints or interactions directly into the ad—and will raise new red flags among privacy advocates. Those search and social sites that get ahead of the transparency curve will tend to gain more consumer mindshare than those who operate under a heavier cloak.

Another key change to speed up in 2010 will be more video results as part of general search queries. That will help drive the greater traffic marketers will increasingly expect as a trade-off for the continued high CPM costs of video ad placements.

Mobile Commerce’s Time Has Arrived
It is eye-catching when a consultancy revises a market forecast upward in the midst of an economic downturn. That is exactly what ABI Research did with its forecast of mobile sales of physical goods in North America. In January 2009 it projected m-commerce sales would reach $544 million this year, up 57% over 2008—impressive in its own right. But in late October, ABI upped its forecast, saying sales would top $750 million in 2009, a whopping 117% annual growth rate. M-commerce’s time has arrived, and it is an easy bet that sales in 2010 will pass the $1 billion mark.

Whereas consumers once limited their mobile phone purchases to downloadable ringtones and games, today they are using their devices to buy books, apparel and other items associated with online shopping on a PC.

Retailers Grapple with Measuring Social Commerce
A number of major retailers have established a presence on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. For now, retailers are intent to learn from these experiments and are not too concerned with driving e-commerce sales. Building brand awareness and a solid fan base and generating leads have been deemed sufficient. But in 2010, retailers will become more serious about trying to measure social media’s impact on sales. One question retailers will grapple with is how much a large fan base translates into sales or brand loyalty.

Mobile Is Moving Into the Mainstream
Although mobile usage is firmly entrenched among consumers, marketers still view mobile as an emerging channel, hence the long-running (and always unfulfilled) expectations about the “year of mobile.” 2010 promises to be a little different. Aided by a flurry of acquisition activity, an influx of venture capital funding and growing brand adoption in the latter half of 2009, the year ahead will see mobile continue its shift toward the marketing mainstream.

Mobile ad spending will rise from $416 million in 2009 to $593 million in 2010 as more brands and agencies integrate mobile into their marketing mix. And if not an outright arms race, Google’s $750 million purchase of AdMob is certain to prompt greater interest in the mobile space from agencies, brands and media companies alike.

The fusion of mobile and social and the appetite for apps (among both consumers and brands) will continue unabated. In fact, location- and social-aware apps and utilities will be a key avenue for brands looking to engage consumers on the go. Cheaper smartphones and smarter feature phones will help marketers bridge the gap with consumers, but the onus is still on marketers to provide consumers with a measure (and measurable degree) of utility, relevance and entertainment.

Earned Media Takes Center Stage
Marketers will demand better ways to manage and measure the impact of earned media—the additional unpaid exposure a brand gets when consumers share about the brand online. Agencies will need to establish earned-media goals for every paid-media online ad campaign.

Social Ad Networks Will Expand
Expect more momentum—and regulatory scrutiny—behind advertising that is targeted based on information from social network user profiles. News Corp.’s Fox Audience Network (FAN) and services from startups 33Across, Media6° and others are already up and running. Meanwhile, some advertisers, such as Discovery Channel, have tested ad formats that are personalized on the fly by using Facebook profile data.

Twitter
It doesn’t take a crystal ball to guess that 2010 will be the year in which Twitter turns its focus toward building its business. So far, it has concentrated on audience growth, and by any measure it had a spectacular year. (eMarketer estimates that Twitter’s US user base tripled to 18 million in 2009.)

The questions now are: What kind of business will Twitter build, and will it succeed?

The revenue streams that have been discussed include paid corporate accounts, celebrity authentication and temporal search. Of these, search seems the most realistic as a revenue generator. There will be formidable challenges, however: After all, how does a marketer insert itself into a short, time-sensitive conversation without disrupting the flow of that conversation and alienating the user?

It’s not clear how, or if, Twitter will overcome these obstacles, but co-founder Biz Stone offered a tantalizing hint when he told Reuters that the company has a novel form of advertising up its sleeve. Expect Twitter to roll this out in 2010 as the cornerstone of its temporal search business.

Another thing to look out for is a possible Twitter IPO. This appears a more likely avenue than an acquisition, which loomed as a possibility at this time last year.

Online News Content
Media companies are at the center of a fierce debate over how to best monetize digital content. In recent years, they swung from one extreme to another—first charging the consumer for access to content, then opening the floodgates to free, ad-supported content (with a few notable exceptions).

Now, some media entities with premium offerings are again contemplating paid-content experiments. As these play out in 2010, we’ll see what works and what doesn’t. Our prediction? Consumers will resist paid systems, and competitors will capitalize on the negative sentiment with ad-supported content. In the end, there will be islands of paid content (The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times) and hybrids of paid and ad-supported models, but on the whole, the digital media landscape will be predominantly ad-based.

Digital Video Convergence
One of the keys to transitioning the US home video audience from DVDs to digital streams and downloads will be the emergence of technology that bridges the gap between the computer and the TV. The Consumer Electronics Show in early 2010 will usher in TVs with direct Internet connectivity, or with on-screen access to content portals such as YouTube, Blockbuster and Netflix. As online video becomes intertwined with the living-room TV experience, download and streaming services will take on a prominent role in the home entertainment ecosystem.

Look to the 55+ Age Demographic for Internet Usage Increases
Internet usage will continue to rise, as consumers find more ways to access the Internet. The continuing proliferation of laptops, smartphones and Internet-enabled TVs, MP3 players and gaming consoles will be the main force behind this trend. Teens and young adults are already active Internet users with many devices. The change will be seen among adults ages 55 and older, many of whom have always had an interest in consumer electronics and now are discovering social networks and other media.

However, the number of Internet users will begin to stabilize, as penetration reaches 66% of the US population, or 205.3 million people. Year-over-year growth will slow from 3.3% in 2009 to 2.36% in 2013, reaching 70% penetration in four years.

Broadband standards in the US will be redefined by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in February 2010. The FCC’s current benchmark—which eMarketer uses—is an Internet connection of 200 Kbps in at least one direction. That falls an order of magnitude below global averages. The US does not even make the top 10 list of global “broadband leaders,” which measures household penetration and quality of connection. eMarketer will update its definition of broadband following the FCC’s decision in February 2010. The change may substantially affect estimates of US household broadband penetration, if cable and satellite connections—the dominant forms of digital broadband—prove slower than advertised.

Now that you’ve had a chance to read eMarketer’s predictions for 2010, what are some of yours? TopRank will be posting 2010 Social SEO & PR predictions next week.

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MiNterview: Greg Swan, Digital Account Group Manager

Lee Odden — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:08:03 +0000

The next in our series of interviews with Minnesota based, social media savvy marketing and public relations professionals is Greg Swan, Digital Account Group Manager at Weber Shandwick Digital.

Greg manages and executes interactive public relations programs for Weber Shandwick clients across consumer, technology and public affairs industries. As the social media team lead, Greg oversees the U.S. Army’s social media efforts, including pioneering instant messaging and mobile programs and the launch of the Army’s first-ever Soldier blog. Greg has helped clients, such as The Coca-Cola Company, Snickers, Verizon and Chevrolet, take the big leap into the social mediasphere to influence consumer behavior online and create authentic engagement.

You’re in an elevator going to the 45th floor (NYC) and you’re asked what you do. What’s your reply? If that happened in any other city, would your answer be different?

My role as a digital strategist at Weber Shandwick is to help colleagues and clients understand, embrace and leverage the marketing opportunities that are created by the ever-changing social dynamic that’s fostered by new technologies. I love thinking about what’s next and helping brands experiment with emerging social marketing techniques. Or if I’m riding in an elevator with my Grandma, I would say, “I do marketing.”

Where did Perfect Porridge come from and where can I get some?

I’ve always loved music. I probably own a couple thousand CDs by now and don’t even want to know how much money I’ve spent on concert tickets over the years. I was a journalist for a short time in college — wrote for the alternative newspaper in town and was editor-in-chief of an arts magazine I co-founded. So when my wife and I moved to Minneapolis, I needed an outlet for that passion for writing and sharing news, and a music blog was the perfect outlet for both passions.

It’s been more than four years now, and my little music blog has grown into an AllTop.com-accredited destination for national and local music news, mp3s, video and reviews. I’m receiving more than 100 PR pitches a day and about 50 albums a month to review. Although that’s a tad overwhelming, I’ve developed long-term relationships with PR firms, record labels and publicists vying for coverage — yielding experience that helps me inform Weber Shandwick clients on blogger engagement strategies beyond the blind e-mail pitch..

Let’s try something different. I’m going to list a few words or phrases and it would be great to get your initial thoughts on each. What’s the most important thing for each topic companies should be thinking about for 2010?

Reputation management: Online reputation management is going to be a hot topic in 2010. A sizable 84 percent of global senior executives surveyed by the Economist Intelligence Unit reported that reputation risk increased significantly over the past five years. When executives were asked to choose among 13 risk types, reputation risk emerged as the most significant threat to global corporate business. As company, brand and product reputations fluctuate and/or deteriorate worldwide — and the real-time Web becomes “the” destination for breaking news, scandal and crises — marketers need to proactively engage reputation radar systems to identify, track and respond to approaching reputation threats, as well as find ways to locate and empower brand advocates. It’s my belief inoculation strategies today are crucial. As my boss always says, “Fill the sandbags before the flood.”

Search and PR: In my opinion, search marketing — both organic and paid — should be part of a complementary marketing mix. Organic search results are a continuation of an online reputation management framework, as well as a core part of any proactive campaign. There’s a philosophical debate happening right now about the utility of static URLs in a world dominated by search. For example, if a consumer wants to learn the latest news about a certain sports star scandal or the availability of a new energy drinks, they’re more likely to start at Google then visit a static URL homepage. In 2009, your marketing program could be helped or hindered by those first 10 links the search results. In 2010, it would mean success or failure.

Social Media and PR: At the Public Relations Society of America’s General Assembly in 1982 the attendees came to an agreement on the definition of PR: “Public relations helps an organization and its publics adapt mutually to each other.” For decades, reaching the masses with marketing messages required utilization of mass media (e.g., newspapers, magazine, radio, television). The most visible aspects of the PR industry today centers on pitching these legacy mediums to share an organization’s messages with its publics. But beyond the publicity and media relations aspects of public relations, PR pros have always been listening to what consumers think about companies and issues, building grassroots networks, fostering word of mouth campaigns and seeking two-way communication with those same publics. In 2010, PR is still the same marketing discipline it’s always been, but we have different tools to meet our clients’ objectives. The social Web has increased the velocity and momentum of these community building and social marketing initiatives. In my opinion, PR is perfectly suited to operate in the social mediasphere.

PR Measurement: I love this topic. Measurement is so important to all marketing campaigns, but the accepted norms are changing. Traditional PR measurement may include circulation, impressions, pass-along and advertising equivalency. These are all good baselines for traditional coverage. However, the nature of social media requires a shift in ROI focus from traditional, media-driven metrics to more progressive, participatory metrics. It is critical that an organization develop acceptable, understandable and meaningful measures of ROI, and agreed-upon benchmarks and stretch goals, as well as marketing plans to meet those goals. Depending on your objectives, your goals will be vastly different. If a company isn’t sure where to start or what would be successful, a good starting place is to start logging analytics as a benchmark today. A great way to know where you’re going is to know where you’ve been. Start by keeping track of total visits, number of posts, number of comments/likes and number of friends/followers in a detailed record that can be extrapolated over time. Six months from now, you’ll have a good idea if 20 comments on a blog post is “good.” Digging deeper than number of comments, we’ve developed a Digital Media Scorecard that can analyze the volume, content and sentiment of online conversations about a company or brand and then assign a numeric value to it. This is an even better way to assign quantitative measurement to qualitative engagement.

Future of the PR industry: Like all marketing practices, the PR industry will evolve to help their clients utilize new technologies to connect with their publics. We recently got rid of all of our fax machines across the office in favor of integrated copier/printer/fax units, and I thought that was a telling sign that the more things change the more they stay the same. I may never use a fax to send a press release to a media outlet again, but I’m glad I know how to send a fax if I need to. PR has never been about the tools – phone calls, blast faxes, e-mail and media clip pasting — it’s been about relationships. That won’t change. In my opinion, PR is going to see explosive growth as more senior leaders get over the technology barrier.

For companies that are trying to wrap their arms around the digital space, especially when it comes to brand, influence and the media, what are some of the larger issues they should consider before engaging outside help? What can they do to take better advantage of digitally savvy PR consulting? Think of that scene from Jerry Maguire, “help me, help you”.

You had me at “digitally savvy,” Lee. For starers, I’m a big believer in internal inventories to give brands and outside contractors the most accurate and up to date intelligence to layer digital strategies upon. For example, we’ve developed a client checklist to help brands clearly understand where they already have assets, resources and opportunities. Do you own your online profile in the intuitive places (e.g., URLs, social networks)? Do you know who in your company has the username/passwords? Do you have an internal and/or external social media policy, and if not, what are the steps to writing and approving one? What mainstream or online media monitoring and measurement practices do you already have in place? Is your company subject to regulatory standards that prohibit certain social marketing activities? You get the idea. The next step is agreeing upon a measurable objective. Then charge your internal and external marketing partners to focus their efforts on developing strategies to meet that measurable objective. Show me the money!

What advice do you have for companies still feeling uncertain about active engagement on the social web when it comes to dealing with budgeting and resource issues?

Remember that only a small percentage of both B2C and B2B companies are engaged in the social Web, and of those, even fewer are doing a tremendous job. The bar is still low, and recognizing an opportunity and digging into the resource and dollars is a great first step. From there, start a small project with a low-hanging fruit measurable objective. Execute, evaluate and try again. Baby steps go far in social marketing, particularly over the long-term.

Our readers love tips, so please share a few practical tips for getting a social media PR effort off the ground, assuming specific objectives have been identified, such as increased placement & mentions on online news sites, blogs and industry publications.

Agree upon measurement for the specific objectives, even if they seems innocuous (e.g., 5% increase in Facebook friends).

Identify company spokespeople who are available and willing to react to positive and negative online news, in both official and unofficial channels (e.g,. Corporate blog/Twitter, as well as message boards, newspaper article comments).

Do a deep dive into the social media buzz around your campaign topic.
Identify influencers, advocates and badvocates and transparently reach out to them ahead of a formal pitch. Ask them questions that will make your campaign better, stickier and more sharable.
Build relationships you can leverage when you’re ready for the ask.
Set up a comprehensive Google Alert (www.google.com/alerts) to get a sense of what’s being said about a brand, product, spokesperson, etc. in real time both now and throughout the campaign.
Keep detailed reports and post-campaign develop a summary that includes successes and key learnings. Evaluate, adjust and try again

What are 3-4 resources (blogs, books, podcasts, web sites, newsletters, conferences, etc) for staying on top of digital and social media public relations?

http://www.socialmediatoday.com/ is a curated blog that publishes the best of the best social marketing writing every day.
http://mashable.com/ publishes daily articles about the latest and greatest applications and innovations happening in social media.
http://sxsw.com is my favorite annual interactive conference and the one event a year I can count on recharging my creative batteries with a host of new thinking and status quo-challenging.

Minnesota is a treasure trove of companies and talent in the digital, interactive and social media space, yet a bit of a “best kept secret” compared to the coasts. Please describe some of what impresses you about the Twin Cities digital community?
The marketing community here in the Twin Cities has continued to grow, innovate and produce a tremendous quality of work in the interactive space. From Fortune 500 brands headquartered here to big name clients tapping local talent, the scope, scale and reach of Twin Cities-touched interactive work is something of which we should all be immensely proud. The community itself and the opportunities that arise from plugged in and passionate individuals coming together inspires me. For example, there is the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA), which boasts one of the largest memberships of any IMA, as well as some of the largest monthly and annuals events (disclaimer: I’m on the board). On the grassroots side, there are 1,400 members of Social Media Breakfast (SMB) who sell out ad hoc breakfast events for 300 in under three minutes. From a market-impact perspective, the buzz and community of the Twin Cities metro area is unparalleled.

Fun question: If you could be a single social media application, service or web site, what would you be?

I would be a widget. Widgets are dynamic, updatable, sharable, and the best ones can adapt to anywhere they’re placed. Grab me!

Find more about Greg Swan on the social web:
Twitter http://www.twitter.com/gregswan
LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregswan
Blog http://www.perfectporridge.com

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Reader Poll: Best Books on SEO

Lee Odden — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:20:28 +0000

With all the hubub about personalized and real time search and the potential impact on the SEO work that can influence search visibility, the question about relevance comes to mind when considering books about search engine optimization. Search engines like Google change often (38 new search products in 70 days) so one could argue that a book published in print would become outdated. For those books that outline very specific tactics and even tricks/loopholes, that indeed is the case.

However, there are many SEO books that focus on strategy and tactics worth considering. Well understood principles of information retrieval, content optimization & promotion, consumer search behaviors and analytics are timeless.

To that end, I’ve compiled a list of 14 books on SEO below from our list of 100 Search Marketing Resources and setup a poll that provides you the opportunity to pick which 3 are your favorites. Maybe we’ll find the Best SEO Book of 2009 (according to Online Marketing Blog readers at least).

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

If you would like to learn more about any of the books on SEO in our poll, here are the links to their pages on Amazon (not affiliate):

SEO Warrior – John I. Jerkovic
Art of SEO – Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, Jessie C. Stricchiola
Search Engine Marketing Inc, 2nd Edition – Mike Moran & Bill Hunt
Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day – Jennifer Grappone & Gradiva Couzin
The Truth about Search Engine Optimization – Rebecca Lieb
Search Engine Visibility, 2nd Edition – Shari Thurow
SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible – Jerri L. Ledford
SEO Made Simple - Michael H. Fleischner
Search Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint for Effective Internet Marketing – Kristopher B. Jones
Building Findable Websites: Web Standards SEO and Beyond – Aarron Walter
The Findability Formula: Easy, Non-Technical Approach to SEM – Heather F. Lutze
Landing Page Optimization – Tim Ash
Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets – Andrew King
Inbound Marketing - Brian Halligan & Dharmesh Shah

Also, here are two new SEO books coming out in 2010: Search Engine Optimization Secrets by Danny Dover and Marketing in the Age of Google by Vanessa Fox.

There is some irony in this poll of course, because Aaron Wall’s “SEO Book” is no longer sold and therefore, not included in the poll. Are there other well written and relevant books on SEO that we missed? Please mention them in the comments and we’ll add them to the 100 SEM Resources post.

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Top 5 Reasons for Ongoing SEO Services

Michelle Bowles — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:22:35 +0000

For many companies, an ideal world involving Search Engine Optimization would be simple, quick and a one-time task to check off a list. An organization would create a website, optimize its content for target keywords and promote the site. Soon, the website would acquire a strong number of inbound links and start ranking for those target keywords. End of story.

Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. In reality, SEO isn’t just about adding keywords and linking. SEO is increasingly social and sits at the intersection of multiple business functions outside of marketing including public relations, customer service, recuitment and branding.

Ongoing SEO consulting is an important part of any internet marketing mix. Truly good consultants save companies significant expenses and contribute to increased leads and sales by providing unique expertise and insight into the technical, creative and increasingly social sides of internet marketing.

Back in 2007, Lee pinpointed 5 Advantages of Ongoing SEO Consulting. As we near the start of 2010, I think it’s the perfect time to revisit those points to see if they hold just as much weight today as they did 3 years ago:

1. Ongoing search marketing consulting is important because a large percentage of organizations fail to implement the recommendations provided to them by their SEO consultants.

There are many reasons companies do not implement the advice they’re paying for. In difficult economic times, some companies aren’t able to justify the expense of making major changes to their content management systems or devote significant resources to content creation. Many web development or copy writing staff are overbooked and SEO implementation requests never make it to the “done” checklist. The best optimization recommendations in the world can be given, but if they aren’t implemented properly or at all, then they’re useless.

An experienced search marketing consultant can lend a hand in implementing recommendations at once, in phases over time or provide quality control oversight of client side implementation on an ongoing basis. Ongoing SEO helps companies avoid costly mistakes in situation such as when SEO work is overwritten or implemented in a way that actually hurts search engine spider interaction rather than facilitate it.

For one B2B e-commerce site that TopRank has worked with for several years, SEO oversight over time has been instrumental at achieving compounded search traffic. Because the company’s web site encompasses a vast number of product pages – and because product focuses change over time – ongoing attention to keyword glossaries, on page optimization, anchor text and link sources has been vital.

In order to maintain search momentum and integrity to target keywords and audiences, the SEO team revisits optimized content to ensure keywords are still relevant and that pages retain their ability to pull search traffic. Since 2007, top 10 search engine rankings for this site have increased by more than 150%. While the value of “rankings” can be argued with Google’s new personalized search for everyone, ongoing measurements using consistent means can provide a relative measure over time. The end result has been a significant increase in relevant search traffic over time, despite changes in keywords and target audiences.

2. Search marketing consultants can help organizations proactively build links over time.

Link building continues to be one of the most common victims of a neglected search marketing program. Yet ongoing link building is still one of the most critical factors in determining page relevancy, crawling and rankings.

From content marketing on social networks to optimized press releases to link bait, search marketing consultants can help organizations acquire links that drive traffic directly and influence better search visibility, which also drives traffic. SEO Consultants can even assist in more passive link building efforts such as directory submissions, bookmarking, widgets and operationalizing the link opportunities that exist with other types of online content such as job listings, events and public relations efforts.

For one retail SEO client, TopRank has provided ongoing search marketing consulting – ongoing link building, in particular – that has resulted in over 80% of all web site traffic coming from natural search. On any given month, the site receives anywhere from a handful to several hundreds of new inbound links from relevant sources. Since an ongoing effort to acquire links was started, the website and blog have increased unique visitors by 214%.

3. Ongoing search marketing consulting is necessary because the search engine industry changes often.

This point may be more relevant today than ever before. The major search engines are constantly fine-tuning and the search engine landscape continues to change. Bing didn’t exist 3 years ago and who could have imagined that Yahoo and Microsoft would actually be working together let alone Google achieving 70% market share?

As an example, in just a little more than a year, Google has completely revamped the way it crawls and indexes Adobe Flash files. Before summer 2008, it was virtually impossible for a Flash-based website to gain search engine rankings. Today, many of the rules for optimizing on-page text can apply to text in Flash files.

More importantly are the impact of personalized search for everyone, the influence of social media and real-time search. The implications for SEO with these recent developments are profound and consultants that are on top of such changes provide invaluable advice to their clients, saving time, money and increasing competitive advantage.

Keeping up with the changes can put a strain on companies’ IT and marketing departments. In a win-win scenario for the client, search marketing consultants stay on top of these constant changes and consult on the implications for individual client online marketing efforts. Not only will the client’s site continue to reap the benefits of SEO, but as Lee noted in his post, he or she can “look like a rock star to their management team.”

4. Companies have thinly spread employees; ongoing search marketing consulting acts as “more hands on deck”.

Now, more than ever before, employees are wearing multiple hats within their organizations. A company’s web development staff, copywriters or other marketing personnel might be tasked with SEO in addition to all of their other responsibilities. Compounding the issue, the person responsible for ongoing SEO might not even have previous experience in search marketing.

Having a search marketing consultant on board gives the people tasked with SEO with useful resource so they can focus more attention on core responsibilities.

For example, TopRank acts as a partner with a B2B distributor of industrial products for all of their online marketing activities, including content optimization, blogging and PPC management. With a capable internet marketing team as a resource, the client is able to focus its in-house employees on making sales. As a result of their top 10 rankings on important keyword phrases increasing by 125% since the beginning of the year, search traffic has also improved significantly. More qualified traffic = more qualified prospects for this B2B company.

5. Many companies don’t actively or effectively use analytics on their own.

From measuring SEO performance to mining new keyword opportunities, Analytics are as important as ever. This is especially true as organizations are increasingly demanding proof that their marketing budgets are being put to good use. Marketers must definitively prove marketing ROI and tie efforts back to corporate goals. Concerns about effectively measuring web site ROI have given way to questions about measuring social media ROI.

Qualified SEO consultants have the necessary experience in monitoring keyword traffic, referral trends, time spent on sites, visitor interaction, social media conversations and other vital metrics to enable companies to make smarter decisions about what’s working and what’s not. The increasingly social and real-time nature of search brings new opportunities for on-demand SEO tactics that would be lost without proper analytics oversight.

Web analytics are certainly more present in most company online marketing programs with the introduction and acceptance of Google Analytics, but even there, constant innovation on the part of Google creates competitive advantages for those companies that stay current. SEO consultants providing ongoing web and social media analytics insight can reveal long term trends, cyclicality and the effect of the many changes mentioned above to an organization’s ability to attract new business and manage it’s reputation online.

Conclusion:

Organizations that invest in ongoing search marketing consulting are putting themselves a giant step ahead of the competition by allowing the company to focus on its core skills and relying on the SEO agency either completely, strategically or to fill in where needed. Do what you do best and outsource the rest.

Companies that hire and manage in-house SEO teams continue to leverage the expertise and strategic advice of competent SEO agencies to provide insight that proves highly valuable in staying competitive, reducing online marketing costs and increasing bottom line sales.

What are your thoughts on the value provided from ongoing SEO consulting? Do you think SEO can be handled in-house all the time, some of the time or never? If you’re a company considering SEO, what are some of your major concerns with outsourcing on an ongoing basis?

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MiNterview: Connie Bensen Director of Social Media & Community Strategy

Lee Odden — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:00:48 +0000

Online Marketing Blog continues sharing Minnesota-based social media expertise with the next installment of our MiNterview series.

Connie Bensen is a key voice amongst online Community Managers. Her blog is recognized as a leading resource for cultivating online communities and providing best practices for this emerging role. She also provides mentorship and inspires individuals to explore this new career. Connie is the Director of Social Media and Community Strategy at Alterian, which provides leading marketing products for the enterprise.

Please describe your personal evolution in becoming a community strategist and explain what that role is?

My community building started as a public librarian (even though I didn’t realize it). Outreach and community building was critical to staying relevant when we were competing against Amazon, Barnes & Noble & Google. A digital imaging company found me using their product in a new way. They allowed me great latitude to experiment with brand building, social networking, and social media marketing. I quickly realized the power that community offers in regard to word of mouth, organic SEO and human nature. Over the past three years I have been sharing my ideas on why a company needs someone focused on social media and what that role looks like as well as challenges, compensation, etc.

What’s the best thing about working with Techrigy and what has changed the most about your role there?

Techrigy was acquired in July, so it is Alterian SM2 now (I have to be true to my present role). The best thing about Techrigy was that it was an opportunity to take a brand from square one and build it as quickly as possible. The rate of change at a startup is incredible. When I started there were 4 people and 10 months later we had acquired Andiamo Systems, grown our customer base by 840% and had a staff of 10 people! My challenge was that I didn’t have a marketing budget, but sales & I put our heads together & learned from each other. by acquisition time I was ready to give up the many hats that I was wearing. That knowledge transfer is done and I now lead the social media efforts globally at Alterian (offers products for marketers: database, analytics, email, content management system and now Techrigy SM2). It’s exciting to have the opportunity to work in a global company!

The number of companies offering social media monitoring and analytics services has really mushroomed in the past year or two. Yet many companies really don’t have a sense for how monitoring and engagement fit within their social media efforts. What advice can you give about how best to use social monitoring tools? (pick whatever application, purpose or objective you like)

I don’t really see how anyone with an online presence can afford to not be monitoring their brand. I’ve been using Google alerts and RSS since 2006. It’s the only way to efficiently build your brand (personal and/or company). And it’s very helpful in identifying conversations to participate in which is huge for building SEO and driving traffic back to your site (what you call ‘Social SEO’ – great term by the way!). My favorite application is lead generation for sales. It’s simple: monitor for people expressing a need for your product, then provide information. At Techrigy it shortened our sales cycle, we quit cold calling after 3 months, and had lower acquisition costs (some Freemium users were converting directly).

Our industry is in agreement that an organization needs to have a certain culture in order to sustain a social media engagement. Zappos, Dell, and Southwest Airlines are all very successful because they truly care about their customers. Companies will require various levels of organizational restructuring in order to embrace social media. Considering that aspect will make best use of the PR consulting (rather than considering it a separate entity). Social media requires an entwining and communication amongst many departments and that will be a challenge for many.

To me, listening is the precursor as well as the justification for social web engagement. Do you have a good example of a company that made business level changes based on social media monitoring?

Paula Berg has some great examples of how Southwest Airlines has responded to their customers requests. My favorite is the example of people complaining about the amount of color ink to print boarding passes. In only a few hours, a change was made so that they printed in black and white which saves their customers how much? (I keep hinting to United that they should do the same. Each leg of a flight requires a full sheet of paper to print and half is advertising! Too annoying! Northwest’s boarding passes are smart – one sheet of paper with all of the legs of the flight in one place!)

What are your thoughts on the intersection of search and social media? You and I Tweeted with Best Buy CMO, Barry Judge about this in the past and I’m curious what your current opinion is and if you’ve seen any specific examples of it in action worth noting?

It’s easy to say that search and social media are totally dependent. Having a site is one thing, having a presence and participating in channels takes it to the next level. Social media monitoring identifies which channels are best and where the influencers are at for your vertical. It allows you to build your search rank as quickly as possible. As we said in that conversation the community aspect and their contribution of user generated content results in building a level of word of mouth that is invaluable (others creating backlinks for you).

What practical tips can you share for getting a social media monitoring effort off the ground? If you can be unbiased about it, what recommendations can you give for selecting the right tools?

1. Everyone should start with free tools. Google Alerts, Tweetbeep, etc are great places to start. If you’d like to see the volume and the results aggregated then we have the Freemium of SM2 and Scoutlabs & Filterbox have 30 day trials.
2. Listen for awhile (1-3 months)
3. Identify a business objective and create a strategy
a. identify who in your organization should participate
b. Have HR put a social media strategy in place
c. Talk with legal and put together a crisis plan
4. Train staff on best practices for engaging
5. Benchmark and plan to measure the objective decided on in number 3

Tip – Start small and grow it

Do you have any creative models for ongoing cost justification associated with adding tools and community managers to a corporate social media program?

My advice to small companies is to find someone to do contract work to start with. Both parties will quickly realize if it’s a good fit or not. And the nature of the position will show its value very quickly if the person is suited (note that it’s really important for the position to be open ended enough to allow for growth). A larger entity can look internally and make it part of an existing person’s role to start with. Monitoring tools are relatively inexpensive and range from free to professional tools for $5 k a year.

What are 3-4 resources (blogs, books, podcasts, web sites, newsletters, conferences, etc) for staying on top of digital and social media public relations?

Putting the Public Back in Public Relations by Brian Solis, Deidre Breckenridge (Review)
Katie Paine’s blog – http://kdpaine.blogs.com/
Marketing Prof’s blog – http://www.mpdailyfix.com/

The MPS SMB is the best! I’m appreciative that they adopted me even though I live 5 hours away. The group is diverse and I’m grateful for the friends I have met through Rick Mahn’s group.

Any predictions for hot applications, services or strategies in the social media space in 2010?

More companies will invest in a Social Media Specialist (community manager) to guide their efforts internally & externally.
Many companies are going to find a conflict when they try to extend their social media efforts across the board. They will need to have a culture shift in order to be successful in their social media efforts. Many will need considerable amount of organizational restructuring.
The value of social media efforts will continue to be reinforced. Social media monitoring tools will make it easier to show ROI.

Find more about Connie Bensen on the social web:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/cbensen
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/bensenc
Blog: http://conniebensen.com

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SES Chicago: Internet Marketing Tips for 2010

Lee Odden — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:27:59 +0000

Here we are near the end of 2009 and at the last Search Engine Strategies conference of the year. While many conferences are down in attendance, SES Chicago actually beat last year’s numbers by about 100, according to Matt McGowan, VP, Publisher & Head of US at Incisive Media, the company that owns SES.

There are many ways to get value from attending a conference but one that is especially important, and often overlooked, is the ability to connect with industry thought leaders and ask important questions.

While roaming the sessions, exhibit hall and networking events at SES Chicago, I did just that and decided to use my trusty iPhone 3GS to capture some insights on what marketers should be focusing on or considering in 2010.

Clearly, iPhone videos should be taken in bright light and close quarters, but these didn’t turn out too bad and they include great tips ranging from online reputation management to measuring social media ROI to the importance of testing what’s new but mastering the basics:

First up is Muhammad Saleem, a social media maven that works with the Chicago Tribune. He’s successfully built a tremendous social media profile as a “power user” on many difference services. Muhammad and I talked about what social media marketers should focus on for 2o10:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The rate at which social media and search intersect is mind boggling with the deals struck between Google and Twitter, Bing and Twitter, Bing and Facebook, Google and MySpace, etc. I talked with digital marketing guru Aaron Goldman of Connectual about his take on the future of search and social:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another dimension that marketers need to focus on is the rapidly changing nature of digital content distribution channels and how to optimize for them. Best selling author, keynote speaker and conversion expert Bryan Eisenberg and I talked about these challenges and how to manage chasing “shiny objects” vs testing what’s new and the importance of mastering the basics.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The social web makes a lot of information about individuals and companies transparent, whether we like it or not. Online Reputation Management is increasingly important as service providers find new ways to help consumers discover, consume and share information online. The author of “the book on ORM – Radically Transparent” and founder of the social media monitoring service Trackur, Andy Beal and I talked in his Penthouse suite at the Hilton (actually it was Matt McGowan’s) on the importance and challenges of ORM in an increasingly social web.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The sheer volume of information about how to best market online is staggering. Staying current is key and without a foundation of knowledge to build upon, new insights can be fragmented and strategies incomplete. Aaron Kahlow, fouder of Online Marketing Connect and the Online Marketing Institute talks about the importance of training and mastering the basics of internet marketing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For more internet marketing interviews from SES Chicago and many other events, be sure to check out TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog video channel on YouTube.

What tips or questions do you have about online marketing for the coming year? What digital marketing tactics and strategies will you be focusing on?

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Dan Zarrella Interview On The Social Media Marketing Book

Adam Singer — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:15:17 +0000

Dan Zarrella, a self-described “social media marketing & viral marketing scientist” lives at the intersection of social marketing and web development. He’s known for conducting experiments with Twitter, compiling data behind the social web, creating interesting web applications and blogging. And now, he has released a book.

Dan’s book is called “The Social Media Marketing Book” and is aimed at helping those who are new to social media marketing learn the basics. The content is well-written and outlined into clear sections. Those just getting into digital marketing will find it to be a good starting point in their journey.

To learn more about the topics discussed in the book, Dan was nice enough to answer a few questions for Online Marketing Blog readers.

1) You’re a self described “Social Media And Viral Marketing Scientist.” Can you tell us the story behind that title and define it for us?

In the current social and viral marketing landscape there’s a lot of what I call unicors-and-soft-focus-rainbows advice. “Experts” telling people what feels right or sounds good. Suggestions like “engage in the conversation” which sound great as soundbites, but aren’t based in real hard data or evidence. I take a much more analytical approach to marketing and strive to answer questions with science, statistics, experimentation and real data.

2) The Social Media Marketing Book is tailored to those new to digital marketing and is a great intro for those just getting involved. As someone fluent in social media marketing strategies, any reason you chose to reach out to this audience as opposed to seasoned pros?

Its not going to be my last book, so I think a book for beginners was a good start. And I noticed that with a lot of the other introductory books theres a lot of “theory” and high-level thinking, this book is designed to be much more tactical and hands-on. Its like a cookbook that will teach you the basics of how to actually get started marketing your brand or product in social media.

3) Much of the book outlines how to use social web tools effectively. As both a developer and a marketer you have a unique perspective: do you think that social media applications don’t do a good enough job of showing users (and marketers) how to use their products?

A lot of the work that goes into good web apps is around making them intuitive, so that the interface itself explains how to use it, rather than requiring seperate documentation or teaching. I think this is a great approach, but with my book I wanted to give people a baseline understanding of what these tools are used for and how they’re used, so that readers know what they’re trying to get out of the tools before they really dig in and learn the intricacies of any system.

4) You mention Digg in the book as a channel for marketers to promote the right kind of material (tech-oriented content, specifically). But you don’t mention that Digg is a highly-gamed network with a majority of front page content controlled by top 100 users. Even with some of the tips you mentioned, do you think marketers have a chance of making page one of Digg without relationships with power users?

You raise a great point, and you’re right, relationships with power users is key. Of course even better than that is to get a piece of your content on a well-known and trusted site and they try to get that site to the frontpage. I didn’t want to give new social media marketers a roadmap that pointed them at 100 power users with the instructions to go beg them for submissions, it felt wrong and dangerous to do that. Instead I tried to give them an understanding of how Digg and sites like it function in general, which are lessons that can be applied to a bunch of different communities.

5) Say you’re a new digital marketer and just read the Social Media Marketing Book, have experimented a bit, and have the basics down. What do you see as the next challenge they will face, and how can they overcome it?

The biggest challenge, I think they’ll face is learning how to incorporate social media into their daily work and life. With Twitter for instance, I know plenty of good marketers, who don’t Tweet that much, or do for a little while and then stop. Its a marathon, not a sprint and you’re going to have the best results when you can learn to integrate social media with what you’re already doing.

6) Do you see social media as closer to PR, (influence) direct marketing, (ROI) or something else?

Interesting question. I think the debate comes down to semantics really. In my head, I think marketing should be the driver of “influence” and PR is concerned with crisis-mangement and old-school earned media. On the web, most great earned media comes from practicing a hybrid skill set of making cool stuff and then getting it in front of the right people, and neither can be ignored. I consider myself a marketer and I think its easier to outsource marketing than traditional PR. As far as results and metrics go, I think people should see influence as a means to an end (ROI) and both are important to measure and undertand, but only one pays the bills.

Be sure and visit Dan’s blog or connect with him on Twitter.

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SES Chicago – Search: Where to Next?

Lee Odden — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:55:23 +0000

Moderated by Simon Heseltine, Senior Marketing Manager for AOL with panelists including: Eli Goodman from comScore, Justin Merickel of Efficient Frontier and Doug McMillen from Microsoft Advertising.

First up is Justin Merickel from Efficient Frontier, which runs about $180m in PPC through their platform. Justin talked about two main trends:

The changing SERP. Data comes front and center to the results page
Justin shows a SERP page for “bottled water” where the top PPC ads display images of bottled water. Not sure of it’s impact. However, if you’re not leveraging Google features (like images in PPC or local listings) you’re missing out on significant visibility.

Advertisers need to think about how to get their products and services into the new multimedia search results page.

Information is coming in the search results page in different formats. For example, “mortgage” displays comparison information between lenders right into the search results page. It’s therefore, critical for companies to gain coverage in Google on these new types if data inclusion.

How? What kinds of structured data do companies have to use for inclusion? What kinds of assets do they have? (Can I hear a DAO?)

Location, product extension, comparison
Benefits: Long tail automation, specific creative, prices and offers, automates a significant manual effort, compliments SEO
The end result is greater coverage in search results.

Great example: “Asics running shoes” for Zappos. #2 in Paid search results, top 3 image PPC ads top right and 2 of the 5 image search results.

Efficient Frontier has a platform that allows you to provide product feeds.

Creative management means developing feeds, mapping feeds to a creative template, generating ad variations from templates, push data to search engines via API and updating creative based on a feed update such as price changes & out of stock.

The second point Merickel covered: The auction moves beyond search

Is display now search like? There are two big trends driving display towards search-like performace, each with optimization implications: Rapid expansion of auction-based access to inventory. Also access to targeting data decoupled from media.

When exposed to both paid search and display ads, consumers were found to be nearly twice as likely to make an online purchase on a retailer’s web site.

How to get to search-like intent? Retargeting and using third party data.

Next up is Eli Goodman, Search Evangelist at comScore, who tracks about a million people online worldwide. Eli’s presentation was focused on three topics for the future of search.

Branding: Online advertising leaves branding dollars on the table. Big dollars will be put into online branding vs direct response.

All three major search engines are delivering richer search results (Universal Search Results) and other enhancements. Example: Special K ad turns into a video. Richer paid search ad presentations will help advertisers capture search brand dollars. But scale is a challenge.

The solution might be to encourage advertisers to think of search as the traffic driver to the brand mechanism, not just the brand. Think not just about obvious terms but terms that represent related concepts and terms, behaviors related to the purchase.

Who could do better? GE’s ecomagination doesn’t rank organically or in PPC ads for “clean energy”. Both search terms and content need to reflect the needs and interests of the customer, not the advertiser message.

The next topic Eli covered was In-text search, which are search results that showg up as you mouse over content. Vibrant Media and Kontera are 2 of the only companies that provide this kind of service for publishers.

As you scroll over text links, informative, useful or entertaining pop ups might display that factors where you are in during the content consumption experience to deliver helpful info. Basically, it analyzes the content where you are and presents additional, useful information.

Example: Hellman’s Receipes. Delivers useful recipe ideas and ingredient lists on related food terms wihtin relevant web content. The most useful content increases user engagement.

The last point from comScore involved social search. Alternative search engines show strong year over year search growth from Sept 2008 except for MySpace. YouTube had over 11 billion searches last month.

While social search is the next frontier, the search results need to be more relevant. That means there are opportunities for marketers to optimize content with social media web sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.

[This is a key point of intersection with search optimization and social media. Optimizing content within social networks, not just public content available at Google.com]

With the high volume of search queries on YouTube, there are significant opportunities for content creation and optimization to achieve visibility on broad and specific terms.

Last up is Doug McMillen from Bing, who talked mostly about Mobile search.

Bing’s upcoming mobile search will be similar to the online search user experience. Designed from the ground up as a mobile specific product, not a web search product brought to mobile.

Industry Reseach: US mobile broadband ramp up is simplar to that of the the PC. As broadband adoption with PCs became prevelant, there was a corresponding jump in search queries. That same parallel is happening with broadband adoption in the mobile industy and mobile search.

With mobile search, think about how users search using a mobile device vs computer based search. “One hand using a thumb while driving”. [Isn't that illegal?]

It’s time to think about a mobile search strategy: Us Mobile search users: 2008 5.2 million and jumping to 56.2 million by 2013.

With mobile, now is the time to start testing and learning. The mobile marketplace is wide open right now. Bing is offering click to call services on a CPS basis. Microsoft Mobile Marketplaces is another product that helps drive mobile traffic to your web site.

There are huge growth rates with mobile search. Mobile search is seeing 2-3x higher CTR’s and CPS as low as .05.

This was a good panel offering a mix of paid search and display, mobile and richer search experiences. What do you think the next big thing in search is going to be?

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5 Must-Read Tips for B2B Search Marketing

Michelle Bowles — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:39:07 +0000

[Note from Lee: A few weeks ago, Michelle wrote a great post on Retail SEO tips and this week, I've asked her to tackle B2B SEO and general search marketing tips, since one-size SEO does not fit all programs. Enjoy!]

Search marketing should be a top priority for organizations in any industry. But B2B search marketing efforts take a slightly different form than the tactics used in consumer focused SEO and PPC programs . Typically, B2B markets are smaller, products and services are more complex, and sales cycles are longer. Therefore, B2B marketers must think a bit differently in terms of target keywords, online content and link building.

TopRank has worked with many companies using search marketing to reach Business to Business audiences over the past 8 years and we’d like to share these 5 B2B search marketing tips that can help companies maximize their results:

1. For B2B companies, getting found is just the beginning. While B2C companies can reasonably expect to generate a purchase from a single site visit, the sales cycle for B2B companies is much longer. Once a prospect finds the B2B website via search, the real work begins to convert the prospect to a sale. Understanding the B2B searcher and their position within the sales cycle (Evaluation, Consideration, Purchase) is essential for creating appropriate optimized content to meet their needs.

Additionally, web sites focusing on reaching B2B audiences, must focus an equal amount of effort on gaining relevant search engine rankings and the stickiness of their site. Visitors looking for B2B solutions can be convinced to stay on a site longer by:

Providing the information prospects need to assess the company and its offerings
Relying on analytics and user experience metrics to measure stickiness factors, such as time spent on specific pages, clickthrough rates on calls to action and length of visits
Ongoing heatmap analysis to ensuring that the appropriate links are included on the home page to lead prospects to the most important content

2. Content is key for B2B websites. For B2C websites, the majority of content focuses purely on product information. Because sales conversions for B2B organizations are based more on building relationships, content must position that organization as an industry thought leader and a trusted resource. Including video demos, case studies and newsletters on a site can help B2B organizations build relationships with their audience.

For one client in the B2B marketing industry, TopRank devised a blog strategy incorporating industry thought leader interviews. Insight was gathered from notable figures and shaped into keyword-optimized blog posts for a special interview series. This tactic contributed to a nearly 50% increase in organic traffic to the blog. More importantly, referrals from the blog to the corporate site increased by more than 140%.

3. B2B target keyword glossaries must be more robust. Clearly, targeting the proper keywords is essential to any search marketing campaign. But for B2B organizations, keywords need to cover a longer buying cycle, and therefore must often be more diverse than B2C target keywords. Prospects at the beginning of a sales cycle might use certain terms to search for information that differs from terms used by those ready to purchase. That variety of keywords must be supported by relevant content and link building as well.

For one B2B client, TopRank® Online Marketing devised a robust keyword strategy that considered audiences at multiple touch points to achieve significant results. The realization was made that prospects who are ready to buy typically use solution-based terms – either general or exact product names – in their searches. On the other hand, prospects at the beginning of the sales cycle use issue- or problem-based terms in their searches. The target keyword glossary, therefore, included both specific product terms and issue-based terms. This helped increase keyword referrals by more than 60%.

4. B2B organizations must think outside the box when it comes to link-building. Because B2B markets are typically smaller than B2C markets, there may be fewer websites capable of linking to B2B sites. Consider the amount of fashion-related blogs compared to food processing technology blogs. To increase the number of inbound links to their sites, B2B organizations must get a little creative:

B2B organizations can approach their supplier networks for inbound links to their site
B2B organizations with a small target audience can create link bait focused on a different but related market
For very specific niches, a B2B blog audience can be widened by blogging about more general company-related issues

5. B2B search marketing efforts have to speak to multiple entities within a business. Unlike B2C purchases, B2B purchases involve different stakeholders within a company. Each stakeholder comes to the site with a different set of expectations.

For example, a B2B site that sells recruitment software might be visited by a company’s HR manager to gauge the effectiveness of the software. A member of the company’s finance department might visit the site to assess the value of the product. In still another scenario, a member of the company’s IT department might visit the site to learn how the software can be integrated into the overall system.

B2B search marketing efforts must identify:

Who in the business is buying products/services on the website
The level of understanding stakeholders have about products/services
The jargon different stakeholders use to find products/services
The benefits that their business needs to receive from products/services

As you can see, there are some important considerations for B2B search marketing vs consumer focused audiences. The key is to understand the unique needs of the target audience, how they search, evaluate solutions, consume information and ultimately, how search affects decision making, both directly and indirectly.

What tips do you have for B2B organizations to add to this list?

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MiNterview: Rick Mahn Land O’Lakes & SMBMSP

Lee Odden — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:00:11 +0000

Minnesota is home to a tremendous amount of digital marketing and social media talent. The local Social Media Breakfast events are notorious for “selling out” in minutes and attracting upwards of 300 – 350 attendees. There are over 1,200 members of the group’s SMBMSP social network. The founder of this group is none other than Rick Mahn.

Officially, Rick is the founder of Social Media Breakfast – Minneapolis/St. Paul, Social Media Strategist for Land O’Lakes, blogger, podcaster and author for Personal Branding Magazine. As part of Online Marketing Blog’s continuing effort to showcase social media movers and shakers in the Midwest, I connected with Rick for the following interview.

You’re a technology guy that now works as a Social Media Strategist at Land O’ Lakes. Can you tell us about the journey to that position?

It’s been an interesting one for sure. I’ve always been fascinated by technology, whether it was computers, phones, snowmobiles (hey, we live in Minnesota right), or anything else that presented itself as a puzzle. It made for a great career in Information Technology.

Somewhere around 2002 I started taking notice of more web-oriented ideas and technology. It was the beginning of ‘web 2.0’ and the idea of creating your own space online was just as fascinating as the technology it ran on. I found myself reading and following some of the early adopters and thought leaders like Dave Winer (a fellow techy guy) and Doc Searls. This led me to eventually start blogging in 2004 and continuing into today.

Somewhere along the way the interest in using web 2.0 started to develop into an idea about the social web. From there the learning and networking led to opportunities to share and teach. I guess without knowing it I developed a second career option outside IT and started transitioning somewhere in 2007.

At Land O’Lakes today, it’s an interesting challenge. I do perform a few functions I used to do – mainly identifying what the business needs related to social computing and work to find ways to introduce those ideas into the organization. We have our challenges as any large company does, from productivity & security concerns related to social media, to addressing the perception and demonstrating value. It’s a tough job, but invigorating at the same time because I see folks at many levels starting to have those ‘aha’ moments. That makes it fun and rewarding.

Not long ago, you started (along with some other forward thinkers) the now world-famous SMBMSP.org ala Social Media Breakfast – Minneapolis / St. Paul. From a few people meeting in a downtown Minneapolis Café to over 300+ attending sold out events, the momentum and value creation from SMBMSP is phenomenal. Can you share a bit about how that organization started and your thoughts on why it’s so successful?

When I started SMBMSP in 2008, there was only one other Social Media Breakfast event – the original created by Bryan Person in Boston. I had connected with Bryan almost two years earlier when following blogroll links from some other folks in the Boston PR seen. He had some great content on his blog and I started reading and commenting along with a few others.

About September 2007, Bryan had this great idea of getting those talented Boston PR folks out for breakfast and talk social media over coffee and such. That first one that they held in November was a hit with about 20 or so folks showing up. People like Doug Haslam, Chris Brogan, and a several others were there taking pics, live tweeting and making it look like a darn good time. In December they did it again, and I email Bryan after New Years and said “if you have contacts with anyone in Minneapolis, you should have them set one up here”. Bryan simply responded “why don’t you”.

And that’s about it – I took that idea and ran with it. Our first SMBMSP was held at Key’s Café in Minneapolis with about 20 folks showing up. Little did I know that most of these folks would end up being peers and mentors, sharing ideas and tweets for the last two years.

What’s in store for SMBMSP in 2010 and how will you manage its explosive growth? What do you have planned for content and events in 2010?

It’s been challenging to keep up. Earlier this year I invited Mykl Roventine to join me in organizing and hosting the events. Mykl has become instrumental in helping take SMBMSP to the next level. We’re able to divide and conquer on organizing, drum up sponsors, keep up with our various community resources and develop ideas.

In 2010, we have a number of things on the drawing board. We’re working ahead to get events planned further in the future, and secure larger venues with specific amenities that we’ve missed in the past. We know that the key to success for SMBMSP is the people who attend. They trust that we’ll have valuable content and many of them participate in sharing ideas and connecting us with resources.

I know that SMBMSP is also viewed as an educational resource as well, with folks just out of school, and many people transitioning jobs or careers looking for information that will help them land a good job. We want to help in that and have some ideas in the works. We’re working on some great content for 2010 and a couple of fun events as well. Stay tuned.

For companies that are trying to wrap their arms around the world of social media in the enterprise, especially when it comes to building a business case, what advice do you have?

Educate. I’ve found that misunderstanding of what social media is and how it is of value for an organization is a real stumbling block. Especially at middle management, it seems to help when getting them up to speed on the concepts and methods that social computing employs.

Also, I try to bring case studies on related or relevant businesses when building that business case. It’s sometimes easier for those folks who are unfamiliar with social media to show them how it works for a competitor, similar product, or sized company.

Obviously, one of the big things is to convey the concepts in an understandable manner. While social media purists like to say “you don’t own your brand, your customers do”, that tactic is the fastest way to loose believability. Start explaining how the collective opinions of consumers shared among themselves sways public perception of the brand and they begin to understand what’s happening. Remove the hyperbole and get back to the basics of business.

A lot of enterprise social media efforts are focused on listening, community engagement, content and measurement. What other actions should companies be paying attention to?

Usability. Make it easier for those customers to share what they love about the product or brand. We’ve got so many nifty tools and networks to do this, but for the vast majority of people on the web they don’t have time or the inclination to experiment.

Mashups are the other thing to watch for. We’ve seen many in the past year, but I think rather than the next Facebook or Twitter, its creative combinations of these larger tools and networks. Look at the number of short video services leveraging Twitter. All the apps on Facebook that tie back to other networks, blogs, multimedia hosting services, and such. This is the semantic web that many folks were describing a year or two ago – this is where we’ll see a lot of new ideas come together in the next couple years.

Do you have a sense for how often companies create their own applications vs. using third party tools? Do you have a model for deciding, for example, when it’s better to create your own social network vs. leveraging something like Facebook or LinkedIn?

I don’t know that I have a model, but I have a few guidelines in mind as I work with companies regarding this question. First I try to figure out what their needs are – otherwise you end up trying to pound that square peg in the round hole.

Once I understand the needs, it makes that decision easier. Second, I determine if there is a “white label” service or tool that would work – i.e. can I customize Ning into something that will fit their needs. If the business need is unique, it then becomes important to understand what portions need to be custom built, and then find ways to bring in those third party networks and tools.

The faster I can find a path to use existing services and functionality, the sooner and cheaper I can get them engaging their customers. For example, why write a custom login & user database when we can simply have them log in with Facebook?

There are many companies that, when asked, will say they’re already “doing” social media. But there’s a difference between having accounts setup on Twitter and Facebook and actually using those tools to better connect with customers and grow a business. How do you explain the value of digging deeper into social participation to companies (or individuals) that equate personal use of social tools with effective use to meet business goals?

That’s a great question because its an easy mistake to make. Just because any of us use social media personally, doesn’t coincide with a business strategy for social media. This is especially interesting for those with a strong personal brand that work for, and represent a strong commercial brand.

Simply getting a c-suite individual on Twitter isn’t a strategy, but developing a framework and guidelines for adding Twitter as a customer support tool is. Making sure that the use of social media by individuals in their professional capacity is in alignment with the goals of the organization is key here. There needs to be a purpose, a reason, otherwise an organization won’t accomplish anything other than being “cool”, which doesn’t necessarily mean that they “get it”.

It goes hand in hand with the business case. Understanding the goals of the organization, finding the right combination of engagement methodologies within the social web, and defining a corporate strategy and usage guidelines to get that done is what the business needs. It’s not easy, nor is it as sexy as one thinks for a social media professional. When all is said and done, we’re here to support our customers in new ways and that is simply doing good business.

What social tools do you use most often?

I’m fairly predictable. I’m on Twitter most of all, along with Facebook of course. I am still a heavy user of RSS feeds in Google Reader and have found several add-ins for Firefox to help manage the load of content I read every week. Also, I’ve been fiddling with Foursquare of late, but outside of letting people know what I’m up to, I don’t find the game aspect interesting.

What are 3-4 resources (blogs, books, podcasts, web sites, newsletters, conferences, etc) for staying on top of social media?

There are many blogs, books and newsletters that I keep up on. Somewhere around 200 at last count in Google Reader. I know many of these folks personally, though I can only call a couple true friends rather than simply connections. There are too many to really give a good sampling but here goes:

Chris Brogan & Jason Falls (Social Media Explorer)
Mashable & Tech Crunch
Small Business Survival & Successful Blog

Minnesota is a treasure trove of companies and talent in the digital, interactive and social media space, yet a bit of a “best kept secret” compared to the coasts. Please describe what impresses you most about the Twin Cities digital community.

Lee, you touched on a good one with this question. The folks we have here locally truly are a hidden secret. They’re talented, open minded, vocal, and very active in the community. I think having those Midwestern values that exist here in Minnesota also plays a role in that.

Going off the SMBSMP community that I’m most familiar with – the folks involved come from all professions and love to share. They look out for each other and trade information on opportunities as well as “how to” tips on social media. We are lucky to have a vibrant economy in the Twin Cities, which allows us to have some of the best minds in PR, Marketing, Web Development, Information Technologies, Business Management, and many more.

I have to say I’m honored to be able to help bring them together and learn from them. That’s probably the biggest thing I respect them for – they participate as a community in every sense.

What are your plans for 2010 and what will you be doing next?

Let’s see if I can come up with a good guarded reply. Exciting opportunities for many folks in social media exist, so I’m not alone. I plan on expanding the offerings of Social Media Breakfast here locally, and working with the group nationally to make some interesting things happen. I’m looking forward to next year to try out some new ideas and hopefully get a few new projects moving that I’ve been thinking on for the last few months.

Thanks Rick. Find more about Rick Mahn on the social web here:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/rickmahn
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickmahn
Blog: http://rickmahn.com

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SES Chicago: 5 Ways to Multiply Conference ROI

Lee Odden — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:49:52 +0000

Next week is the final search marketing conference of the year for me and most others in the SEM industry: Search Engine Strategies Chicago is a MidWest focused event that will offer keynotes from the likes of Jeff Jarvis, Author of What WouldGoogle Do? and a multitude of Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced breakout sessions covering SEO, PPC, Social Media and many other related web marketing topics.

I know there are plenty of agencies and companies that are experiencing slimmed marketing and travel budgets, wondering if marketing conferences are worth the investment. Sponsoring and exhibiting are a big part of many companies marketing strategy and for those companies that do it right, with pre, during and post show promotion, it’s very productive. Even at small shows.

The majority of attendees at SEM conferences are buyers and sellers of search marketing and related services. They go for many reasons ranging from knowledge, to networking to business development. Attending 10-15 conferences every year for the past 4+ years has provided me many opportunities to realize how to get the most out of marketing conferences.

Whether the investment in attending a conference is on the company’s dime or the individual, it’s important that conference attendees get the most out of their time at events by setting goals. Managers sending individuals to conferences should be clear about expectations. Company staff should be sure to talk with others within the organization or teams that have attended the same or similar events to gain their insight.

Here are 5 of the most valuable things you can get out of conferences to multiply your investment:

1. Networking – Set goals and identify how many qualified prospects, marketing partners, vendors to outsource to and job candidates you will meet. Schedule meetings, dinners and other social activities IN ADVANCE. Each day of the conference, tally them up and plan how you will follow up. Get creative with meeting new people in between sessions after the conference at social activities and my personal favorite: over food. In my experience, the single most productive situation for generating the most valuable contacts for biz dev, recruiting and many other reasons is over breakfast, lunch or dinner. Coffee works too.

Write notes on the back of business cards and either use a single social network for follow up connections like LinkedIn. Or, segment the contacts you’ve made into groups and choose the best social network to use for follow up. Some people are best to connect with via Twitter or Facebook. Others are best with LikedIn.

2. Knowledge – Know in advance which sessions will you attend and how you capture the information? It amazes me how many people come to sessions and sit there, listening and doing nothing to document what they’re learning. HUGE mistake!

Take notes on paper or laptop, photos, audio or video (where allowed). When meeting new people, discuss the sessions with them. Compare notes – it’s a great way to network and to get other opinions. Before the conference, make a grid or a plan for which specific sessions you’ll be attending. Often times, there is not much time between sessions and the difference between getting a good seat and standing room only can be a matter of minutes.

If you have multiple staff attending a conference, be sure there isn’t unnecessary overlap by planning out who goes to what session. Then follow up during (if possible) or after the conference to share what was learned. At TopRank, our team will liveblog sessions and then create a PowerPoint presentation when they get back to share the most important, actionable things they learned at the conference with the rest of the team. Staying current is one of the few ways to achieve and maintain a competitive advantage in the SEM business.

3. Content – Think about how will you leverage your conference experience to create new content for your company blog, articles, or process documentation. Set goals for what types and how many content pieces you’ll create each day. The content you capture and create can supply a company blog with numerous posts during and long after the conference. Remember that content comes in many forms: photos, video and audio. If you have an iPhone, AudioBoo is an excellent app for recording and promoting podcasts on the fly. If a speaker has uploaded their PPT deck to Slideshare, then see if you can embed that presentation in a blog post along with your observations.

Liveblogging is not for the weak at heart, so keeping it simple to the main points of a session is just fine.

Creating content from conferences shows clients, staff and prospective clients (if you are an agency or consultant) that you are on top of what’s happening in the industry.

4. Knowledge Transfer – It’s important to decide how will you pass on the information you’ve acquired to the rest of the team. As I mentioned above, TopRank staff take the highlights from a conference and create presentations which they share during all-hands team training sessions which occur every 2 weeks. For many people, knowing they will be expected to demonstrate new knowledge and especially, practical tips, helps create an appreciation for capturing such information during sessions rather than simply sitting there and wondering where to party that night.

5. Socialize – Speaking of parties… After hours events are excellent opportunities for conference attendees to relax, network and share information. Make no mistake, post session networking can be an art form. While it’s important to relax and have fun, be clear about objectives and make a goal of attending a dinner each night of the event if possible. Some dinners are a tradition amongst long time friends, some are sponsored by vendors and some are spontaneous events through new connections and wanting to continue the conversation after the day’s sessions.

After hours events can be good opportunities to capture video or audio interviews, but do it early. There’s less noise, more light and less slurring of words.

As you can see, there are many more opportunities to get value from marketing conference participation than keeping up to date with an industry. Pre conference goal setting and planning, well defined processes as well as follow up and post event knowledge sharing can all multiple the value organizations realize by sending employees to educational events.

What are your best tips on getting more out of conferences, workshops and training seminars?

Incidentally, I will be presenting and moderating at SES Chicago. Here are the details:

Monday, December 7^th 2009 – 3:15pm-4:15pm
SEO Through Blogs & Feeds

Not yet running a blog? Not syndicating your content through web feeds? Then you’re missing out on an important area that can help your overall SEO efforts. Learn more about the unique advantages blogs and feeds offer to Search Engine Optimization.

Moderator: Rebecca Lieb, VP, US Operations, Econsultancy

Speakers:
Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board & CEO, TopRank® Online Marketing
Mark Jackson, SEW Expert & President/CEO, VIZION Interactive
Sally Falkow, President, PRESSfeed
Daron Babin, CEO, Webmaster Radio

Tuesday, December 8^th – 4:15pm – 5:30pm
News Search Optimization
News search engines offer a great way to receive targeted traffic related to breaking topics or to help with a public relations launch. In this session, we look at how to make use of press releases and news content to tap into the power of news search.

Moderator:
Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board & CEO, TopRank® Online Marketing

Speakers:
DanaTodd, CMO, Newsforce
Greg Jarboe, President & Co-founder, SEO-PR
Lisa Buyer, President & CEO, The Buyer Group

Conference info:
Hilton Chicago
720 S. Michigan Ave
Chicago, Ill.
December 7-11

To register, visit SES Chicago

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SEO Case Study: PRSA Jobcenter

Lee Odden — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 12:00:32 +0000

From time to time I like to post a case study as an example of the implementation of all the good advice we’ve been giving the past 6 years. Tips and how to’s are great, but stories of implementation are like a picture being worth a 1,000 words.

The following is a basic case study for SEO work performed on a portion of the PRSA site that is focused on PR and Communications Jobs.

Situation:

With over 32,000 professional and student members, the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) represents the world’s largest organization for PR professionals. One of the key resources PRSA offers to its members is the PRSA Jobcenter, where over 77,000 potential employees are able to connect with a seemingly infinite number of public relations professionals.

PRSA made the decision to upgrade the architecture of the PRSA Jobcenter, with the objective of improving both traffic via search engine visibility and overall usability for its members.

As a component of its existing search engine optimization and consulting program, PRSA engaged TopRank Online Marketing to improve the usability and search engine visibility of its Jobcenter.

Solution:

A SEO Audit was conducted to identify target market keywords, opportunities for code level optimization, crawling and indexing issues as well as content that would meet the needs of candidates searching for specific types of PR and communications jobs. A keyword glossary of popular and relevant terms was reconciled with the available content on the web site and recommendations were made to update pages, tags and links where necessary.

Part of those recommendations were to create job category pages that offered specific information on the top job searches on the PRSA Jobcenter. RSS feeds for each category were created and promoted, allowing job seekers to subscribe and receive automatic updates.

A variety of link building tactics including the use of a widget to populate other web sites with PRSA powered job listings provided direct traffic and a useful signal to search engine crawlers that other topically relevant web sites considered the PRSA Jobcenter worth linking to.

The Jobcenter site optimization edits and new job category pages provided targeted content for the search engines and also created a seamless connection between the employers job listings and job seekers. Clustering popular phrases by category and subsequent content pages proved useful for search engines and for searchers.

Ongoing training of PRSA staff on keyword usage in new document creation as well as link building helped the client, “help themselves”.

Results:

Within the first six months of implementing the SEO audit and new category pages, total traffic to PRSA’s site has increased substantially, while pageviews for PRSA’s Jobcenter increased by over 40% and continues to climb.

Search engine rankings and visitor referrals from competitive keyword phrases increased substantially. For example, referrals from queries on the #1 Google ranking keyword phrase ‘public relations jobs‘ have increased by over 450%.

The goal of making Public Relations and Communications job listings posted to PRSA’s Jobcenter more easily found via search directly affected the ability to promote PRSA over competitors.

No case study would be complete without a quote from the client which has extended the scope of work to include the entire PRSA web site:

“The SEO team at TopRank has been a tremendous partner for improving the search engine visibility of the PRSA Jobcenter. Their work with keyword research, content optimization, code SEO and link building has been instrumental to growing a key business for our organization. I recommend TopRank’s SEO consulting services without reservation.” – William Murray, President and COO, Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).

With case studies like this, there’s a lot more than what meets the eye as far as SEO tactics. Many SEO consultants have very sophisticated knowledge for improving rankings and traffic. Fewer have the insight and patience to deal with legacy content management systems, different levels of approval, interdepartmental cooperation and ongoing education of client staff.

What’s not mentioned above and I’ll mention here is the importance of talented and experienced Account Management. The best SEO advice in the world is useless unless it’s properly implemented. The key to getting recommendations implemented and for those changes to stay implemented is a relationship between agency account team and the client side people involved. That includes marketing, PR, business managers, content producers, IT and often times, Legal.

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BIGLIST Search Marketing Blogs 113009

Lee Odden — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:00:21 +0000

Absence makes the heart grow fonder and we know online marketers already like the BIGLIST of online marketing blogs reviews. This new update that is decidedly focused on search engine optimization should start your week off right.

While we have a good looking group this week, the Search Agents was the winner for the best looking Search Marketing blog. Not only does it offer a clever theme, but content and usability to boot. There are more contributors listed than most SEM agencies have in their employ. Content is balanced between SEO and SEM followed by everybody’s friend, Social Media. The Search Agents is the official corporate blog of The Search Agency, an integrated online marketing firm headquartered in Santa Monica, CA.

Let’s get to it with the last BIGLIST class of November 2009:

Actionable Insights – Covario isn’t just a leading San Diego company in the interactive marketing analytics space, it’s full of Covarians. What do those Covarians do when they’re not using their clever software to automate and analyze SEO and PPC? Why, they’re writing about industry news and updates, indepth analyses, strategic and tactical advice on a blog good enough to make it on the BIGLIST.

SEO Contrarian – What are the chances of another SEO having been a Combat Engineer in the Army? Except my stint was long, long ago. Ari Ozick has his opinions and even a Manifesto, which makes for interesting blogging, especially when mixed with skill and first hand experience. Don’t let the SEO Scum category scare you, just read.

Shark SEO – Dave Peiris works for iCrossing in London and besides playing with search engines all the live long day, he likes coffee, jaffa cakes, napping and designing clever linkbait. The good kind. The blog has a very cool design but reading what’s on a good SEO’s mind is even better. And no sharks to be seen.

Best SEO Blog - With an awfully literal name, (oh wait, we do that too) this blog by Michael Martinez, Nicholas Ramirez and Gene Tapang from Visible Technologies puts out “the latest in search engine marketing tactics, the tried and true techniques.” With posts back to 2007 there’s plenty of SEO insight to gain, which is a good thing in a world currently dominated by social media content.

SimpleFuzz – Jeremy Martin admits to his vices: webaholicism. Which of course, is a good thing when you blog, since that openness means the opportunity to exchange ideas. Say, on the topics of seo, social media, ppc, blogging or web design. This blog is a great resource for small businesses in Utah, where it’s written and beyond.

Holistic Search Marketing – Like TopRank’s BIGLIST, Peter Young (Head of SEO at Mediavest in Manchester) has his own list called TSMR (Top Search Marketing Resources) that you may want to get on. I can’t tell you how here, you’ll just have to visit his blog and find out. While you’re there, check out all the fine SEO and Google focused blog posts too.

Made the BIGLIST did you? Well then don’t forget to wear this impressive badge.

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10 Link Building Tools for Tracking Inbound Links

Michelle Bowles — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:07:33 +0000

Quality inbound links are an essential element of web site marketing and search engine optimization programs to increase traffic and online sales. The greater the number of relevant and authoritative links to a web page, the greater the potential for higher search engine rankings and qualified traffic.

A recent survey from SEOmoz illustrates just how important inbound links are to rankings. An impressive 4 of the top 5 ranking factors involve inbound links:

Keyword focused anchor text from external links: 73% very high importance
External link popularity: 71% very high importance
Diversity of link sources: 67% very high importance
Trustworthiness of the domain based on link distance from trusted domains: 66% very high importance

Conversely, the No. 2 negative ranking factor was link acquisition from known link brokers or sellers (56% high importance). Incidentally, TopRank has never engaged in link acquisitions in this manner, focusing instead on earning links through creative content promotions, social media and online public relations.

Tracking links to your web pages — and those of your competitors — is a major part of any SEO strategy. Fortunately, a host of free and paid tools exist to provide a comprehensive looks at where your web pages stand.

Since link building is so important, Lee and I have collected these 10 tools for tracking inbound links for you to test:

1. Majestic-SEO

Majestic-SEO allows users to track link information for any domain – their own sites or those of competitors. Illustrated in the image below, users can access the number of:

Sub domains
Pages
Links
Referring domains
Images
NoFollow links
Redirects

By verifying ownership of a domain, users can obtain a more detailed report that includes unique links and their anchor text. With registration, the service for your own site is free. Users can buy credits to obtain that same information about other web sites such as competitors. Downloadable data is given on top anchor text, top referring domains and top pages. Plus, the tool offers a “daily update” feature that provides a daily journal of new inbound links.

Majestic SEO

2. BuzzStream Link Building

BuzzStream Link Building focuses on providing tools that help automate redundant tasks in relationship building. It’s a CRM system for link building with applications for SEO as well as online PR.

Find Contact Info
Track Email & Twitter
Manage Link Prospects
Monitor Backlinks for anchor text, nofollows, outbound links, banned words
Track activities and conversion rate
Delegate contacts, split prospecting from outreach

BuzzStream Link Building tools are very robust for link detection, suggestions, relationship management and link management. The BuzzMarker bookmarklet allows easy addition of new link opportunities via the browser. Many other tools focus on link detection, acquisition and the technical site of management. The CRM aspect of BuzzStream and the conversion tracking reports make it unique.

There is a free trial for BuzzStream and monthly costs range from $29/mo to $249/mo. There are also options for Agencies and Enterprise use.

BuzzStream Link Building

3. SEOmoz Linkscape

This inbound link tracking tool offers both a free basic version and an advanced version with a subscription to SEOmoz PRO.

The basic search (illustrated in the image below) allows users to determine the number of inbound links to a page and the number of different domains linking to a page. The tool also gives a ranking of the page based on number and quality of inbound links, as well as a ranking of the domain overall.

In the full version, users can not only judge the quality and quantity of links to their own web pages, but to their competitors as well. Users can compare number of links, number of domains and domain ranking side-by-side against competitor sites.

Users can also determine the keywords competitor sites are targeting in their anchor text and identify competitors’ most powerful links.

SEOMoz Linkscape

4. Raven SEO Tools
Raven is a suite of SEO tools including a Links Manager that allows you to easily manage the link status, contacts and tasks related to each link.

Raven will automatically alert if any changes have occurred on an active link, if the nofollow attribute was added, the anchor text changed, the PageRank changed, or the link was removed. There is team link building management functionality as well as the ability to import, export in CSV format or generate reports online.

A standalone linking too is not available for purchase. The cost for the suite of Raven SEO Tools starts at $79 per month.

Raven SEO Link Builder

5. SoloSEO Link Building Tools
SoloSEO is a collection of SEO campaign management and implementation tools which includes “Links Manager” and “Link Build It!” modules for building and tracking inbound links to your web site.

The Links Manager module helps discover links, assess the strength and quality and track progress. It also includes ongoing link detection and automatic notification if a link is deleted. Link Build It! is a bookmarklet that shows backlink count, PageRank, and Alexa rank for the site, DMOZ listing, .edu or.gov links and the ability to easily add the URL of the page being viewed to the Links Manager.

There is a free trial and the cost for SoloSEO is $29 per month for 5 domains and $4 per domain after.

SoloSEO Links Manager

6. Yahoo! Site Explorer
Yahoo! Site Explorer is a popular, free tool for analyzing and tracking inbound links for users’ own and their competitors’ sites. Users can:

Determine the number pages within a domain indexed by SLURP, Yahoo’s search engine crawler
Explore each page to determine inbound links for each
Exclude inbound links from the domain
Exclude inbound links from the subdomain
Export results into a TSV file

Yahoo! Site Explorer

7. Page Inlink Analyzer
Page Inlink Analyzer is a tool created by Eric Miraglia that leverages the Yahoo Site Explorer tool mentioned above in a more useful interface that combines a left side column listing of indexed pages for the site being researched and the inbound links to the focus URL in the right column. This allows the user to quickly research the inbound links to each page of a particular site.

For each inbound link the page level and domain level inlink counts are reported as well as the number of Delicious bookmarks (with a link to view them) for each link and the associated keyword tags.

The Page Inlink Analyzer tool is free.

Page Inlink Analyzer

8. pluginSEO Beta Linking Tools
pluginSEO is a service in Beta that works to simplify SEO and linking tasks by having users input keywords and competitor URLs to generate advice including link building suggestions.

Link features include:

The Reactor:Links page makes suggestions
My Links shows inbound links to your own site
Competitor links documents inbound links to the competing sites entered
Link suggestions provides a visual listing of new linking opportunities displayed below

pluginSEO is in Beta and is now offering free trials.

pluginSEO

9. Sheer SEO Backlinks Watchdog
Sheer SEO is a set of SEO project management tools, one of which, monitors “guarded” inbound links. The Backlinks Watchdog tool monitors the following link characteristics:

Anchor text
Page rank
Number of outbound links in the referring page
Availability of the page
Presence of meta tags “nofollow” and “noindex”
Existance of the link to your site
Presense of “nofollow” attribute on the backlink (rel=”nofollow” causes the link not to pass rank)

There is a 90 day free trial for Sheer SEO with paid options ranging from $7 to $40 per month.

Backlink Watchdog

10. HubSpot Website Grader
This free SEO tool provides an overall SEO score for websites based on inbound links, website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other factors. Users submit their website URL, along with competing site URLs, and are then emailed a detailed report that includes:

Google PageRank and number of Google indexed pages
Number of inbound links, with the option to analyze links through HubSpot
Competitive analysis with website grade, Google PageRank, number of inbound links and number of del.icio.us bookmarks

A sample report is shown below.

There are many other link building and tracking tools ranging from the SEOBook toolbar and Backlink Harvester to SEO Spyglass Link Assistant. These 10 should be a good start.

What web based or desktop software tools have you found to be useful for tracking inbound links?

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All New Google Design

Lee Odden — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:53:13 +0000

Google is a master of innovation in the search space and while they seem to subscribe to Guy Kawasaki’s “release early and release often” new product philosophy, the attention to changing the Google search page is near-holy. Minuscule design changes at even the pixel level are cautious and carefully considered. And rare.

Apparently, Google is testing a redesign and logo which you can see in this home page screen shot:

The logo has changed and the “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky” buttons are blue rather than gray. But the biggest changes are on the search results page. There are three columns rather than two:

I’ll mention some of the specific changes but I have to say, my initial (and critical) opinion of the updated search results page is “awesome”. I liked it immediately.

Left Column: Colorful blue headings and icons are added for categories of search. The number of initial categories displayed varies by the search query. When I searched on “playstation 3″, Everything, News, Blogs and Shopping showed as the default search categories. You can expand categories to include images, video, books, maps and forums. What initially displays and the remaining categories to expand varies by the query.

Related search queries are listed below that followed by options for time intervals which are from the Options feature.

Additional search tools can be expanded including even more related searches and a timeline. I did a vanity search for my name and the timeline went back to 1960!

Standard search are displayed as a default, but under expanded search tools options for Page images, Fewer shopping sites, More shopping sites and Page previews are available.

Middle Column. The search results for news, blogs, images, video etc all stay within the same format as standard search, although shopping is unique. There is a preview page image search option that is pretty handy, allowing you to see a thumbnail of the page.

I did notice related queries suggested at the top of the page on some queries, but not all. Normally, related queries are displayed at the bottom of the search results page.

Search queries for items that invoke local search results like “pizza” display best match web sites on the top consistently in my tests and the map displayed in the local listings is much wider than it is now.

Right Column. I didn’t really notice major changes in the sponsored links. Recent changes in the right column have included movement left, closer to the organic search results as well as the inclusion of images in the sponsored listings vs all text.

What does this mean for SEO? For Social Media Marketing? With the efforts to disambiguate search results by offering search category filters, it makes sense for content publishers and therefore, website marketers to ensure Digital Asset Optimization efforts are in effect. By showing the time sensitive search options all the time, it will bring more attention to fresh content.

I think core strategies that are focused towards creative content creation and promotion in multiple media formats will do well in a new Google. Besides the aesthetic changes shown above, I noticed several instances of Google indexing and ranking images for text displayed within the image when that text did not appear elsewhere. It could have been due to anchor text of incoming links, but I think it’s worth watching.

Along those lines, I suspect with YouTube’s automatic captioning feature that uses speech recognition software to convert the audio of a video into text, that even more implications will be seen for rich media in the search engine optimization space.

As far as I can tell, this new Google design was reported on Google Blogscoped yesterday where you can get the copy/paste code to check out the redesigned Google yourself. SEL also mentioned it and I would expect that if this is indeed a new change Google will make permanently, that Danny Sullivan will provide a comprehensive analysis and info direct from Google.

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Thankful Wishes From Online Marketing Blog

Michelle Bowles — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:47:44 +0000

With Thanksgiving almost within reach, it’s hard to think of anything but turkey, pumpkin pie, mashed potatoes and warm homemade rolls. Actually, for me, my mind is on my aunt’s chocolate pie and my grandmother’s macaroni and cheese.

But regardless of the type of food item occupying your thoughts right now, Thanksgiving is a time to reflect on what we have to be grateful for. I, for one, realize I have a lot to be grateful for, considering the people I interact with on a daily basis and the work I’m tasked with each day.

Michelle Bowles

Having been a part of the TopRank Online Marketing team for 4 months now, I’m thankful for my fellow team members who have patiently shown me the ropes along the way and made me feel welcome.

And as a brand-new Minnesotan, I’m also thankful for my team members’ recommendations on the best restaurants in Minneapolis, directions to the neighborhood post office, insight on the area speed traps to look out for – you name it!

In the spirit of such thankfulness, I asked some of my fellow Online Marketing Blog contributors here at @TopRank to share what they’re thankful for this holiday season:

Jolina Pettice

“This Thanksgiving, I am especially thankful for TopRank clients. 2009 has been a great year of achieving new heights and celebrating success, whether it was attaining that sought after 1^st place ranking for a competitive term, increasing inquiries or launching a blog. I am also extremely thankful for the TopRank team for their dedication, and my friends and family who keep me laughing all year long.”

Adam Singer

“I’m thankful for being a team member of an industry leading digital marketing firm like TopRank, writing for Online Marketing Blog, working with high-quality clients and the marketing community as a whole for being a great group of people. Additionally, as a (relatively) new Minnesotan, I’m thankful that it is nearly December and I still have not had to use the ice scraper provided to me by Dana.”

Thomas McMahon

“I’m thankful to work in a company that is open to new ideas, new media, and that is ever evolving into new and exciting spaces. I’m also thankful for my coworkers who keep me entertained with their witty, and sometimes strange, stories.”

Lee Odden

“I am truly grateful for the amazingly talented and hard working team we have at TopRank and the clients we are fortunate to serve. There is a real spirit of collaboration, problem solving and work quality here that a lot of other agencies don’t have. The heartbeat of our company is Susan Misukanis, and her dedicated long hours keep our team running smoothly – I am forever thankful for her leadership and commitment.

“I’m also thankful for the TopRank community of blog readers, Twitter followers and IRL friends at conferences, in the industry and the media that have been so generous with their participation and attention. I only hope we’ve provided as much value to you as you have to us.

“Last, but not least, I am thankful for my 3 little ‘munchkins’ who make me proud, make me laugh and remind me of what’s most important of all.”

Dana Larson

“Since I began working with TopRank, the thing that I am most thankful for on a continuous basis is the ability for each team member to help each other out when necessary. No one hesitates to lend a helping hand, and we all maintain a positive attitude. Working as a team ensures all ideas are heard, and we all pitch in to benefit the company as a whole. I am also thankful when our TopRank team members help out coworkers outside of work, such as when I am moving next month *hint hint*

Now it’s your turn. What are you thankful for this holiday season?

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