Voicemail, again?

Has this ever happened to you? You take on a new client as a Community Manager. You're excited, they're excited. They call and Email you a couple of times a week, sending more photos, videos and information about local events than you can handle – and then they stop. Not only do they not call you, but they won't even respond to your Emails begging them for the smallest tidbit of local happenings that you can feature online.

What do you do then? You can share interesting news related to their industry, pop in a video from someone else's YouTube channel or post a photo of the client at a Holiday event from three years ago… But this tends to fall flat, particularly if this goes on week after week.

Being a Community Manager for a community that won't talk to you is a tough position to be in. Your results are going to be hampered by the lack of actual local information.

Rather than giving up and "firing" the client (you do enjoy getting paid, after all), stop nagging and try something new.

This method not only shows your existing fans that you are truly involved in and concerned about the community but also helps other businesses learn a little about you.

5 Steps To A Genuine, Engaged Profile

1. You, as your business page, should already have liked several businesses local to the page, pages related by industry, and even competitor pages. If not, do that now – we'll wait…..
2. Choose a page and check them out, looking for events you could feature, news you can use, or something for which you could compliment them. If, from time to time, you have trouble finding any of these items, find a business whose mission, values, or products you admire and simply applaud them for that.
3. Get additional information as needed by viewing their "Info" tab and/or visiting their website.
4. Get a related (and free) image from Microsoft and save it to your computer.
5. As your business page, create a new status update, uploading the image and tagging the featured business' name in the description.

At the very least, the tagged business will be notified that you mentioned them. This could be the beginning of a mutually beneficial relationship, particularly if you feature them more than once, sincerely.

At best, you will gain exposure to a new set of eyes on Facebook, and maybe even new fans, as your post appears on the featured page's wall. On our very first experiment with this kind of update, someone who had never interacted with our page, but was a fan our our featured page liked our comment within minutes. BINGO!

A note of caution: Even if you're super excited to try this, don't post too often. Not only can it annoy your existing fans, but it doesn't look genuinely social – and isn't that the whole point?

Of course, your goal is to get the client to start speaking with you again so you can truly portray their unique social media voice. Perhaps as they start seeing the results, they'll get fired up again. When they do, you'll be ready!

Related articles

• Avoid These Facebook Fan Page Mistakes (apartmentguide.com)
• Local Tweets: 9 Ways to Find Twitter Users in Your Town (mashable.com)
• Handling Negative Comments on Facebook or Google Plus (scalablesocialmedia.com)
• 10 Tips to Optimize Your Facebook Page for Brand Visibility (wchingya.com)

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

How To Get A Social Community Started (Even When There's Nothing To Say)

Ever wondered what goes through the mind of someone who manages pay-per-click advertising campaigns? Here is a small snapshot:

What actual search queries are my ads showing for? [runs SQR]

Are my bids too high/low? [checks avg. position]

Which ad title is performing better? [views ad performance for last 30 days]

What sites are my display ads showing on? Remarketing? [runs placement report]

Whats my conversion rate and cost/conversion on that new campaign? [checks last 7 days on new campaign]

Whats my ROI? [checks Google Analytics]

With all that happening on a daily basis, its easy for someone to spend hours analyzing and optimizing their PPC campaigns. But what about your landing pages?

Landing Page Optimization (LPO)

Every PPC advertiser has to realize there is a chain of relevancy that must be maintained to achieve maximum conversions. Each link of the chain has a specific purpose:

Keyword " This is the first step in qualifying the click. You are looking for search queries that indicate a problem for which you have a solution. Do this right and your ad should only show for mostly relevant searches.

Ad Copy " This is where you weed out unqualified searchers and get the click. Ads dont need to close the deal, they just need to prime the pump and get the person to click the ad. Dont ask too much of your 130 character PPC ad.

Landing Page " Here is where the heavy lifting happens. You have their (mostly) undivided attention. You can use text, images or video to emphasize why they should choose you. You can place multiple calls to action on the page. Here is where the magic happens.

As you can see, the landing page is where you have the most flexibility and the most potential. So how should you go about optimizing your landing pages?

First, look at the entire process from the customers perspective. If you searched the keyword Utah jazz tickets and saw an ad for tickets to a jazz festival, would you click the ad? Of course you wouldnt. Youre going to click the ad that says Buy Utah Jazz Tickets " February ticket packages on sale now! because it establishes relevance by stating exactly what you want AND the sale is going to get you to click the ad. Since the ad mentioned a sale on February ticket packages, you would expect the landing page to feature those packages. But how should the landing page deliver that information? This is where we start getting into the fun part of landing page optimization.

Starting Your Own LPO

From the above example, we know that the landing page should feature the February ticket packages on sale, but what else should be on the page? Here are a few questions to ask about your landing page:

Should the navigation be simplified? Removed entirely to avoid distraction?

What other offers are being promoted on the page?

How many calls to action are on the page?

Is the most desirable call to action emphasized most prominently?

How easy is it for a click to convert?

In my experience the best landing pages are simplified (navigation, number of offers, CTAs, etc.), feature a single CTA and make the first step in the conversion process very easy (and tell the user exactly how to accomplish that step).

Test, Test, Test

As you start optimizing your landing pages, test the old page against the new page. You can do this in AdWords by creating two copies of an ad that have identical copy and changing the destination URLs. This is the simplest way, but you can get a more fancy with A/B testing. The key is to let your customer decide which landing page is better through voting with their information & dollars.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

You Optimize Your PPC, But What About Your Landing Pages?

Compared to directory submissions or outright link buying, link building tactics that conform to Google guidelines and provide the greatest long term benefit can be difficult and time-consuming to implement. Guest blogging is no exception. It's not supposed to be.

Site owners want to serve up the best content for their readers, and Google wants to find the sites who are best at doing that. Just about any link building or guest blogging tactic that does not respect this simple calculus is a risk not worth taking, in my opinion. That being said, white hat work doesn't have to feel like a trip to the gulag.

When you start a guest blogging project with one piece of content to shop, or target a short list of host blogs, or you constrain yourself to a very narrow niche, the work is always going to be hard and slow. Here's how to shift your approach to dramatically increase speed AND quality.

As you may know from project management teaching of the past decade, there are three primary constraints to any project: cost, time and quality. Each of the constraints affects the others in such a way that many people often restate this idea as: Cheap, fast or good, pick two.

Scope

The scope of your project usually determines how the constraints can flex. That means if you want a project done on the cheap, you might be able to keep a tight timeline, but you will hurt quality. To deliver a high quality project, you'll probably have to adjust either your spending, or the time it takes to complete it, or both. No matter how you look at it, you only get to control one or two variables, not three.

A lot of hard tasks are like this, in that they are constrained by three variables. To illustrate the point, lets say I have a specific fitness goal of bench pressing 200 pounds. My variables are time, effort and result (how much I can lift). The sooner I want to achieve it, the harder I have to work. If I don't want to work all that hard at it, I have to either string out the time to allow for slow and steady progress, or reduce my fitness goals (change the scope).

The problem with performing well at guest blogging is that you have three constraints, none of which can be adjusted, if you want the scope to stay the same: get the best SEO impact.

Authority

The host blog must be an authoritative site with high Pagerank (or whatever measures you like), the content has to be of sufficient quality to be accepted, and the topic should be relevant to both your blog and the host site for the link to matter in regards to your keywords:

You just can't be flexible on any or all of these three variables, without sacrificing the value of your backlink for SEO.

When you're having a hard time guest blogging efficiently, it usually takes the form of one of three scenarios:

1. You REALLY want to get content on a specific blog, and you have to figure out how to pitch a relevant idea, then can you write it?

2. You start with a great idea, but then you have to ensure it fits the niche, and put in the work to write it.

3. You have awesome content in the can, but framing it to be really marketable in the right niche, then finding the right blog for it is a challenge.

Personally, I've encountered all three issues. Then I realized that if I can let all three variables flex at the same time, the job gets easy.

Guest blogging is difficult when you want to control the variables as specifics: I want THAT blog, I want to post THIS piece of content, I want to post something about THIS topic. But you don't need to be concerned with the specifics to be successful, only with keeping your standards for quality content, authoritative sites and relevant topics. Suddenly, you can post all sorts of great stuff all over the place.

Combining The Two

You don't need to pick a blog, or a specific topic, and you dont even need to be able to write the content. If you play it right, all three can come together with very little effort on your part. What's even better, this approach can sometimes yield two, three, or even more article placements, for the same time and effort as getting one post the old fashioned way.

Let's say you decide you want to get some content up on a PR 5 blog that deals with tax issues. First, locate a list of such blogs with Google blog search, blog posts that list great blogs in a niche, blog directories and the like, OR assign the task to someone overseas for $5.00 or less. oDesk got me a quality list of 50 sites for $2.22, to be exact. That gives me a batch of target blogs, quick, easy and cheap.

Next, settle on a topic, but let the crowd do it for you. Select a handful of target blogs and post a writing assignment to Craigslist, or oDesk again. Ask respondents to pitch you their best idea for the blogs they see. The most sophisticated, timely and relevant topic(s) you'll use to pitch the blog owners yourself by email. The winners get to write their own topics and, if accepted by a target blog, they get paid.

Don't think for a second that people won't write on contingency. If you put it in your ad up front, writers who can't cut it rarely bother. What's even better is that the crowd tends to come up with some great stuff. They self-select further after reviewing the blogs and taking a stab at a topic. You filter the candidates by their ideas, not their puffed up resumes. Of course, if you do think a writer did provide great content, then by all means, pay them and shop it around elsewhere, or keep it on your own site!

Supposing you already have an article idea, but not the time or knowledge in the category to write it yourself, you can also go straight to a site like Freelance-Writers.net for good quality work, without the crowd aspect– they handle all that behind closed doors.

Once again, being flexible on your variables, if you start with a specific piece of content, put it up in the gallery at MyBlogGuest.com or other sites that are built to match guest posts with blog hosts. Let the market decide if it's any good. The longer you leave it out there, more and better sites are likely to ask you if they can post it. The only currency exchange here is content for link juice, which is exactly what you're after.

While it might take a few days to get comfortable with your systems, this approach can greatly expand not only your reach into the blog world, but also the efficiency and speed with which you can gain the links. If you're after the solid SEO returns that guest blogging can get you, this is the way to do it.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Better And Faster Writing With Crowds

I often find many site owners are reluctant to add the long tail keywords my SEO company has researched to their website and content marketing campaigns. The reaction is almost always the same"Why should I target a keyword that only gets 100 searches each month? This keyword gets 5,000 searches each month! Its very easy to get blinded by a keyword's search volume and overlook the fact that it might not be the best keyword for your website. Sometimes long tail keywords, even though they have a smaller search volume, can have the biggest impact on your SEO.

Here are four reasons you shouldn't be hesitant to target long tail keywords on your website and in your content marketing:

Long Tail Keywords Are More Relevant.

In my experience, keyword relevancy is more important than search volume for SEO. The keywords you target on your website should accurately reflect the content on that page as best as possible. Sure, you can tell Google what keywords you want them to recognize as the most important for that page in the Meta data, but if the content doesn't back them up your site will never rank well for those keywords.

Long Tail Keywords Drive More Targeted Traffic.

What's the point of driving more visitors to your site if they aren't your target audience? A huge spike in traffic doesn't mean anything without an improved conversion rate going along with it. Now there are many factors that can impact your conversion rate, but if the keywords you're targeting don't match user-intent than chances are you are driving the wrong people to your website. Long tail keywords are typically used by searchers that are nearing the end of their buying cycle. They know exactly what they are looking for and are looking to take action. You want your site to be found by those visitors and a long tail keyword is what is going to pull them in.

Long Tail Keywords Are Easier To Own In The Search Results.

The broader a keyword is the more search volume it has, which also means the stronger the competition is to own it in the search engines. For major keywords like insurance or mortgage, large, national brands are likely dominating the search results because they have the time, money and manpower to do so. A local business probably isn't going to be able to unseat those major brands, no matter how hard they target those broad keywords. But a smaller company can dominate the search engines with long tail keywords and build their online brand presence that way. A lower search volume means the competition isnt a fierce for that keyword and your site might be able to rank extremely well fairly quickly.

Long Tail Keywords Can Strongly Impact Visitor Growth Over Time.

Lets say you add 25 new, long tail keywords to your website. Even if those keywords only bring an extra 5 people each month to your website, that's an additional 125 unique visitors each month! What kind of business could you hope to do with 125 highly-qualified leads? Over the course of a year, that's an uptick of 1,500 visitors just because you incorporated those new keywords. While that may not seem like a lot, when you add those 1,500 visitors to the rest of the traffic earned through your SEO and link building efforts, you're looking at substantial visitor growth.

Site owners shouldn't be so hesitant to add long tail keywords to their website. I'm not suggesting that you forgo all broader keywords as some of them might still be very relevant, but understand that there is a significant opportunity for growth to be had in long tail keywords if you're willing to work them into your SEO.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Why Are You Hesitant to Incorporate Long Tail Keywords?

When it comes to online marketing, we often think about lead generation and quality over quantity and in most instances, I agree. Its incredible to have a ton of traffic visiting your website or landing pages every day, but if none of those leads ever convert to paying customers, then you could be wasting your time and money and need to determine what adjustments need to be made so you can get more bang for your buck.

But when it comes to Facebook and other forms of social media, its beneficial to consider quantity over quality for several reasons. To start, the benefits of Facebook go far beyond simply generating new fans and prospective leads directly via Facebook. Facebook gives local businesses the opportunity, when utilized effectively, to generate leads indirectly, as well, via several vehicles, including search engine optimization. Facebook is also a great way to build brand exposure and expert status by reaching literally millions of people with an already built and connected network around the globe. However, for Facebook to really have a powerful effect on SEO, brand exposure, etc., the power is in the numbers"hence quantity is more important than quality.

Social Reach and the Viral Effect

If you have 5000 fans and a competitor has chosen to be more selective and only has 500 fans, whos going to reach more people via reposts, re-tweets, etc.? You are! When you post something that 5000 people have the potential to see and repost, then you have access to those 5000 fans contacts and networks, as well. Your reach is far greater when you have more fans, which is why quantity is better than quality when it comes to social media (though having both aspects is even better, of course).

Search Signals and Search Engine Optimization

To go even farther with social reach, the search engines are changing their algorithms constantly, and those algorithms are being developed to be more sensitive to social networking activities, which means the more social signals you have with posts, reposts, re-tweets, mentions, etc., the better for your search engine rankings. And again, the more fans you have, the more social signals you have the potential to create.

Who is your ideal customer, really?

As local business owners, we often take great stride in determining who our ideal customer is, and with good reason; these are the people we want to target. At the same time, consumers might surprise you. By accessing more and more people via social networks like Facebook, you could be tapping into a client or customer base you hadnt considered, and given that social media is low cost, you can test it out with little risk or investment.

In many instances, you want to focus on quality vs. quantity to get conversions and close the deal. By doing so, youll get more return on your investment. But when it comes to social media and Facebook, do what you can to get a many fans and likes as possible because there is power in numbers when it comes to social marketing.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Facebook – The Power is in the Numbers

We all know that in today's socially connected world having a visible and active presence across multiple social networks is a must if you want your business to get noticed. But creating engaging, dynamic social media content and then sharing and tracking it can be a challenge for those of us who can't afford to have a dedicated team managing these tasks on a day to day basis. So in this post I'm going to share with you some useful tips and tools that will allow you to organize and automate much of the leg work associated with producing and sharing your social media content and help make the process manageable.

Create an editorial calendar

Having a content or editorial calendar allows you to plan ahead and means that when your next blog post is due you won't be sitting there scratching your head and wondering what to write about. A simple Excel spreadsheet is all you need to get started.

Just set up columns for post date, post title, which social networks you're going to post it to, the format (e.g. blog, video, article, photos), the theme or category and the primary keyword you are targeting.

Once you've done this, begin to populate your spreadsheet with key events and activities over the next 6 months, such as holidays, product launches, exhibitions, trade shows etc. This will provide a structure for planning your content and ensure that you have a balance of evergreen and on-trend or seasonal content that's relevant to what's going on in your business and your customers' lives. Think creatively about how you can use these content hooks to add interest for your audience and relate them back to your products and services.

Decide how frequently you are going to publish and then begin to fill up your calendar, making sure that you have left some space for reactive content. That way, if anything topical and relevant to your niche comes along you'll be able to respond quickly and demonstrate to your audience that you have your finger on the pulse. Google Alerts is a great tool for keeping abreast of all the latest news in your industry. Use it to get instant notifications of content that will be of interest to your audience and earn brownie points for being the first to share it with your online community.

Make light work of sharing your content with these useful tools

If you use WordPress as your website platform then integrating your blog with your social media profiles is a breeze. There are a host of plug-ins that will allow you to automatically update all your various accounts every time you post, which is a great time saver.

Another tool which takes all the hard work out of sharing your content is Buffer. Whenever you find an article you like just click the Buffer icon in your browser to add it to your queue of tweets or posts. As well as being quick and easy to use, Buffer allows you to choose the optimal time to share your content and spread your posts out during the day without being chained to your desk.

My third must-have social media tool is Hootsuite. Among other things, Hootsuite allows you to manage all of your social media accounts from a single dashboard without having to log into each one separately and schedule all your tweets and Facebook and LinkedIn updates in advance. You can also share multiple blog posts across your networks and monitor mentions and keywords in separate streams, so you can see who is talking about you and things you are interested in and respond in real time. One Hootsuite feature which I particularly like is the Hootlet, which allows you to share content you come across with a single click of a browser.

Don't go overboard with social automation

The "always on" nature of social media and pressures of finding time to keep up an active presence may tempt you to completely automate all of your social media activities. However, this would be a big mistake. Tools such as Buffer and Hootsuite are invaluable, allowing you to be present 24 hours a day and share your content with your followers wherever they are in the world. However, over-reliance on them to the point where you are no longer engaging in a two-way conversation with your audience will undoubtedly be detrimental to the success of your social media efforts in the long run. When it comes to being interesting, there is no substitute for timely, hand crafted posts which are tailored to the specific audience and invite interaction and feedback. After all, the whole point of social media is to build relationships and you don't do that by giving your followers the impression that you don't care enough to speak to them on a personal level.

So by all means use the tools, but don't forget about the value of listening and being able to jump into conversations that are taking place in the here and now. If all you do is pump out a constant stream of content without taking the time to engage or interact, your audience will rightly come to view your content as spam and switch off. As Dan Howell, a fellow guest blogger here on Search Engine People puts it, "Invite followers to interact with your brand – feed hungry mouths rather than ramming content down their throats". Wise advice, which you would do well to follow.

No-one signs up to social media to receive automated spam, so keep social media social, be human and your audience will thank you for it.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Time saving tips and tools for producing and sharing social media content

If you don't know how to manage outsourced projects properly, you'll end up with a headache, missed deadlines and low-quality deliverables.

To ensure that your outsourced projects run smoothly, you should know how to manage your commissioned deliverables and the virtual staff that creates them. There are many projects you can outsource to boost your productivity. I'm going to share with you the tools that I depend on to make sure everything arrives on time and is exactly what the clients need.

The most common services outsourced are writing services, linkbuilding services and website development services. For the sake of simplicity, I'll talk about outsourcing articles from writers. I use this process to track a ton of articles every week. It is a simple process that I started using when I was handling just 10 articles a week. It's proven very scalable and simple to use.

Here are the tools that will ensure your outsourcing supremacy.

1. The Google-ization. After selecting your staff, make them get Gmail accounts. This is to give them access to your shared Google platforms. Google Docs is where you can place your writing guidelines, work guidelines and FAQ sheets. In Google Docs, you can share different documents, which you and your staff can update. Article writers will update the spreadsheets upon submission of their assignments. Linkbuilders and Web Developers will be updating their website checklists. Your shared documents are also a nice venue to commend a particular staff member or team when they perform well. Giving praise to an individual or team publicly tends to flame friendly competition between your staff members. It can motivate and raise productivity amongst your outsourced staff. Bonuses help too.
2. It's A Date! Google Calendar is another app you need to utilize. This is where you update everybody about the project schedules and meetings. Outsourced staff workers are more efficient when they given structure with their projects. Start of projects, deadlines and milestones that they can see every day makes sure that they know what they have to do. Plus, it also gives you grounds to remind them when they're not working efficiently. Make sure that you state in your guidelines that consulting your group calendar everyday is mandatory.
3. The Skype Is The Limit! Communication is key to any outsourcing project. Make sure everybody has a Skype account, which they must use during work hours. There are other Instant Messengers available, but Skype saves your messages and allows you to access previous conversations in one click. You can also use the Ctrl-F command to find what you talked about concerning a certain topic anytime. Schedule group conferences, and have an open forum concerning work issues every few days or a couple of times a week. You (or your team leaders) can confer with the outsourced staff members at the start and at the end of their day.
4. Do You Copy? Concerning articles for online publication, copying is not allowed. Plagiarism is never okay when it comes to website content. This can lead to site penalties and lower Search Rankings. To ensure that you aren't penalized, Copyscape your articles before publishing. Copyscape is an online plagiarism detector application. It is a paid service that costs about $0.02 per check. This check goes far in ensuring that you won't fall victim to a Google Panda update. You may have written everything in your own words, but the World Wide Web is a big place. What if somebody else thought the same thing and wrote it in a similar manner? Just a few words or phrases can raise a plagiarism hit. Make sure this doesn't happen to your site.

If you know how to leverage these online tools, you're ready to conquer any outsourcing project. There are other platforms online, which can help you manage your outsourced project. Check out Basecamp, a managing platform. You can also look into SugarSync and Dropbox for cloud storage.

The fifth and most important piece of the whole system is YOU, the project manager. You have to make sure that everyone delivers. Check if your people are stable and efficient. Successful outsourcing means progress and growth for your business. If you become too busy and need help managing your projects, consider hiring a project manager to direct the staff.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

The 5 Essential Outsourcing Tools

Recently there have been a lot of great posts about tools to help with link building, tools to help with content creation, tools and templates to help with Gmail productivity for link building and even some great content on finding linkers for outreach. In this post I'll focus on five great tools that are specifically useful for link outreach. While link building-related tasks such as link prospecting and content creation are crucial pieces in the link building puzzle, link outreach is also both important and difficult, and there are several elements that require organization, which is where some of the powerful link outreach tools now available come in.

1. Tout App

One of my favorite new Email outreach companions is Tout App. The application is really affordable (though not free) and has some great features:

• Email Analytics This is fantastic you can quickly and easily see who opened and (in the event that they have images turned on) even who clicked through on your links.
• Templates You can also create and save certain responses and pitch Emails as templates this is fairly common in these types of applications, but it's also very useful as you're performing outreach to multiple people multiple times a day.
• Shared Templates This is one of the most powerful features of the application you can create and share multiple templates, then track their performance across multiple people performing outreach. This gives you a global picture of how certain subject lines or different approaches to the body of your pitch Email work, and allows you to test different ideas and get to statistical significance more quickly.
• Scheduled Emails I've written a large chunk of this post between 1 and 3am, but not everyone keeps these sorts of hours being able to queue up Emails whenever you have the time to work on them for times of day when folks are more likely to respond (and less likely to wonder why you're up at 3am crafting outreach Emails) is very handy. You can also space out your outreach over a series of days.
• Integration with Gmail You can use the Tout app within Gmail so that you can be tracking certain Emails (ie outreach Emails) and not others (ie personal Emails), and you can also quickly save a note as a template or use a template right from your Gmail interface.
• Find Contact Information on Webpages The tool also has a browser plugin that quickly scans pages to find contact information that's included on the page the plugin is slick and the integration with the app you're sending mail from is very handy.

Personally I'm a huge fan of the Tout app and we use it internally at Measured SEM, but it's also worth noting that some folks have seen poor deliverability results in the past.

2. Boomerang

Another app which serves a similar function to Tout App is Boomerang. Like Tout App Boomerang has quite a few nice features for Email outreach, and even many of the same features as Tout App including scheduling Emails and integrating with Gmail. Another nice feature offered by Boomerang that Tout App doesn't currently offer (as far as I know) is the ability to flag Emails to return to your inbox after a certain interval and/or if someone doesn't respond. As someone who manages several tasks based on my unread Emails in my inbox, this is a really nifty feature. Eric over at SEO Book did a great in-depth review of how to use Boomerang for link building.

That said personally I prefer Tout App's feature set to those of Boomerang, but you'll want to try both to get a sense of which fits better with your workflow.

3. Rapportive

Rapportive is another app that's gotten multiple mentions within the link building community as of late, and with good reason. Rapportive is great because it provides a lot of rich context to your outreach prospect, including things like their title, their geographic area, their latest tweets:

Leveraging the app here can quickly give me a lot of information about the person I'm reaching out to in combination with apps like Tout App, I can now very quickly customize an outreach template to be more personalized (by mentioning their position within the organization, including a PS complimenting then on a recent infographic they created and shared, etc.)

4. Citation Labs

As with Rapportive, a key component of link outreach is understanding context Rapportive does a great job of helping you do this at the personal level, and Citation Labs' link building tools do a great job of helping you do this at the site level. These tools can help you to discover:

• Contact information for a list of potential prospects
• Whether the Webmaster has already linked at you
• What the status of links on your target's site are (for broken link outreach)
• Whether a potential link is even relevant (using their URL filter tool)

This sort of additional context and list cleaning (usually taking place between link prospecting another handy tool for link building there and actual link outreach) is really invaluable as you move to executing link outreach because it can greatly increase your conversion percentage (both by converting more of the folks who might not have otherwise and by keeping you from wasting time on the wrong prospects).

5. BuzzStream

For us one of the hardest and most critical pieces of the link outreach puzzle to get right is managing the process, and more specifically managing and updating link prospects. As you start to do outreach and have guest posts placed for a variety of sites and clients by a number of different people, it becomes critical to have a living database with updated information on which contacts you've already contacted, which contacts you've had success with in the past, and which contacts have been unreceptive. BuzzStream offers an extensive tagging and filtering system as well as very granular user controls, so that you can have several different outreach specialists and link builders working across projects and ensure that you're saving time and not overlapping your efforts.

As with anything else you'll want to make sure that each of these tools fit with your workflow, but in aggregate piecing together multiple of these tools for outreach has greatly improved efficiency and productivity in our link building outreach process, and likely will with yours as well.

Like link building tools?

• Using SEOmoz Tools for Link Prospecting
• What Building 10,000 Links Taught Me About The Top 3 Link Building Myths (+ 3 Essentials That Work!)
• The 5 Tools I *Really* Use Everyday

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Five Tools for More Efficient Link Outreach

Let's talk about a few ideas:

• Personalizing website and blog links
  
• Recommendations
• Groups

Personalizing website and blog links.

When adding your web site or blog url to your profile, choose "other" to add it instead of choosing "website" or "blog." (See the screen shot below.) In the first field, you can identify your site or blog and in the second field you'll add the url. The advantage is two-fold. First you identify your site by name.

Those viewing your profile will see:

"Words Etc. Writing" or "Words Etc. Writing Blog" instead of just "Website" or "Blog"

Not only does this personalize your profile, but helps with the indexing of your LinkedIn content. (As you probably know, indexing is how search engines read the words on your LinkedIn profile page.)

Recommendations

Invite colleagues or clients to recommend your work. And make sure you reciprocate if they do! In case you don't know how to do this, go to your LI page to the Profile tab and choose Recommendations from the drop down list. The rest is pretty self-explanatory from there. And be sure to move those recommendations to your website as well to expand their power.

Control your profile

There are lots of options for your under settings to help you control your profile and share your activities. Here you can manipulate your Twitter activity, blog posts and other sharing activities, along with a variety of other aspects of your profile: what activities you want to share, change your photo and more.

Groups

LI groups offer a world of opportunity. No matter what your industry or field of interest, there are valuable groups to help you build your marketing strategy or to learn more about what works for others. And you can share your own expertise with others as well. You can search for groups on your LI home page. Click on the "Groups" tab to do a search or select "Groups Directory" from the drop-down list.

Some groups require approval for your acceptance. But once you're in, be sure to get involved in discussions, post questions, or share your blog posts. Don't forget to read the rules for the groups you join so you don't cross any lines of protocol. Some great groups to join if you're a blogger are The Blog Zone and a sub-group under this called The Blog Promoter. These groups welcome sharing of your posts to help increase your traffic and to see what others are blogging about.

And be sure to connect with other group members to expand your LI network. You'll find that most other members of the groups welcome your invitations. Once you get in the habit of being involved in the group discussions, you'll know which people you'll want to connect with. From job opportunities to brainstorming about marketing ideas to answering a software question, you are sure to find people that you'll want to add to your list of connections.

Personalizing your profile, requesting and providing recommendations and getting involved in groups are just a few of the ways that LinkedIn can help you maximize your marketing strategy and increase your exposure to potential clients as you grow your professional network.

Also read:

• How To Use LinkedIn For Your SEO Campaign
• 3 Competitor Intelligence Secrets SEO Experts Dont Want You To Know

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Making LinkedIn work for you

I want you to visualize yourself sitting at your computer and opening up your browser to bring up your favorite WordPress site. Imagine it now–run through the process mentally of how you normally open your website and how you open your WordPress admin panel. Now as you visualize it being just about ready to open…

…Imagine a sudden feeling of panic hitting you–your abdomen muscles suddenly contract as that sickening feeling rises inside your stomach and slowly takes control of your body. You just realized that your WEBSITE IS DOWN–you have no idea why, but you can tell it's really BAD this time. Is it just a bug? Can't be.. Did a hacker take down my site? Where IS my site? What happened all to my files? Where is my wp-content folder??!! Oh boy…

Pheww, I don't even want to think about it… But did I scare you a little? I hope so… I hope that I can get you to finally pay attention now and implement some of the WordPress security tips that everyone always tells you about but you never do. Imagine how good it will feel knowing that the above-mentioned scenario will probably never happen to you, and you won't ever have to worry about losing your WP site and not being able to quickly restore operation.

While no website can ever be made 100% secure, if you follow this simple guide and implement the tips mentioned, you'll be a lot more secure than most websites and have a lot less to worry about. Below are 4 absolutely vital WordPress security tips, in order of importance:

1. Secure Your Login + More

If you're still logging in to your WordPress via the default "admin" user name, we need to change that ASAP as that is the WordPress default for every single installation in the world, and is often exploited via brute-force attacks by robots simply cracking your password. Here's how to fix this and more:

Change your default user name:

Below I'll guide you through how to do it the "real" way, but if you don't think you're up to it, click here for the easy way.

1. Login to your hosting account and access PhpMyAdmin to access your raw databases (don't worry this will be easy). There's an icon for PhpMyAdmin in Cpanel. In GoDaddy, it is under Databases–>MySQL in your hosting dashboard.
2. Once you're logged in, from the left column, select the WordPress database that you want to do this change to (if you only have one WordPress blog on your domain, you should only see one database besides "information_schema". The database may be called "_wrdp1" or something similar to "soc1196452288121". Click that.
3. Once you're in the correct database, select the wp_users table (wp may vary according to your DB table prefix) and browse the data (there should be a tab up top titled "Browse").
4. Locate the row that contains the value "admin" and click the pencil or Edit on that row.
5. Change the value of admin (in the field titled "user_login") to a new name of your choice.
6. Press Go to save. You have now updated your WordPress default login name and can login with it. That's it! (Don't change anything else in PhpMyAdmin, unless you know what you're doing.)

Ok that was fun. But we're not done yet. You also need to change your password to a better one.

A Fun Way To Change Your Password

Simply login to WordPress (with your new Username and existing password of course), and go to Users–>Your Profile, and use the New Password field at the bottom.

Being somewhat paranoid, I wouldn't recommend using the output of any of the free password generators that you can find online, but instead what I do is play around with the awesome Microsoft's password checker and come up with a password myself that earns a "Best" rating and then use that. Check it out, it's tougher than you think (and you'll see most of your existing passwords that you use are very weak)! I don't know the statistics, but I bet that most WordPress security hacks happen due to site owners using cheesy passwords.

Update Your Hosting Account Password Too!

While we're talking passwords, you need to also make sure you have just as secure of a password for your hosting account (CPanel, GoDaddy etc.) as you do for WordPress. Create a tough password, and use it. Don't use the same one as on WordPress though! CPanel has a "Change Password" icon to make this change easy.

Almost Done. A few Plugins to Really Keep Your Login Secure

As important as the previous tips were, these plugins offer even more protection and make it essentially impossible for anyone to login to your WordPress via unauthorized means. Install these 3 plugins (yes all of them) and they'll work in concert to offer a triple layer of brick walls for any would-be hacker. Overkill? Maybe, but they only take a second or two each to install, so you should do it.

1. Limit Login Attempts
2. Login Lockdown
3. User Locker

If you're wondering why you need to install all 3 when they essentially all do the same job, the simple answer is because they each work in different ways to offer the same protection, and the security benefit is exponentially greater with multiple redundancies. The Limit Login Attempts plugin offers the first layer of protection, and is the plugin you will see logging all of the unauthorized login attempts. (You'll be surprised to see how many you'll see!)

2. Guard Your Site – Must-Have WP Security Plugins (And Plugins to Delete)

While you're working with plugins, there's one more that you need to install. It's free, and goes a long way in securing your WordPress site since it takes care of a multitude of issues that would take hours to do manually. Remember, advanced crackers and hackers will find the backdoor to your site if the front door is locked (ala the previous security measures and plugins we went over). So you need to install either one of these all-in one WordPress security solutions. Configuration is easy, and out of the box settings work great, but read everything on the download page and follow the instructions:

1. BulletProof Security (The most secure and comprehensive plugin, with many built-in security features and checks that work great out of the box. Requires some configuration, and might not work well with some plugins. Try this plugin first. If it gives you problems, try the plugin below.

1. Secure WordPress (An alternative to the previous plugin, but while not nearly as comprehensive, it takes care of most basic WordPress security issues such as hiding your WP version and limiting access to certain files. I use this on a few blogs I own that are running old versions of WordPress that I can't update for various reasons <– Yes this is bad, but sometimes necessary especially with troublesome e-commerce themes that don't like WordPress updates.

Delete any Plugins You Don't Use

This is important: if you have any old plugins installed (even if they're deactivated) that you don't use anymore, delete them! There's no reason for them to be on your server, and with the off-chance that they contain malicious code (it's happened to me), you don't want them anywhere near your site.

3. Always Update Your WordPress

WordPress is an open source software that's used throughout the world in all types of hosting environments, and as such, security issues and other bugs are very quickly discovered and fixed by the community and the developers. Some of these are small bugs, while others are major security issues, but hackers love to go after the outdated and less secure WordPress versions. There's no reason your WordPress site should be at risk to this if a fix already exists. Therefore, always update.

Another important reason to regularly update is because if you don't upgrade WordPress for a long enough time, like from say version 2.8 to the current 3.3.1 version, there will be so many changes that if you suddenly update across that many versions, your theme or some plugins may not work correctly afterwards. It's best to always do small, timely updates as they come out, and always check to make sure everything is working as it should.

4. Backup Your WordPress, Like You Mean It

This vital tip ended up last in this list, but it is equally important as any of the other WordPress security issues. Why? Because unless you're storing or processing truly sensitive information on your site (not including credit card transactions or other things that go directly through a secure merchant website), you probably wouldn't even care that your site went down for whatever reason IF you know that you could easily restore it from a backup and be up and running quickly. In other words, if all of the above security measures fail and someone still hacks your site (it can happen because nothing can be made 100% secure), you can at least feel good knowing that nothing was lost and your site can be brought back to life easily.

The irony with backups though is that any backup you do will only be as good as the restore (and your restoration skills), therefore I don't recommend anyone with an important and/or money-making WordPress site to trust any of the free WordPress backup plugins or manual solutions out there unless you've done a restore before. Why? Because if your site really does go down, at best it will take several sphincter-clinching hours for you to restore your database and re-configure your installation, admin access, and plugins etc. (even if they're backed up right), but at the worst you'll realize that you can't handle the task of piecing back together your site and you'll be in for a major headache and a WordPress site that's down for a day or more until you finally fix it. Also, backups are pretty much useless if they're done manually, because quite frankly you'll forget to make timely backups.

So Instead… I'd recommend either of these 3 popular WP backup solutions that take care of everything for you when it comes to realistically backing up and restoring your site should the worst happen:

• BlogVault
• Backup Buddy
• VaultPress

Either of these providers will allow you to backup your WordPress site in its entirety to a secure server they provide (or your own secure location, such as an Amazon S3 cloud account etc.), and this means that if something happens to your site, even if you don't know what it is, with their setup you can restore everything exactly the way it was, in its entirety, with just one click. Everything from your posts to your plugins to your WordPress version will be restored to the exact way it was before, and you will be back up and running like nothing ever happened.

Sound too good to be true? It's not… All it will cost you is a few bucks, and it will be the best money you ever spent should your site be hacked or otherwise compromised. Prices range from $6.00-15.00 per month with these services, so it's about the same as your hosting bill. And it is just as important. Go sign up to one of these now. I'd personally recommend BlogVault, as it is the easiest to set up and use, and technical support is outstanding. Also, if for some reason you're running a WordPress installation older than version 3.0, BackupBuddy and possibly VaultPress won't work. BlogVault costs $9 per month for one site, or $19 for three sites. There are other packages available for more sites.

That's It!

If you've followed all of the steps I mentioned, you are now much more secure with your WordPress site, and should anything happen, you are protected by the automated backups performed by either of the 3 services I mentioned. All of the tips I mentioned can be completed in 1-2 hours (total), and there's no reason not to do them. Especially if you're making money with your WordPress site or if you have many important things on there that you couldn't stand to lose. Thanks for taking the time to read this (rather lengthy) post, but have fun and happy WordPressing! (If you have any questions feel free to ask as I respond to all comments)

Also, see my last article on Search Engine People on removing duplicate content on a site after Panda.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

4 Vital WordPress Security Tips in 2012