One thing that I used to always recommend was PPC above Media Buys. Not only could you get a great return, but it was so easy to set up and get live. Unfortunately since the market is saturated with competitors, those nice CPAs get worse and worse each year and sometimes become unprofitable. So where can you turn for relevant and instant traffic? I started taking my clients, especially start ups to doing media buys instead.

A Media Buy is when you pay for adspace on a website or a blog. The ad is usually in the form of a banner ad.

Not only have I been able to generate better CPAs through media buying for my clients which may be budget and spend cautious, but the results and brand building have been amazing. Here are some things to think about when trying a media buy to compete with a PPC ROI.

Type Of Site:

Blogs – Blogs are great because they have readers that come back on a regular basis so you can get the 7 exposures to a click that is commonly found with banner serving and remarketing. If the blog owner is curious about your product, they may even click on it and use it or request a free trial so that they can do a review which may help to drive sales and also to build your brand since their readers may begin to trust you.

Forums – Forums can be a good option because you have a very targeted audience that has the same interest about a topic. The one thing you should be careful of is how many posts are just spam and how active the community is and has been over the last year. Some forums look great but have died out and others are growing strong.

Websites – With websites, you can select pages, articles and other things that are relevant to your product. You can also negotiate sections and pages easier to keep your costs down as opposed to having to buy the entire site which may not be relevant for you.

Things To Look For:

Keywords – Use a spy tool or keyword tool to see what keywords are driving traffic to the sites you are looking at and then look at your ppc and see how well it converts. You can then create an expected return based off of that. You'll also need to guess what the CTR is for these to help make a better guess on the buy.

Activity – Does this site have a lot of activity or does it have a huge bounce rate and just spam bots or spiders. Activity doesn't mean sales or no sales, it can just help you to make a smarter choice when you are stuck between a couple of sites. Sometimes the sites with no activity outperform sites with, it just depends on the site and the loyalty of the readers.

Space available – You need to make sure that you are tracking all sizes and where they are placed. If you know the site has the traffic you need, monitor and measure each space and try a couple out. Even if one doesn't work, another may work extremely well.

I never really looked at Media as a way to beat out PPC in the past, but with the current prices growing per click, Media is starting to become my go to channel. It takes a little more testing and some luck to find which types of sites are going to work best, but when you find the niche you can really start to grow and expand your reach and sales or leads.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Tired of PPC and Rising CPAs? Try Media Buying Instead.

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Written by Adam Riemer, Adam Riemer Marketing, LLC

For someone who knows how SEO works, we tend to work in the right order- keyword research then content. In a perfect world, every job that we get would be in the right order. Unfortunately, the role of an SEO typically involves reverse engineering the content on a website to ensure that what the webmaster wants to rank for will (hopefully) get ranked.

So how do you do it?

The good news is that optimizing existing content is easier because you already have analytical data to show you what's working (and what isn't). And the smart SEO will begin with what is working and ask why it's working and help educate their client as to how the process works.

Step 1- Use Analytics in relation to the website's goals and gather top level keyword data.

Hopefully, the business has some sort of analytics program that they are using to view traffic. This will give you, the SEO more than enough data to begin building what is working for the business, keyword wise.

• Sample of few month's of the organic traffic and then place them a spreadsheet.
• Separate the current keywords that provide a transaction value.
• Order the terms in which the business was found organically according to estimated "value" (for the business).
• Validate that the keywords are currently ranking.

Step 2- Analyze entry page data to help gauge visitor sentiment for potential page growth through keyword discovery.

There is a myth that a page ranks for just a few keywords. In reality, an entry page can rank for a ton of keyword phrases, mostly semantic but at times, syntactic. And the good news when you are working with existing websites, is that there is a ton of keywords that can be "discovered" from existing analytical data.

Rather than build a keyword list in which a client doesn't rank for, it is my opinion that building upon the list that search is already rewarding traffic is the better option. It's kind of like going with the flow of what the search engines are giving you first rather than guessing whether the traffic is going to be worth guess-timating competition and potential.

For instance, if you have a page that is ranking for Memphis Divorce Lawyer and you have visitors who have arrived to this page through "Memphis Divorce Lawyer for Men", then a new page may (or may not) be considered. This can be done one of two ways depending on the value of the phrase-

1. Create a new page optimized for the keyword phrase.
2. Build internal links pointing to the page with the keyword phrase (if the two keywords are close)

Step 3- Bulk up the website with both internal links and external links

Of course, links are what drives rank so once you have a decent sampling of existing keyword phrases to work on, you will want to build links to support the keywords. Adding links internally can help boost existing phrases that are currently ranking. External links will drive a phrase teetering within the striking zone upwards.

Step 4- Educating the client

For those who are not in the SEO or marketing world, sometimes education works best to help the client stay focused on their goals.

For instance, I had a client that sold a service locally but wanted to rank for it's international head term. This particular term would have not only been difficult to rank for, the return on the phrase would have been minimal, despite the traffic that it could draw.

By talking to the client about their business' goals, I was able to convince them that there were more reasonable keywords within reach that would demonstrate value to their business quickly.

Helpful keyword research articles:

•  The 5 Best [Free] Keyword Research Tricks I Tried In 2011
•  5 SEO Keyword Research Mistakes You Probably Make
•  Keyword Research For Those Who Have Something Else to Do

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

4 Steps to Doing Keyword Research For Existing Content

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Written by Leo Dimilo, Read More Articles by Leo

Pinterest is growing really, really fast. As with all things that generate a lot of traffic and lot of sharing it's become a focal point for SEOs looking to distribute content to wide audiences and build links. The first, most fundamental question here is: can you actually build links using Pinterest?

Not directly – not unlike other popular social sharing sites (like Twitter) Pinterest no follows external links and subsequently isn't an SEO silver bullet, so the value of Pinterest for link building is really more about:

• Content Distribution – Not unlike networks like Stumble Upon and Twitter Pinterest can help get your content (in this case images and videos) in front of large audiences and specific niches, some of whom may be potential linkers.
• Relationship Building – The network also lets you connect with specific users via commenting and re-pins, so you can establish a relationship with a brand or individual in your niche

So unfortunately if you're looking to use Pinterest to build links for SEO value, you'll have to actually (gasp) put some effort into interacting with other users and tailoring content to specific niches within the Pinterest user base.

How to Use Pinterest to Help Distribute Your Content

If you're looking to use Pinterest to get more exposure for link-worthy content you've created, there are a number of good ways to do that. Obviously Pinterest is primarily useful to distribute visual content such as:

• Compelling, high quality photos of your products (for businesses where the product is visually interesting such as fashion, food, etc.)
• Infographics/Data Visualizations
• Video Pins

If you haven't yet spent time on the site, the concept is pretty basic. Simply put, nearly every photo/video is connected to a website of some kind. For example, pictures of food link back to foodie blogs while style photos link to specific store that sell the highlighted garment. If you don't have a "visual" business, there are many types of abstract novelties that you can link back to you site. Think of the picture as your "click here" call to action. It can be a motivational quote, an infographic, an abstract representation or a cute picture of a kitten or puppy, anything that is going to draw the attention of pinners to click through to your site.

How To Build Links With Pinterest

So, how exactly do you build links through Pinterest? Here's a simple, step by step guide to using the virtual pin board to build links and drive traffic to your site.

1. Find an image that relates to specific content on your site. If you're a visually based business, this is going to be an easy task. A hair stylist can easily pull a picture of a stunning hair style to link to their website, but what if you run a service-oriented, not-so-glamorous business? A little out of the box thinking and an exterminator can easily come up with some images that correspond with some tips and tricks on DIY extermination or an investment banker can find a few quotes from Warren Buffet that motivate and teach. Adding these types of visuals to your blog posts, landing pages or even to your static content will provide you with endless opportunities for pinning.
2. The easiest way to pin is to install the Pinterest "Pin It" button onto your tool bar. A quick click will give you the opportunity to add any of the graphics on your webpage to your pinboards. You can also add Pinterest to your social share buttons in hopes of having followers pin your post to their pinboards.
3. These images need a home. As with SEO or any online marketing endeavor you want to use keywords where possible to make your content easier to find – in this case you can name your Pinterest boards and title your images strategically. To research which terms to use you can leverage the same process you'd use in determining how to name and tag your YouTube videos or Flickr images – my business partner Ken wrote a great social media keyword research guide a while back whose strategies on YouTube keyword research and Flickr keyword research can be applied to Pinterest.
4. Share, share, share. Be sure to share your pins on other social media sites. You can analyze your Pinterest activity by using sites like Pinerly or Pintics to see if you're indeed driving traffic back to your site. And, from there, it's business as usual.

It's important to remember that just because someone repins your images, doesn't mean they have taken the steps needed to visit your site and then actually linking to your site is a step beyond that. People can simply pin or repin based upon the image itself without ever leaving Pinterest. For this reason you'll want to consider whether your content is a logical fit for Pinterest and the Pinterest community, and you'll want to gauge as quickly as possible:

• Whether the network has sufficient benefits for you beyond content distribution for links (namely: does it send relevant traffic?)
• The effort required for you to build links using Pinterest
• Whether that effort is worth the returns you're seeing

You can then weigh the returns you get for engaging on Pinterest versus other possible tactics and decide whether it's worth committing time and effort to. If you're looking for some additional Pinterest how-to resources here are some posts you'll likely find useful:

• Four tools for a better Pinterest experience
• The Beginner's Guide to Pinterest
• Going Viral on Pinterest
• How to Use Pinterest for Business (EBook)

Image courtesy of BackStreetCrafts / Etsy

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Can I Use Pinterest To Build Links?

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Written by Tom Demers, Measured SEM Blog

I've written several times about what I like to call the Next Shiny Object Syndrome. I see it all the time. Local businesses and individuals get caught up with the next cool thing when it comes to online marketing. And I understand how easy it is to do with so many options being thrown at us from different companies; from social media optimizing tools, to new social media and blog platforms, to easy to use and design websites, to the next big thing that promises to create the biggest and baddest lead generating machine out there. But its very important for local businesses to take a step back and look at their entire marketing strategy before adding any new addition or tools to their arsenals.

Fact is, technology is changing every day. A new program or software may come out today, and within six months, its already becoming obsolete. It's a similar concept when it comes to online marketing tools. Its not that they become obsolete so much, but social media platforms, search engine algorithms, blogging platforms and other online marketing tools are constantly changing, and sometimes those changes can truly impact search engine rankings (such as Google's Panda update that impacted local businesses last year).

For our company, we focus on the concept of "signals" in the distributed web. Making as many quality signals as we can, with geo coding, social media optimization, etc. to boost our clients online presence to build exposure and generate more leads. To do this, we have a digital blueprint for how we get there so we don't miss anything but its just that — a blueprint. And that blueprint is always changing to keep up the changes with technology and the distributed web for our local business clients. We have to be flexible and keep up with these changes or were doing our clients a huge disservice.

With all this being said, it serves local business owners well to remember that it's better to have a compass to guide the way rather than have a map that's set in stone. In Seth Godin's blog, The map has been replaced by the compass, he offers a very good analogy of this concept, emphasizing that technology keeps changing, so its not worth it to go off-road and try to develop and innovate and remake what we thought was going to be next.

These constant changes are also part of the reason as to why its good to avoid the Next Shiny Object Syndrome and work with a company who can help you create a blueprint that's flexible and can change with the demands and changes of the distributed web that fit your specific needs and overall marketing strategy. Not every new and improved online tool will do this. Experts can also help you keep up with the constant changes so you can focus on your base business, which is what you do best as a local business owner.

Local Search Articles:

•  How To Check Local Rankings And Dominate Local Search
•  3 Local Search Starter Resources You Shouldn't Do Without
•  Local SEO: Staying Ahead of the Pack

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Local Business Online Marketing Blueprint – It’s a Sketch, Not Set in Stone

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Written by Chris Marentis, local seo marketing

Even if you're not a Google Analytics pro, you can set up a dashboard that lets you check in on site health, so you can make sure you're on track for success. Here are some tips for setting up dashboards and configuring reports in Google Analytics.

The Basics: Set up the Dashboard

In Google Analytics, go to the Home tab, select Dashboards on the left-hand side, and select New Dashboard. You'll have the option to create either a Starter Dashboard or work from a Blank Canvas; then name your dashboard and you're ready to get started!

What Should Go On My Dashboard?

A good dashboard should quickly answer the questions you need to ask in order to figure out "How are we doing?" You should know what question each metric on your dashboard is trying to answer. If you're looking for a quick website checkup, the reports in the Starter Dashboard (Visits, Average Visit Duration, Goal Conversion Rate, Visits by Traffic Type, Visits and Avg. Duration by Country/Territory, Goal Completions and Conversion Rate by Source/Medium, Visits and Pageviews by Mobile) will probably get you most of the way there.

Only you can decide what data is important to you. I have to say that these metrics aren't exactly how I would set up a site checkup dashboard. Mobile or international traffic, for example, aren't important to every business website. Here are the questions I need to answer with a site checkup dashboard, and the metrics I use to answer them.

• Are we getting more, less, or the same amount of traffic?
  • Visits and page views over time. I like to add in page views because if we're getting a ton more traffic but not a concurrent bump in page views, the reduction in pages per visit is worth a look-see.
• Are people hanging out once they get here?
  • Average Visit Duration and Bounce Rate. For some sites, one page is all it takes to get to the good stuff, so make sure you interpret this data in the context of your individual site.
• Are we making money?
  • Revenue from the Ecommerce report. If you don't have an Ecommerce site, you can still attach a dollar amount to your Goals and put Goal Value in your dashboard instead (more about Goals in a minute). If you do have an Ecommerce site, get that Ecommerce report configured and get reporting! Google's instructions on how to do this start here.
• Where is traffic coming from?
  • Visits by Traffic Type. Organic, Paid, Direct, Referral and Other will probably be your main traffic sources.
• Are people doing what we need them to do?
  • Goal Conversion Rate. I actually set up an entire separate dashboard just for site goals, so all I'm looking for in my site checkup dashboard is a basic percentage of the people who come to the site who are doing what we want them to.

And that's it. Just a few key metrics to check on overall site health, and that's my site overview. Then, when I need to check on the health of specific projects or channels, I have separate quick-view dashboards for those.

I've just touched on a key tenet of actionable dashboarding: you can have more than one dashboard. As a general rule of thumb, if your dashboard is much bigger than your monitor (like your big monitor, not your laptop monitor), it's going to stop being as useful. This is just a rule of thumb, your mileage may vary, but if you're looking at too many data points consider splitting them up into separate dashboards (like Site Overview, Goal Performance, and SEO Metrics, for example). That way you can get what you need when you need it.

The second key tenet of actionable dashboarding: dashboards are about what is happening, not why its happening. Figuring out why it's happening is when you go leaping and diving in to the data. Dashboards are just about quickly checking on stuff and then identifying and prioritizing said data diving as needed. Resist the temptation to add too much "why it's happening" data to your dashboard "so it's all in one place." You do not want a furrowed brow when you're looking at your dashboard. You want to be all like "Check! Check! Check!" That said, make sure you know why things are happening before you show your dashboards to other people – their first questions are always going to be something along the lines of "What happened there?"

Adding Widgets to Your Dashboard

We've covered what you might want to put on your dashboard but once again, everyone has different data needs. Here's how to add just about anything to a Google Analytics dashboard.

From the dashboard screen, select Add Widget at the top. If you start from a Blank Canvas worksheet, it will automatically prompt you to add a widget upon creating the dashboard (A widget in Google Analytics just means bit of data or a mini-report, if you will).

The Add Widget dialog box will ask what you want to measure and how you'd like it displayed. You can even apply filters! Right there in the dialog box! It is pretty much the very coolest.

Filtering is great if you'd like to view specific segments of data within the dashboard, without filtering the whole dashboard. For example, you might want to view visits from branded vs. non-branded search traffic. You'd add two Visits widgets: one only showing visits from searches containing your brand terms, and one only showing visits from searches NOT containing your brand terms.

Now say you're cruising around through other non-dashboardy parts of Google Analytics and you say "GASP! I must have this specific piece of data as part of my dashboard, posthaste!" That is totally how you talk. Simply select Add to Dashboard at the top of the report, select the dashboard you'd like to add to, and Google Analytics will pop up all of the available metrics in that report for you to widgetize to your heart's content.

Let's Talk About Goals

If you're an Ecommerce site, you can modify the Google Analytics code in your shopping cart to capture product and revenue data, which is SO NICE. Not everyone's website conversions result in Ecommerce sales, though – and many websites actually have more than one target action they'd like users to perform. To that end, Google Analytics has Goal Tracking.

To set up Goals for your account, select Admin at the top right of your screen, select the profile you want to use, and then select Goals.

Goals can be configured around users visiting a certain page, staying on site for a target amount of time, exceeding a target number of pages in one visit, or when customized events take place. Custom Events are a bit more advanced and require some tweaks to the Google Analytics code on your site, so today lets just focus on visiting a page. The most common goal set up on a website is when users hit a Thank You or Receipt page after making a purchase:

Just tell Google Analytics which URL you want to track, assign a dollar value if you can, and start tracking!

If you're interested in seeing how users interact with your funnel process before they convert, you can set up funnel tracking for your Goals as well.

This is really useful if you're trying to optimize your conversion rate – is there a step in your funnel that's causing users to abandon?
Notice that Google gives you 4 sets of 5 goals each to work with. That means you can customize your goals to track metrics that are important to you, beyond just a purchase! This might include:

• Downloading a free trial
• Signing up for an email newsletter
• Adding an item to a cart
• Spending more than 1 minute on site
• Visiting the Contact Us page
• Downloading a whitepaper
• Visiting from a social media site

Any action that users take on your site that you know leads toward conversion down the line may be important. Notice that not all of these goals are revenue-generating or of equal value to your business. For this reason, I like to include only Goal Value and Goal Conversions from my revenue-generating goals on my Site Overview dashboard; my other goals have their own dashboard. I find that including less-important goals alongside top-priority goals on an overview dashboard a.) muddles the data (yes we had 5,000 goal conversions, but 4500 of those were Contact Us page views) and b.) tends to mean the less-important goals don't get the attention they need.

By this time you should have a Google Analytics dashboard in place that allows you to quickly gauge how your site is doing and prioritize actions to make it better. Take time every now and then to make sure you're getting what you need from your dashboards, and add and subtract widgets as needed. Over time, you'll have a robust view of site health that you can digest in easy bites. Happy tracking!

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

This Is How You Easily Setup Actionable Google Analytics Dashboards

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Written by Ruth Burr,

With this change has come the ability for anyone to reach viral status with the right means of using social media for exploiting content. The best way to use it for more than just a hit and miss method of sharing is by watching the effectiveness of your shares, followers, common mentions in brand, and keeping an eye on updates while providing plenty of your own.

The trick is to know how to create a social media dashboard that really works for you. These five tools will give you what you need to do just that.

1. Cyfe

Citing themselves as an all-in-one business dashboard, they have really focused on providing a professional dashboard for the serious user. They are more feature heavy than many other services, more on par with MediaFunnel. But their pricing options might prove to be better for some businesses. There is a custom option, as well.

2. HootSuite

Probably the best known on the list, HootSuite works by allowing you set up a multi-account social media dashboard that gives you a wide range of features. Some of these include custom analytics, team collaboration, message scheduling, automated reports, brand and keywork monitoring and more. They have a free account available that has limited features, which can be used for personal account watching. But HootSuite is aimed more at professional use, which benefits from the Pro account. That only costs $5.99 a month for fully integrated features and unlimited monitoring.

3. Threadsy

If you want something that will work more simply, then you will like Threadsy. It basically gives you a free way of pulling together multiple email and social media accounts to work on a single dashboard. Right now it supports a handful of applications including Gmail, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr, among others. It is free and basic, so easier to use than the more complex analysis tools.

4. Seesmic

Create a mobile social media desktop you can monitor from anywhere. Seesmic is compatible with Android, Apple and Windows phone platforms. You can use it to keep up on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, on unlimited accounts. Currently they are releasing Seesmic Ping, an update to the service. While it is in beta you can try if free by signing up on their site.

5. MediaFunnel

A more interactive social media dashboard, this one actually allows your customers to post anonymously on your companies profiles, through a moderated system you can check prior to authorizing. It also has integration with programs like Salesforce and Zendesk, among other more standard dashboard features. They have a limited free plan that is guest for trying it out. If you want the paid plan it is $1 per user or channel, depending on what is greater. Which lets you just pay for how it is used.

6. TweetDeck

Unlike HootSuite and MediaFunnel, which are more professionally based, TweetDeck is a better application for those who are wanting a personal tool that is Twitter specific. You can arrange feeds, monitor brand mentions and data, schedule tweets and more.

Conclusion

It is important to monitor your social media accounts closely, especially if you are using it for marketing and branding. Of course, there are many other uses for such applications. Whatever you are looking for, one of the six tools above should give you what you need.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

6 Tools to Create a Social Media Dashboard

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Written by Ann Smarty, SEOsmarty.com

Google Knows User Intent?

According to the Inside AdWords post,"Google's organic search systems detect and compensate for misspellings and close variants. We know users are happier when they get search results that reflect their intent and help them achieve their desired action, even if it's not a precise match for what they've typed. So we're extending this behavior to ads."

If properly executed, "Near Match" could provide a nice boost in exposure and traffic to existing campaigns. It could also limit the amount of keyword research time needed to launch an advertisement by triggering user's offers on common misspellings,plurals, etc. Less time building, more time earning (great for newbies ). What's not to like?

Could "Near Match" Be A Risky Proposition?

Well, for starters, not all misspellings are created equal, and most SEMs will likely have their most effective misspellings and/or plurals in their account already. While the additional exposure can result in more leads, the keyword variations delivering your visits will likely result in more ad spend that needs to be accounted for. Although Google's own post claims that the new matching behavior won't become active until mid-May,PPC Specialist Melissa Mackey found out recently, that Google's Near Match algorithm leaves something to be desired. She wrote,"Just yesterday I was reviewing some search queries for VoIP keywords, and apparently Google thinks that's the same thing as 'voice recognition apps' and 'cheap prison telephone voice'.

But, at least we have phrase and exact match to counteract the silly broad matching. Right? Wrong."

Google's intent to apply this new matching option to Exact match keywords also strikes me a the answer to a question no one is asking. Exact match keywords are set as such for a reason. From a company claiming to understand intent, it seems like a shortsighted to meddle with the exposure for these terms. If the user wanted variety, they would choose make use of the existing Phrase and Broad match settings, and not to trust Google to know what is best for them. This decision only fuels the grumbling by some that this new matching tweak is nothing more than a "money grab" by Google to appease their investors.

The Bottom Line

While an increase in click revenue will likely result from these changes, they could also serve to make AdWords that much more accessible to new marketers. Given the option, most experienced marketers will likely avoid the "near match" conundrum by opting out in the settings. However, if the algorithm works, like in any other case, user adoption will follow. If results mirror Melissa Mackey's above, however, Google will likely find itself in the middle of storm of protest from marketers "in the know" who call it like they see it.

This should be interesting.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Google's "Near Match" Keyword Update: Swing and a Miss?

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Written by Cleofe Betancourt, AskPPCBlog

Image Source: Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

What is the value of including how-to videos in blog posts?

Many people hesitate to create and use video as part of their content marketing. Their reasons are often:

• It's one more thing to learn.
• It's another social network account to manage.
• Self-conscious (don't want to be in the video).
• They think it's hard and expensive.

Honestly, I compared it to walking the plank until I was convinced to start using video in my social media strategy…

In 2009, video just started making a dent in the social space, and the word was not everyone liked video and it wasn't optimal for search engines.

In 2012, we don't even read as much — Infographics are now mainstream in communicating history and statistics. In turn, video receives very good interaction on Facebook, and we watch from our smart phones. As a society, are busy — We want information fast.

A Mighty Crew

While I have yet to wear the captain's hat in my videos, I have found comfortable ways to convey information to help my clients and target audience.

On my blog:

• 6 of my top 10 visited blog posts include video.
• 4 of those 6 entries include "How to" videos.
• Those 4 posts account for 1/5 of the traffic to my site.

What do other business owners and social media professionals have to say?

Knikkolette Church: "I would say my most successful 'how-to' post was a YouTube video, and not even a blog post…but I like some of my videos being exclusive to my blog."

"From my research, the two words 'How to' generate far more emotional engagement than by not including those words. My sense is the results are due to emotions being activated rather than just the quest for knowledge," says Leanne Hoagland Smith.

Video – No Dead Man's Chest

• YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine.
• A video is 53 times more likely to appear on a first page search result (Brightcove).
• 53.5% of the population & 70.8% of internet users will watch online video in 2012 (HubSpot).

So at closer look, it is to our benefit to sail past those hesitations, and inject some visual energy into our blog content!

What Is Diamond-quality Content?

Chris Horton via Social Media Today gives us a formula:

(DEFINE+LISTEN+ADDRESS) X (SIMPLE+ CONCISE+RELEVANT) = BLOGGING SUCCESS

Deciphered: We need to figure out who our target audience is, learn their pain points, answer their questions and help them find what they need. Also boil your points down to easily digestible segments that offer timely value.

Most blogging experts agree that posts should be 400-600 words.

Video is your ally in a few ways:

• Helps keep text brief.
• Quick access to information.
• Allows readers to become familiar with you.
• It's mobile friendly.

With those four parrots on your shoulder, you actually leverage video to build authority in your niche.

It's like offering your viewers a treasure map to yourself and your business services. If you do it right, they'll even run madly toward you!

Social Media Marketing enthusiast, Rana Shahbaz, and Search Engine People CEO, Jeff Quip, are exploring how to build authority with social media using video right on this blog – Click the link to access their topic series.

X Marks The Spot

Facebook Timeline for brand pages has been a hot topic lately, and Facebook Page owners and admins have been clamoring to keep up on all the latest tips and tricks.

A "How To" gem for my mateys:

A quick tip offering timely, valued information!

Are you using How-to videos in your blogging strategy? What is your experience?

Did I miss any benefits of using how-to videos in blog posts?

Please share your thoughts in the comments box below…

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Are How-To Videos In Blog Posts Like Davy Jones' Locker?

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Written by Keri Jaehnig, Social Media Tips & Tutorials

Wouldn't it be nice if your ideal customers felt as strongly about you as you do for your favorite childhood cereal or the dream car you watched glide across the television screen during a commercial break?

That feeling you experienced is branding.

With the rise of social media and online marketing, the term branding has become a buzzword among the small business community. Yet, it is often confused as simply being a logo or website design and erroneously interchanged with the meaning of the words marketing and advertising.

What is a brand?

The American Marketing Associations technical definition of the term brand is a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.

Simply put: your brand is the personality of your company and the perceived value that resides in the mind of your target market.

A strong brand directly impacts your business success because it is what differentiates you from your competitors; it is typically the deciding factor of whether or not your customer will purchase from you.

What makes up a brand?

Brands are composed of elements that play to the five senses and may include: names, logos, graphics, taglines/phrases, sounds, tastes, colors, and even movements.

For instance, when you think of Kellogg's Rice Krispies, you may think of:

• The cereals shape and taste
• Its blue box adorned with three cartoon characters
• Snap, crackle, pop!– Its tagline and the sound it makes when you pour milk over it.
• The nostalgic memory of creating Rice Krispy treats with your mom

All of these components make up the personality of this brand.

Kellogg's didn't regard the branding of this product as an afterthought. They carefully determined what they wanted the brand to mean to their audience, conducted market research for what their audience wanted, and crafted a branding campaign to achieve these results.

How do you create a brand strategy?

Branding is not reserved solely for large companies with equally large marketing budgets. Small businesses and entrepreneurs can harness the same principles used by larger corporations to create their brands.

For starters, you will want to develop your brand around the following key areas:

• Architecture: What are the foundational elements of your brand in terms of its vision, value, emotional benefits, and target audience?
• Story: How is the brand positioned? What is the brands message?
• Experience: What is the brands personality? What is its promise of value? How can you incorporate the brand into the five senses?

In upcoming posts we will dive into deeper discussions with practical, how-to branding advice for entrepreneurs and small businesses.

Good Reads On Branding:

•  The Impact of Web Design from a Brand Building and SEO Perspective
•  Proximity Trust: How To Get Google's Branding Trust For Your Site
•  The Most Dangerous Words That Kill Your Brand Publicity

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

What is Branding (and How Do You Do It?)

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Written by Kimberly Bordonaro, Kimberly Bordonaro's Brandspiration Blog

Image: taoty / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Competition online is steep. To become (or remain) competitive it simply isn't enough to try and see what works. Maximizing the effects of your efforts requires reasoned planning and execution. That goes for guest blogging, too. Here's how to take a strategic approach to guest blogging, whether you've been doing it for a while now, or just getting started.

Although guest blogging can sometimes feel like you're cannibalizing your own website as you work hard to build depth and value for your visitors and search engines, the truth is, guest blog posts aren't something you give away.

Guest blog posts are investments that return value, often more than any single post on your own site can deliver– if you make them count.

You probably already know that guest posts can:

• demonstrate your knowledge to your industry and target prospects
• reach many more readers than your own blog currently does
• build credibility through your content host's endorsement
• provide a channel for referral traffic to your site
• raise your site's authority with search engines for better organic results

Notice that guest posts can do those things for you. To make sure that they do, treat each post like a page of your site map. They just happen to live on other people's sites.

1. Organize Your Content Ideas

Good SEO starts with an organized site, so that both users and search engines know where to find what, and to determine how to rank your pages. Your site's got to flow.

Just like you build a site map to plan out the content and keywords of each of the categories and pages on your website, it's a good idea to map out the ideas you'll publish through guest posts as well.

If you were to publish the content on your own site, where would it go? What is the objective of the piece? How does it relate to your primary keywords? Your long tail keywords? The other pages on your site?

Build your off-site content around your on-site content.

All of your content should facilitate the user experience, while also giving search engines important information about the keywords you consider to be most important. That's why you want to think of guest posts as extended parts of your site, helping to funnel referral traffic as well as link juice.

2. Identify Your Audience

You need different groups of people to know and like your website for a variety of reasons. You may have a few classes of prospects you're targeting, influencers you'd like to, well, influence, potential industry partners, referral sources and so on. Each post should be constructed with that a specific audience in mind.

Who should read this? Where will they find it online? Where should it link on my site?

Just like you construct on-site pages to meet the needs of different users, your guest blog articles will do the same. Rudimentary posts aimed at beginners might flow right to the home page, or to a resource section. More technical posts might link into a complex case study. A post about you and your experiences in business might best link into the About Us section.

Dumping all your referral traffic and link juice only onto the home page or a sales page is less likely to keep the reader around, and tells search engines that the rest of your site isn't very important.

Remember: think beyond the standard blog post to reach your audience. Would the piece work better as a series? An infographic? What about a survey of valuable resources or an interactive tool? Make the piece count, just as if you published it on your own site.

3. Choose Your Content Host Targets

When you create content that is good for your industry, I guarantee that other authoritative sites will be happy to host it, regardless of whether your own site is currently a PageRank zero and no one knows who you are.

Don't shoot low. All that work you've done above counts for something, unless you're just blogging ideas off the top of your head then pitching them to anyone who will take your posts.

If you're like most site owners, you don't have a team of white-hat link builders on the job. So you've got to focus your efforts on the sites that already have the audience you want, and carry the authoritative link juice you need. Depending upon how you weight it, one post to a relevant PageRank 5 site can be worth 600 times the link juice of a PageRank 1 site. It probably gets 600 times the eyeballs, too, not counting the additional sharing of your content that the right audience will naturally do for you.

Which raises an important point: If you could just buy 600 spam posts for cheap, should you? No. Not only will that shortcut not get you the real visitors you want, it won't impress search engines nearly as much as a handful of real pieces. (And it could put your other SEO efforts at risk.)

You can't fake the social credibility and natural link profile that will grow out of earnest publication efforts on reputable, relevant sites.

So, would you rather blog haphazardly hundreds of times, or make many fewer posts count? This is a big reason you're guest blogging in the first place. If you don't pick high value targets, you might as well stay at home to blog.

4. Follow Through

Guest blogging is part of an on-going content marketing plan which supports elements of your brand marketing, social media marketing, SEO, and yes, conversions! Consistent, purposeful production of content does a whole lot more than build links. It fosters relationships with the people who matter to your business.

If you promised a series of posts, deliver them quickly. If you committed to a regular guest spot, don't renig on it. And once you establish your level of quality, stick with it. Don't put out lousy content just for the sake of it. Let the quality of your content reflect the position you intend to command in the marketplace.

You can show people that you know how to be a leader in your industry with just one good post. Only over time, however, can you demonstrate that you actually are one. Let your finely constructed online presence prove it.

Post from: Search Engine People SEO Blog

Guest Blogging to Build Your Off-Site Site Map

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Written by Mike Sobol, Guest Blog Genius