SEO for Flash – is it a reality yet?

One of the most common issues for web sites with poor search visibility involves Google not being able to crawl and index a site’s content. Web sites made entirely with Flash are problematic because there are often no links for search engine crawlers to follow or HTML text to copy.

According to the Opera (browser) developer center, somewhere between 30% and 40% of all pages tested contained Flash files representing a lot of content that may not be included in search results or only partially indexed. Despite a large number of sites publishing content using this type of file format, Flash and search engines have been like oil and water. They just didn’t mix.

In the summer of 2008, Google announced it had improved the indexing of Adobe Flash files. Many Flash developers and SEOs across the globe could breathe an optimistic sigh of relief: Text in Flash files was now crawlable.

But what’s the whole story? Can a site be built entirely with Flash and expect to gain the same search benefits as an HTML site?

Consider these 5 points that Google makes in regards to SEO for Flash:

1. Google can crawl and index all of the text content users see as they interact with the Flash file. That’s a big step in the right direction, since ensuring a site is crawlable is the No. 1 SEO basic. A few points to keep in mind concerning SEO for Flash:

• Google maintains that the text in Flash files is treated like text in HTML or PDF files.
• If identical content is used in both Flash and HTML, Google will likely see it as duplicate content.
• If a Flash file is embedded in HTML, you’ll be able to add meta information, but the content will be indexed as a single item.

The below image illustrates how a Flash site was previously seen in search results (without meta description text) and how it is currently seen (with descriptive text):

2. Google can discover links within Flash files. In other words, if a Flash file includes links to your website pages, you can increase your odds of Google finding and crawling more of the site – just as is the case with links that appear in HTML and other files.

3. Google can index external content that a Flash file loads and associate it with that Flash file. This capability is an update from the summer 2008 revision. Previously, if a Flash file were to load an HTML or XML file, Google would not associate that external content with the Flash file. This new capability, introduced just this summer, allows external content to appear in search results.

The image below shows the results to the query “2002 VW Tansporter 888.” Before the introduction of the new Flash search capability, this result did not appear because the content is contained in an XML file loaded by a Flash file:

4. Google supports common JavaScript techniques for embedding Flash. Another update from the 2008 revision, this capability also applies to SWFObject and SWFObject 2. Previously, if a page loaded a Flash file using JavaScript, Google wouldn’t recognize or index it.

5. Google can index sites scripted with ActionScript. That includes AS1, AS2 and AS3 versions. Google also maintains that is does not decompile Flash files or expose ActionScript code if it’s not visible to users.

All that said, Google’s ability to crawl Flash files is still evolving, so building a site entirely in Flash isn’t best practice. To create the right balance when it comes to using Flash and implementing SEO for Flash, consider these tips:

• Don’t use Flash as the navigation.
• Embed Flash files into HTML pages.
• Use descriptive page titles and meta descriptions.
• Don’t include an entire site in one Flash file. Instead, break the content into multiple Flash files with different HTML pages.
• Use Flash for design elements and less-important content, and use HTML for the most important page elements.
• Enhance web fonts in Flash files by using slfr, per a suggestion by SEO Zombie Blogger Justin Briggs. Because the Flash styles enhance the HTML content rather than replace it, the engines can still read titles.

While Flash, Ajax and JavaScript offer enticing user experience, they continue to offer a less than ideal experience for search engine crawlers. What tactics or best practices have you found in balancing rich media and SEO?  Do you think it’s reasonable to for a web site to have an amazing Flash component and still be able to compete in aggressive search categories?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | SEO for Flash: 5 Tips and Best Practices | No comment | http://www.toprankblog.com

I noticed someone using Google suggest in another story today (honestly forgot where) and thought I’d see what Google “thinks” about social media. Then I tried SEO. Not surprising. Funniest of all, considering Google’s business model, was advertising.

Pretty telling when you think about it. Of course this isn’t what Google “really thinks” about social media, it’s Google’s response to search queries and effort to predict what we’re really searching for.

Google Suggest works by drawing from searches by other Google users, sites in Google’s search index, and ads in the Google advertising network. If you’re logged in, Google will use your search history to make suggestions. It can be a handy search tool. It can also be revealing.

But, that’s not as interesting as viewing these screen shots as what Google “thinks”, so let’s continue:

Whoah, let’s turn off the SEO hate, OK Google? In case you’re not a hater and curious about search engine optimization, find the truth about SEO here and why ongoing SEO is important here.  The reality is, Google is the recognized leader amongst the few remaining search engines in more than market share. They’re also the pioneer (thanks in part to Vanessa Fox) and leader in providing webmasters with SEO tools and insight via Google Webmaster Central.

After typing in “advertising is” on Google, I had to laugh because of such positive sentiment.  How many millions of dollars, no billions of dollars, go into advertising that is untracked, unaccountable?  Google’s bread and butter is advertising so it’s just a bit ironic. Of course, the kind of advertising that Google sells IS trackable and VERY accountable.  No wonder Google Suggest says “advertising is good for you”.

What does Google Suggest think of your industry?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Google: Social Media is a Party, SEO is Bullsh*t, Advertising is Good For You | 16 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

“It’s a people driven economy stupid” and “Online word of mouth has made many traditional marketing strategies obsolete”. Those are powerful words and central to the theme in “Socialnomics” by Erik Qualman, Global VP for Online Marketing for EF Educatio, the world’s largest private educator.

I appreciate Erik’s characterization because it’s how I’ve viewed social media since our digital marketing & PR agency started blogging and using social news/bookmarking sites in 2004: as technology that facilitates word of mouth. At conferences, I often say to audiences that if a company has strong word of mouth in the offline world, then Social Media may be a powerful option for them. If not, perhaps social media can help them get word of mouth started.

While many companies are “doing social media” as many marketers put it, most are shooting from the hip. Socialnomics explores the impact social media is having on the way companies are developing and marketing products that reaches consumers directly and eliminates middleman waste.

Here’s the chapter breakdown:

Word of Mouth Goes World of Mouth – Social media beats porn? Wow. Social media can seem like information overload, but the reality is that your network can filter the noise as can search engines that increasingly rely on social signals. News is push and bloggers are news. Publishing business models need to adapt as do marketing departments that want to best leverage social media communication channels.

Social Media = Preventative Behavior (What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube) – Social media enables people to be open about their interests and lives attracted by the notion of being part of something. Individuals and companies realize this openness and are adjusting what they publish accordingly. Once something is published on the web, it’s forever.

While some companies work to drown out negative sentiment and commentary about their brands, products and services, others see the opportunity to engage with customers about their concerns and leverage that insight to create better solutions.

Social Media = Braggadocian Behavior (It’s all about me, me, me) – Social media is becoming a bigger part of people’s lives involving relationships, communications, and entertainment. Both Gen Y and Z aspire to changing the world around them using social media, maybe because their interpersonal skills in the real world are hampered overuse of social tools.

Obama’s Success Driven by Social Media – Great breakdown of the Obama campaign’s use of social tools like video and what companies can learn from it.

I Care More about What My Neighbor Thinks than What Google Thinks – Social what? Socialommerce – the transactional, search and marketing components of social media. This is more about the pull of social. Instead of us going to what we want via search, what we want comes to us via social media. 76% rely on recommendations from others vs 15% that rely on advertising.

Death of a Social Schizophrenia – The initial popularity of representing different personas will give way to real transparency of character as social media participants mature and realize the difficulty of maintaining different identities.
The best marketing investment companies can make in a social media world is in the quality of their products and a focus on being the best. Quality and focus facilitates word of mouth and referrals vs traditional push marketing, so marketers will need to adopt new roles that involve listening, engaging and reacting.

Winners and Losers in a 140 Character World – Great mix of good and bad examples of social media use by companies. Being honest is appreciated by consumers and the future of social media advertising means including both advertisers and audiences in the content creation process. SEO and social media go hand in hand, a topic that TopRank could write an entire book about.

Next Step for Companies and The “Glass House Generation” – The last chapter focuses first on putting search agencies out of business, PPC agencies that is, through a socialnomic model where search engines get paid for sales, not clicks, by advertisers. At the same time, Google’s efforts with social search (the Google and Bing deals with Twitter and Facbook post date the book) are important and warrant marketers’ attention. YouTube after all, is the second most popular search engine, not Yahoo.

Companies should consider carefully, whether to build their own social network vs using a social network platform that already exists, such as Facebook or LinkedIn. Social media will play a huge part in jobs and recruiting, especially for those job seekers and employees that successfully use social tools.

When writing a book, you have to pick your battles with a topic like social media since there are so many angles, approaches and topics that could be covered. I guess that explains why there are so many books on social media.

Socialnomics does a good job of presenting high level analysis and practical impact sandwiched by stories that marketers can appreciate. The key points bulleted out after each chapter are handy and I recommend reading them before you read the actual chapters.

I appreciate the nod to the SEO value of social media content, but my heavily biased opinion is that there’s a lot more to be said. Search Marketing agencies that speak social fluently (like TopRank) are distinct from PPC or advertising agencies.  I don’t think advertising is going away, but it’s certainly going to change and adapt according to advertiser shifts in budgets. Some of that may go to social advertising and some may go to something new not covered in the book.

To round out this review, check out this Social Media ROI video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can get the Socialnomics book on Amazon, visit Erik’s blog here or connect with him on Twitter.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Book Review: Socialnomics by Erik Qualman | 7 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Recently, I presented at PubCon on the intersection of social media and PR.  The session title was “experts on PR and Twitter,” however the session description went on to discuss a variety of networks.  Therefore my interpretation was to speak on the intersection of social media and PR, and not just PR and Twitter.

The social web is far more than just Twitter, and if Twitter is the extent of your participation you’re missing out.  Lee’s diagram of social media and channels of distribution presents a visualization of a strong approach, where the centerpiece is a blog.  The centerpiece could be anything of course, not just a blog – but the essential element is that it’s a place you control and not an external network.  Using Twitter or any network you don’t control as the centerpiece is a mistake, because you’re building the value of a digital asset that isn’t really yours (no analytics, no control, no SEO benefit and if that network falls out of favor all your hard work is devalued).

Additionally, while today we speak about channel-specific PR or marketing, the future will be different.  Traditional and digital PR will merge and it will just be seen as PR.

A quote from William Gibson adds clarity to this:

image credit:  will lion via flickr

Segmentation will end when the digital divide is bridged.  In the meantime, the idea of digital PR continues to proliferate while we see a decline in traditional.

A recent digital readiness report states 18% of marketing decision makers have no interest whatsoever in traditional marketing.  This shows a good percentage are already embracing digital fully and is a potential harbinger of the future.  Other data in that survey adds to this:  a majority agree that knowledge of social networks (80%), blogging, podcasting and RSS (87%), and micro-blogging (72%) is either important or very important when it comes to PR and marking hiring.

Many marketing/PR professionals and agencies are already on board and becoming more sophisticated in their strategies daily.  But for those who are new, I’d like to discuss why it is such a great platform for interacting.  These are points I touched on during a recent panel on PR and Twitter however I wanted to follow up with more detail.

Authenticity/personality – the world and web crave it

There are too many faceless brands, companies and even, amazingly, people on the planet.  We crave authenticity – and digital channels reward it higher than traditional.  This is because they are personal versus the fact that traditional channels produce content as the result of a polished, refined process.  The truth is the web is not meant to be a finished product; it is merely an avenue to express ourselves.  Additionally, the web enables you to talk with consumers and prospects, not at them.  Embrace PR with this in mind and you’ll nurture a very different kind of relationship than those who treat it like a broadcast tool.

It scales – popular brands just get more popular

The idea of social media scaling for customer service is of course a misnomer – it doesn’t.  But popularity on the other hand can continue to grow.  That’s not to say it’s easy to keep up, but look at the runaway growth of certain brands, networks and media and you’ll see this to be true.  People like Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington just get more popular, and socially active brands like Zappos and Whole Foods gain greater share of voice daily especially when stacked against competitors.

Social media applied strategically for PR helps make a brand referential.  And when something becomes referential, it just keeps growing.  Digital media – due to links, sourcing and aggregation potentiates anything which is referential.  Staking a claim sooner rather than later is how you can do this and begin to grow organically.  As digital channels continue rise in popularity and influence it will become more difficult to do this as more attempt to do so.

Long-term storytelling – build a permission asset

Permission marketing is a core skill for digital PR and marketing professionals to embrace.  By growing a community and getting people to say “yes, I want to hear from you,” you’ll earn the permission to share your messages with them long term.  And overtime you will develop influence, trust and eventually be seen as an authority on a subject.  And as Brian Clarke sagely advises:  authority rules.

Leverage – digital PR is your social proofing

If you acquire digital PR and never do anything with it, you’re not optimizing your social proofing.  If you’re gaining endorsements from credible industry professionals or generating tons of buzz and links about your product and not showcasing that, it is a missed opportunity.  While many will have seen the buzz initially, what about those who have not?  Here at TopRank, we embrace this by aggregating mentions of our brand in a digital marketing newsroom.  Put your digital PR to work instead of letting it accumulate digital dust.  Even consider taking it offline to win new business:  comments, endorsements, interviews and feedback from trusted externalities can be a persuasive force.

Intersection with SEO – links are by-product

As discussed frequently at Online Marketing Blog social media and SEO have a symbiotic relationship.  And digital marketers who go a step further find there is a nexus between SEO, social media and PR.  Uncover this and you will discover the three play off each other for even greater results.  Your keyword glossary should not be used merely for SEO – rather, use it across all marketing channels, including in PR programs.  After all, generating more search demand for keywords you are optimized for is only going to help you long term.

PR has changed – pull is now more effective

Pull PR is superior to push, there is no escaping this.  A (not so) secret part of media is this:  media report on media.  It’s so simple, yet so overlooked.  By becoming media you embrace a pull strategy naturally and will attract attention from all other types of media – both professional and amateur.

Quick conclusion

Social media for PR is a dynamic, constant process, and not all companies will be agile enough to embrace it.  But it allows truly passionate and authentic brands to stand out, build a tribe and become referential.  The few brands and professionals that get it right are memorable because there are so many who get it wrong.

Having an effective strategy and the patience to see it pay off, enabling your brand “tip” in the social web is reserved for those who can commit long term.  But those who do will see returns far greater than traditional PR can offer.

Today I shared a brief overview of why to use social media for PR.  If you’re not already a reader here be sure and subscribe, as next I will explore how to use social media for PR.

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Yesterday I presented at PubCon on the intersection of social media and PR. The session title was “experts on PR and Twitter,” however the session description went on to discuss a variety of networks. Therefore my interpretation was to speak on the intersection of social media and PR, and not just PR and Twitter. The social web is far more than just Twitter, and if Twitter is the extent of your participation, you’re really limiting yourself.

I also think it’s a bit funny we’re talking about channel-specific PR in the first place. While we segment the idea of “social media PR” today, in the future this will not be the case. It will just be PR.

A quote from William Gibson adds clarity to this:

“One of the things our grandchildren will find quaintest about us is that we distinguish the digital from the real. In the future, that will become literally impossible.”

Regardless, social media for PR in particular – while not new to tenured digital marketers – is new to many. Therefore I’d like to discuss why it is such a great platform for interacting. These are points I touched on during yesterday’s panel on PR and Twitter, however are worth further discussion:

Authenticity/personality – the world and web crave it

There are too many faceless brands, companies and even, amazingly, people on the planet. We crave authenticity – and in fact digital channels reward it higher than traditional. This is because they are personal versus the fact that traditional channels produce content as the result of a polished, refined process. The truth is the web is not meant to be a finished product; it is merely an avenue to express ourselves. Embrace PR with this in mind and you’ll nurture a very different kind of relationship than those who treat it like a broadcast tool.

It scales – popular brands just get more popular

The idea of social media scaling for customer service is of course a misnomer – it doesn’t. But popularity on the other will continue to grow. That’s not to say it’s easy to keep up, but look at the runaway growth of certain brands, networks and media and you’ll see this to be true. When something becomes referential it just keeps growing. Digital media – due to links, sourcing and aggregation just continues to build upon itself. Staking a claim sooner rather than later is how you’ll grow.

Long-term storytelling – build a permission asset

Permission marketing is a core skill for digital PR and marketing professionals to embrace. By growing a community and getting people to say “yes, I want to hear from you,” you’ll earn the permission to share your messages with them long term. And overtime, you will develop influence, trust and eventually be seen as an authority on a subject. And as Brian Clarke sagely advises: authority rules.

Leverage – digital PR is your social proofing

If you acquire digital PR and never do anything with it, you’re not optimizing your social proofing. If you’re gaining endorsements from credible industry professionals or generating tons of buzz and links about your product and not showcasing that, it is a missed opportunity. While many will have seen the buzz, what about those who have not? Here at TopRank, we embrace this by aggregating social proofing in our digital marketing newsroom.

Intersection with SEO – links are by-product

As discussed frequently on TopRank Blog social media and SEO have a symbiotic relationship. And digital marketers who go a step further, discover there is a nexus between SEO, social media and PR. Discover this and you will find the three play off each other for even greater results. Your keyword glossary should not be used merely for SEO – rather, use it across all marketing channels, including in PR programs. After all, generating more search demand for keywords you are optimized for is only going to help you long term.

PR has changed – pull is now more effective

Pull PR is superior to push, there is no escaping this. A (not so) secret part of media is this: media report on media. It’s so simple, yet so overlooked. By becoming media, you embrace a pull strategy naturally and will attract attention from all other types of media – both professional and amateur.

Certainly this is a very short list of why you should embrace social media for PR.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Why Use Social Media For Public Relations | 9 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Online retail websites face a unique set of obstacles when it comes to improving sales through better search engine visibility.  Repetitive product descriptions, a lack of content and frequent churn of products can all be hurdles to overcome. But with these specific tips for retail search engine optimization, online retailers can turn those challenges into opportunities and maximize their organic search traffic.

1. Add fresh content to the website. Many online retail websites focus on selling products rather than informing and providing value to customers, and hence severely lack content. It’s a good idea to include pages on a retail site that are purely content-based. Not only will informative, optimized content improve search rankings, it can help retailers sell more products by engaging customers.

Try these ideas for adding fresh content to an online retail site:

• Add customer success stories and case studies to the website.
• Create a blog to provide relevant industry news, tips and product offerings.
• Incorporate a resource section on the site with relevant white papers and other content.

2. Eliminate repetitive copy. Another issue online retailers face is that many of their products are significantly similar, with only slight variations. As such, product descriptions tend to use very similar copy. And if other retailers sell the same products, their descriptions are likely similar as well.

Avoid being penalized by the search engines for duplicate content by writing product descriptions that are as unique as possible. Highlight the most distinguishing characteristics of products to avoid duplicate copy. Lastly, ensure keyword phrases aren’t repeated too many times throughout descriptions. It’s an easy mistake considering target keywords are likely found in the name or description of most, if not every, product.

Not only will this technique contribute to improved search rankings, but user experience will be enhanced as well.

3. Draw traffic to static pages. For many online retailers, products are frequently added and removed from their website, some as often as every month or every week.  Adding fresh content to a site provides SEO benefits, but removing it can quickly negate any advantages, as it takes time for search engines to index content.

To maneuver around this roadblock, draw traffic to more static pages, rather than revolving pages. For example, instead of focusing SEO on individual product pages, focus on product category pages.

4. Don’t forget to optimize PDF product catalogs. For many retailers, it’s a common practice to offer a product catalog in PDF format on their website. When devoting time to optimizing HTML pages on a website, it’s essential not to forget about the catalog or any other PDF files. Remember these key points when optimizing PDF files:

• Create text-based PDFs, rather than designing them in an image-based program, so that the search engines have text to read.
• Optimize as you would an HTML page, incorporating keywords in headlines, copy and meta descriptions, and including anchor text hyperlinks.
• Post a smaller sized PDF to avoid search engines – and customers –  deserting the PDF before accessing its content.
• Remember to complete the document properties, particularly the title.

5. Optimize images for search engines. SEO doesn’t end with HTML pages and PDF files. Online retailers’ sites are full of images. Why not leverage those images to gain better search rankings? Including alt text and optimized captions can all contribute to improved rankings in the search engines. Plus, images found via the search engines have the potential to be shared and linked to across the web, also contributing to improved rankings.

Have you implemented creative SEO tips for ecommerce and online retail web sites? What tips would you add to this list?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 5 SEO Tips for Online Retailers | 21 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

From the perspective of some, it seems like Vegas was late to participate in social media (according to the PubCon panel description).

However, the prominent brands on the strip have stepped up to the plate and are actively engaged in social web participation.  They’re leveraging digital platforms for a variety of purposes – from customer service to promotion.

This open-format panel at PubCon 2009 analyzed how Vegas marketing departments are using SM as part of their overall marketing plan and featured some of the largest names on the strip.  Brands represented were:

• Brad Goldberg, Vice President of Marketing, Luxor
• Brandie Feuer, Director of Interactive Marketing, Planet Hollywood
• Peter Arceo, Executive Director of Casino Marketing, Las Vegas Hilton
• Michael Perhaes, Assistant Vice President of Marketing, MGM Grand
• Bryan Allison, Vice President, Marketing, Vegas.com

The session moved quickly, but I was able to jot down the good bits from each of the speakers.

Brad Goldberg, Vice President of Marketing, Luxor

We saw successes from other brands using social media and decided we wanted to pattern the same results.  While not everyone may check their emails in Vegas, many of them still check their social profiles while traveling.  People are looking to what is happening right now, up-to-date.  We wanted to be a part of those real-time conversations and top-of-mind for our consumer base.

We want to keep it fun – staying away from “cold” messages that are too commercial.  We think it’s important with regards to the social web to maintain personality/voice.  That’s one of the most important things we want to hold onto and maintain.  Otherwise, it’s just another advertising vehicle.

Making it easier for those interacting with your products to communicate about those interactions is something we see as important to our future.

Peter Arceo, Executive Director of Casino Marketing, Las Vegas Hilton

At the Hilton, we don’t necessarily have the same resources of our competitors.  So what we do is staff social media with people actively interested in what we’re trying to do – spread our brand.  We try to get customers to both sample our offerings and make it social.  We have a “toys for Tweets” promotion that will bring awareness to the fact that there is a Hilton in Vegas in a positive light.  Our approach to get employees involved in social media isn’t to guide them, but take the Zappos approach and let them have their own voice.  We want to find people internally interested in doing social media organically.

We design promotions and events to get people together – not just to meet us, but to meet each other.  There is a hunger and a need for people to meet each other.  We want to be the connector.

Brandie Feuer, Director of Interactive Marketing, Planet Hollywood

We see social media as a great direct response channel.  But we’re also cognizant of providing value to users.  We do things like give out last minute concert tickets to our followers and promote little things that might not be worth a press release.  Social media rests with PR and our interactive department, however we also encourage others to be a part of the space.  All employees should be empowered, where possible. We want to move towards more of a social business model.

Michael Perhaes, Assistant Vice President of Marketing, MGM Grand

The MGM Grand was late to the social media game compared to competitors on the strip – we finally joined for a few reasons.  The effectiveness of our email marketing was beginning to degrade a bit.  The value of email has diminished in the last few years.  We’ve seen sites like Facebook have taken up that role for many.  We want to put content into social media that may have been ignored in email.  In a few years time, social media will become an even more important network than email for our brand.

We have high expectations on response for social media as a full-blown marketing channel.  The people that choose to follow us on the social web have affinity for our brand and we want to be able to market to them.

We have specific pages for some channels, for example we have a separate food and beverage Facebook page for that department since there are people passionate about those items.  We want to engage other departments too.  Most importantly, we want to find ways to make this more meaningful even beyond direct response and reach people interested in Vegas.  We’re creating personas to try to build affinity with people.

We read (and respond) to posts customers put up on their Facebook page – specifically things like customer complaints – in order to make their next experience better.  It allows that two way communication – if someone complains about their room, we have a way to respond to them immediately.

As a promotional effort we launched a “confessions campaign” on Twitter where you can Tweet your sins, and there’s a livestream of people tweeting those sins.  Users can vote on sins which are forgivable vs. unforgivable.  The best sins can win a free night.  We’ve done advertising in LA to support it and create more buzz.  The goal is to gain additional awareness on Twitter, gain more followers and experiment.

Bryan Allison, Vice President, Marketing, Vegas.com

We identified people internally who were passionate about social media and empowered them to get involved and answer consumer questions.  The entire company is leveraging the social web.  We just launched a campaign called “Vegas Experts Exposed.”  This wasn’t the idea of the marketing department; rather it was the idea of some other employees in the company.  We want everyone to contribute ideas across the company.

We’ve done things that are both commercial and fun on social channels and we’re continuously surprised with how people interact with the more fun items.  We want to have something that people will look forward to on their live feed.

We use a mix of “power users” internally for promoting the product, and also customer service representatives talking to customers and alleviate their problems.  There are people internally who are really passionate and want to share their workplace/what they do all day.  We encourage them to do so, however to use common sense and ask first on appropriateness if there is a questions.

Many of our younger employees are already involved – it’s an opportunity to use them, tap that resource.  They know how to communicate and engage in these channels.  We use them to help the people who may not be as experienced in social media get up to speed.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | PubCon 2009: How Major Vegas Hotels Are Using Social Media | 6 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Zappos has grown gross merchandise sales from $1.6M in 2000 to over $1 billion in 2008 by focusing relentlessly on customer service – a potent digital marketing tool. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, kicked off day one of PubCon 2009 with a keynote on the importance of delivering happiness through service.

Founded in 1999, Zappos has grown to 1,400 employees and is listed at #23 in Fortune Magazine’s “100 Best Companies To Work For.”

Zappos is “Powered by Service.” Its goal is to provide the best online shopping experience possible.

Customer service in action:

#1 driver of Zappos’ growth is from repeat customers and word of mouth. Put a focus into the customer experience, create something that is worth talking about. Let customers do the marketing for you through digital (and physical) channels.

Customer service:  What customers see first on the Zappos website:

• 24/7 1-800 number on every page
• Free shipping
• Free return shipping
• 365-day return policy

Consumers are bombarded by thousands of marketing messages daily.  As low tech and unsexy as it may sound, the telephone is one of the best marketing devices out there.  Zappos encourages customers to call them – and yet, 95% of their orders are online.  What they have found though is on average, nearly all customers contact them at least once through the phone.  Zappos is actively building personal relationships with their customers, who in turn are helping them grow.

What customers experience:

• Fast, accurate fulfillment
• Most customers are “surprise”-upgraded to overnight shipping (creates a WOW experience)
• Friendly, helpful, “above and beyond” customer service – even directing customers to competitors if they are looking for something Zappos doesn’t have

What Zappos does internally:

• No call times, no sales-based performance goals for reps
• Run warehouse 24/7
• Inventory all products (no drop-shipping)
• 5 weeks of culture, core values, customer service and warehouse training for everyone in Las Vegas office
• Customer service is not just that department, it’s everyone
• Culture book – all employees contribute a few paragraphs. Except for typos, it is unedited. Everyone reads it.

Zappos wants to own the three C’s: clothing, customer service, culture.

Customers tell them Zappos is “happiness in a box”. Whether that happiness is from the product, their customer service team or the internal culture, it’s all about delivering that experience through both digital channels and a tangible product.

Zappos top 10 core values:

1. Deliver WOW through service
2. Embrace and drive change
3. Create fun and a little weirdness
4. Be adventurous, creative and open-minded
5. Pursue growth and learning
6. Build open and honest relationships with communications
7. Build a positive team and family spirit
8. Do more with less
9. Be passionate and determined
10. Be humble

Tony touched on the importance of hiring people who consider themselves lucky/optimistic. People who consider themselves lucky pay more attention to detail and are cognizant of their surroundings. Luck is about being open to opportunity. This is important in a world where we are all connected: Your employees are potentially a great marketing asset to spread your brand in the right light.

Committing to transparency – Zappos puts themselves in the public spotlight:

• Twitter.Zappos.com
• Ask anything newsletter
• Extranet for vendors
• Tours & reporter visits
• ZapposInsights.com

During Zappos tours, visitors are free to walk around the offices and talk to whoever they want. They are comfortable doing that since they invest so much in hiring/training of employees up front. Employees are trusted to represent the Zappos brand just by being themselves. People leave buzzing about the brand.

What Tony hears frequently: “That’s great for Zappos, but it would never work at my company …”

The response: It doesn’t matter what your core values are, as long as you commit to them. First, figure out what your core values are. Second, seek alignment across all staff. Values must be “real,” not overly corporate/lofty.

In terms of vision: Whatever you’re thinking, think bigger. Decide if the vision actually has real meaning. Then, chase the vision, not the money. The money will actually follow.

For entrepreneurs: “What would you be passionate about doing for 10 years even if you never made a dime?

For employees: “What’s the larger vision and greater purpose in their work beyond money or profits?”

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | PubCon 2009: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh Keynote | 13 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

If you have ever wanted to be a fly on the wall listening to experts talk about the convergence of PR and Social Media, here’s your chance.  PRSA brought together the following people to lend their thoughts about the PR (R)evolution:

Moderator: Kami Watson from My PR Pro and Panelists: Deirdre Breakenridge from PFS Marketwyse, Ariel Hyatt of Ariel Publicity & CyberPR, Joseph Jaffe from Crayon and Brian Solis from FutureWorks PR. Here is the conversation as it unfolded, marked with Twitter handles.

What’s next in the realm of online and how will it impact PR?

@dbreakenridge – Google Wave is next for launching information and collaborating. As discussed in a panel yesterday 2008/2009 was the year of checking off a list of social media tools. Facebook – check. YouTube- check. Next, we need to evolve, connect the networks, improve the experience and understand real-time metrics. In addition, the consumer experience will be upgraded to reflect real-time pricing, etc.

@jaffejuice – I get irritated when people ask me what the next big thing is. The next big thing is right now. I am really bugged by this complete fixation on Twitter. SecondLife is back in a big way in the form of Twitter. What we are forgetting are podcasts and blogging as tools for peer-to-peer communication.

iPhone users only make up 3% of AT&T users, but create 70% of the data. So a big thing now is mobile. I challenge you to re-visit the checklist and ask yourself how many are hitting those items on a strategic level?

@kamichat to @briansolis – What is the impact of the ‘live web’?
@briansolis – Twitter is phenomenal in how it’s changed how people interact. It’s nothing short of a shift in how people interact. We’ve not seen its full reach. The full power of this is the human network. Twitter is changing how we communication (press release vs 140 characters).

Twitter won’t be here in 5 years, something else will but the impact is not the tool but how it’s changing the way we communicate and participate. Today’s technology isn’t tapped into to its full potential and it’s our job (pr pros) to help increase the level of interactivity.

@kamichat – What about the little guy?

@cyberPR – What’s interesting is that what is next is making sure that clients understand how to use the tools with or without us (the agency). What’s always next is that we don’t leave them cold and once we leave their Twitter stream doesn’t dry up. If you are working on the corporate level, you have to convince people that the conversation is necessary and get them involved.

@kamichat to @dbreakenridge – A lot of clients expect us to do the tactical implementation, how does that work in this new communications model? How does that work with client-side or agency-side PR pros?

@dbreakenridge – We discuss this whole ‘who owns social media’ but we all own it. You have to have your overarching strategy. Whatever you do online it has to be tied to business goals.

Don’t engage at the tactical level, start with the strategy and a big part of the strategy is to listen. What are you getting yourself into to, what is the culture of the community. If you can’t understand the different stakeholders and what they need from you, then it’s no different than pushing a message that they don’t want to hear.

@jaffejuice – The message has to come from within the client; it can’t be the job of the agency. In a survey, some 60% of the companies who have listened haven’t followed through. In other terms, you can’t be half pregnant. The half hearted attempts can backfire.

@kamichat – What kind of skills do the new PR professional needs to be the new architect and move away from the tactical role?

@briansolis – I’ll get there, but first I have to talk to Joe. Who owns email marketing right now? Email isn’t going away and it’s going to get more social. Right now, IT owns email. The lesser aspect of social media is that no one will ever own it, but someone has to be accountable.

Somewhere we got misdirected and started mass-blasting messages. However, PR is a very social activity. At some point the organization itself (PR, Sales, Customer Service) has to get social, embrace the brand and be able to represent it. PR has its biggest and grandest opportunity right now to more effectively communicate outward and be able to impact the organization in a much more valuable way. Any discussion that takes our eyes off that ball, is mute.

We need to figure out how to be valuable to the organization, and be less concerned with Twitter/Facebook and more concerned about the conversations.

@jaffejuice – I love what Brian said, in fact there is a tear in my eye. The only thing is this, when I first encountered the PR space I was blown away by the innovation and understanding the power of relationships. That said, the more I got to know the PR industry the more I realized most were still mired in the past and grappling with how to change. If you want the lead you can have it, because you are already out there but you don’t have much time before people surpass you.

@kamichat – How do we train our clients how to do this?

@cyberPR – What’s interesting about the music industry is that we are the canary in the coalmine. The music we create is the first thing that can get stolen online. Our goal as an agency is to make them understand is that they same thing they do on stage – connect with the audience – is exactly what they need to do online.

@kamichat – What are the skills that people need (we didn’t get this answered before)

@briansolis – There really isn’t a checklist. To go back to Joe’s point, listening is what gives you all the answers. It’s the listening that tells you how to respond and where, but if you are a human you can’t help but gain empathy for those talking about your brand.

@kamichat – Question from the audience: in the past, there have been 1 or 2 spokespeople, are you saying may people within the organization need to be social?

@dbreakenridge – It can approached any number of ways. However, the more opportunities for a customer to get close to your employees the closer they will become to your brand. Start on the inside with training, policy and procedures or whatever you need to get buy-in and then take the conversations to the outside.

@jaffejuice – I can’t agree more. BestBuy is changing the way they serve their customers because of social media. We can no longer control the message. The people you have on the front lines are your brand. If we can’t figure out how to harness employees then all the ads and billboards in the world don’t matter.

@briansolis – I’m nodding my head. Before you come to the table as a PR person, come as a consumer. You talk when you like something, you talk when you don’t. Ultimately you have to find the right people and there is no amount of media training that can make someone genuine.

@kamichat – What I’m finding is that clients are having internal battles over social. Do you find there is a turf war?

@jaffejuice – There isn’t a company on the planet where all departments play nice together. PR & Advertising are often still oil and water. Consumers don’t follow your org chart, the brand is the brand to them. The problem is we can’t move quick enough. Turf wars are at least good because at least somebody is trying to take ownership. It is worse if social isn’t even part of the conversation.

@kamichat – Part of this is really all about training internally. How are hooking training in and appealing to them?

@cyberPR – Now that Oprah is on Twitter, it’s getting easier. Society is making it easier for any of us trying to drag client into this arena. Do as they do helps tremendously. It’s more difficult to train clients if you don’t have a presence on the sites yourself. Show them how it’s benefited you or others.

@kamichat – We have come into this era where a personal brand is important and perhaps employed by a brand.

@briansolis – This is a really powerful time as both a brand and an individual. You, as the individual, have the opportunity to create influence within your community. This will become a job requirement in years to come. The question about personality is whether you should be you or you at X company. In Twitter and Facebook you are creating contextual networks where you might have a client and your mom commenting on the same page. I’m a big proponent of separating your personal and professional brand.

@kamichat – Question from the audience: If companies are starting to ask employees to have a social presence, how do we deal with those that block Facebook, etc at work.

@dbreakenridge – It’s not ideal. The best scenario would be to open it up, train people and let them be a proponent of the brand.

@jaffejuice – If we believe that companies will become more open, we’re going to have to train IT. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. The upcoming workforce may start to push back and withstand working for organizations who block their ability to connect.

@kamichat – How do we go from building social campaigns to commitment by the organization?

@jaffejuice – If you want to go and invest money in a 30 second campaign to get friends on Facebook, you better have a plan for what you are going to do with the friends.

On the other hand, the commitment can create a campaign as well. If you build and nurture slowly with empathy and care, you can leverage that community at any point in time for something that is more focused and socialized. Conversations are not magic beans. You can’t just plant a message and expect it to grow. Slow and steady OR fast and figure out the rest later? Both can work, but have a plan.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | PRSA09: Discussing the PR Revolution | 7 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Today at the PRSA 09 conference, it was a packed room for TopRank CEO (and author of Online Marketing Blog) Lee Odden who gave a presentation on SEO for Public Relations.

He started by explaining why SEO is/should be important to PR Professionals.

In a 2008 Journalists Use of Search Survey by TopRank, we discovered that 91% of journalists use standard search to fulfill a component of their job whether researching a story or locating a subject matter expert.

With journalists writing for more channels and with less resources making your content visible within search is critical.

Here are Odden’s 10 SEO Tips:

1. Number one thing to do?
Magic answer is that it depends on the problem.
However, if you choose one item to tackle make sure your website is crawlable. If the site isn’t crawlable, then really nothing else you do in terms of SEO will matter.

2. Understand and Optimize PR Tactics
The content that is likely already being created as part of the PR campaign is low hanging fruit in terms of SEO.

Optimize the following content with keyword phrases (or those terms that journalists might be searching) to help your content become more visible:

• Press Releases
• Letters to the editor
• Online Newsroom
• Media kits
• Corporate blogs
• White papers
• Webinars/demos
• Newsletters
• Real world interviews published digitally

In addition, Odden introduces the audience to the idea of Micromedia Optimization. Now that tweets and soon status updates are being integrated into the search engines, it’s important to optimize the content regardless of the channel.

3. PPC vs SEO for PR
SEO is long term, part of a content process and contingent on content and links over time.
PPC is on-demand, pay to play and an alternative to natural listings. If you have something you need to draw attention to right now, PPC is perhaps the more viable option as you can have ads live within minutes.

4. Keyword Research
In order to optimize your existing content, a list of keyword phrases needs to be developed.
Here’s how you build the list:
1. Brainstorm phrases
2. Import to a keyword research tool
–Google Keyword Tool
–Google Insights & Trends
–WordTracker
–Keyword Discovery
–SEM Rush
3. Find popularity and variations of the original keyword list
4. Create a keyword glossary

When creating the glossary, be sure to segment by popularity and category to ensure no important phrases are missed.

5. Basics of OnPage SEO
When optimizing a website, newsroom or landing page, don’t forget to include keywords in the following places:

• Title Tags
• Keyword Placement within content
• On-page titles
• Navigation links
• Body copy
• Keyword text links
• Image alt text

6. Get more from Press Releases
Press releases can be more than a vehicle for distributing messages. If optimized, it can also serve to pull journalists (and even prospects) to the content hosted on a website or within a newsroom.

To optimize your press content for search visibility, remember to:

• Research and identify target keyword phrases
• Optimize the release for 1-2 phrases
• Include a Call to Action (link to landing page, so you can track activity)
• Develop and Optimize Landing Pages
• Post to Newsroom
• Pitch to Media
• Distribute via RSS
• Leverage Wire Service Distribution
• Measure Results

Here are 7 tips specific to Press Release Optimization:
1. Think up and to the left
2. Optimize for people first, search engines next
3. Use keywords in Title, Subhead, body
4. Don’t obsess over keyword density
5. Aim for a 500 word release to use target keyword 2-4 times
6. Use keywords in links to company sites
7. Add media: images, podcasts, video

7. Newsroom Optimization Tactics
Online newsrooms can be an added resource to draw journalists in, if it is optimized and can be found via search.

To optimize your newsroom or to get one started, follow these tips:
1. Consider using blog software to manage your newsroom, very search friendly
2. Share/Save Bookmarks
3. Leverage keyword categories
Chronological archives don’t benefit the search engines or the user. No one wants to search through years of press releases – as opposed to clicking on a category of content like ‘SEO Tips’.
4. Cross link from optimized content to relevant content on the website

8. Link Building
Links ‘electrify’ content in search and can significantly improve search rankings.

Earn links with great content and by deploying the following:

• Promote content socially
• Link up with partners
• Cross link internally
• Embed links in releases
• Social bookmark pickups of release content/coverage

When creating hyperlinks, be sure to use keywords in text:
Yes: Red Widget
No: Click Here

9. SEO & Social: Yin Yang
SEO and Social Media can be very complimentary to one another, so if deploying both (or even parts of both) be sure to integrate for highest impact.

Optimize Social Media for Search
The role of SEO in a social media effort is to directly influence discovery of social communities or content via search.

Link Building for SEO Through Social Media
Indirectly, social content can boost links to website content, improve search traffic and online sales.

10. Measuring & Selling the Value of News SEO
After deploying some or all of the above, it’s important to tie back to results.

There are are many different ways to attach measurement to the optimization of news content and here are a few to get you started:

• Newswire service metrics
• Web analytics for landing pages and websites
• Google / Yahoo alerts
• Monitor blog search engines (via RSS)
• Press release landing page conversion tracking
• Social media monitoring
• Inbound links
• Pickups on blogs
• Pickups on other websites
• Pickups on publications
• Search Rankings

Don’t think those will work? Odden recommends using the power of the competitors. Are your competitors receiving better social or standard search visibility? If so, that’s often a compelling data point for decision makers.

What tips do you have to add for optimizing news content?

TopRank is offering a Free Guide to SEO for PR here.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | PRSA09: Top 10 SEO Tips for Public Relations | 23 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The first day of the 2009 PRSA International Conference in San Diego kicked off general sessions today.

One session I’ve really been looking forward to was the one on social media measurement featuring Katie Paine of KDPaine & Partners. She started the audience off with some numbers, that we all might find useful:

• 48% of respondents to a PRWeek study said that they were moving money from advertising to social media – only 18% said they were taking money from PR
• 78% of people trust peer recommendations, 14% trust advertising
• 91% of Inc 500 companies are using social media
• 38% aren’t monitoring their brand, product or reputation in social media

Next, the audience had to grapple with the idea (read truth) that it’s the end of measurement as we know it. Here are ten supporting facts:

1. Procter & Gamble is now paying for engagement, not eyeballs
2. Sodexo cut 300K out of its recruitment budget using Twitter
3. Comcast avoided government regs and improved customer service via Twitter
4. Immunize BC used social media to boost awareness and increase percentage of population immunized
5. BMC Software measures communications effectiveness based on contribution to EPS (earnings per share)
6. HSUS (Humane Society) generated $650,000 in new donations from an on-line photo contest on Flickr
7. Red Cross judges success in terms of property saved and loss averted
8. IMB receives more leads, sales and exposure from a $500 podcast that it does from a $40,000 advertising program
9. Wal-Mart credits Q109 profits to 11 Moms
10. Stanford University calculates ROI from Facebook based on applications and retention

So, if you are measuring success with any of the following, you might be labeled Old School (and need to keep reading).

• AVE (ad value equivalency)
• Eyeballs
• Hits
• Couch Potatoes
• # of Twitter Followers
• # of Facebook Friends/Fans

Paine explains that the above measurement methods are in fact Old School and the incorrect way to measure the effectiveness of any campaign. Eyeballs aren’t a measurement of success anymore because those eyeballs likely avert your advertisement. Hits aren’t an objective of a website, inquiries and conversions are.

The measurement of success isn’t the creation of a Facebook page or even the number of friends/followers the page has. Rather, success is in the engagement with a particular audience and how that engagement has the potential to impact a preset objective.

So why don’t more professionals update the way they approach measurement? Paine says it’s fear. She adresses many fears that this (or any other) audience may have when it comes to social media and defining metrics.
1. Afraid metrics will reveal the program isn’t working.

• If it’s not working, why keep doing it?

2. Afraid of what you will hear.

• If you’re deaf to the conversation, only your enemies will hear it.

3. Afraid I won’t be able to justify my program/existence.

• It’s not about justifying; it’s about improving

4. Afraid I’ll be fired for not showing the right numbers.

• You should be fired for not showing any.

Social Media renders everything you know about measurement obsolete. The definition of timely has changed, the definition of reach has changed, the definition of success had changed.

The answer isn’t in how many you’ve reached, but how those you’ve reached have responded

Once you have reached the audience, take a look at how they engage and make decisions as it may have changed.

OLD:  Awareness > Consideration > Preference > Trial > Purchase
NEW:  Find > Observe > Participate > Engagement > Purchase/Act/Link/WOM

To get started, set goals for Social Media. Examples of goals are:

1. Marketing/leads/sales
2. Mission/safety/civic engagement
3. Relationship/reputation/positioning

To reach those goals, what do you need to measure?  Paine recommends following the 7 Steps to Social Media ROI:

1. Define the ‘R’ – what are expected results
2. Define the ‘I’ – what’s the investment
3. Understand your audiences and what motivates them
4. Define the metrics (what you want to become)
5. Define your benchmarks
6. Obey the Rules
7. Analysis

In what ways are you measuring social media? What have you found to be the most compelling metrics for getting management and/or client buy-in?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | PRSA09: Social Media Measurement – Katie Paine on Establishing ROI | 12 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Blogs are often touted as good for search engine optimization. The reality is, blogs are simply software tools and what you get out of them from a SEO perspective is in proportion to how well you know how to use them.  Good keyword categorization and content are a start, but blogs are not much of a SEO asset unless they attract links.

The myth of “Build it and they will come”.  Not many businesses that start blogs have the patience to create great content and wait for others to find that content all on their own as a linking strategy. Without clicking on a link or finding it on a search engine, how will others find your blog?   Content is King but only if you promote it.

Links from relevant, credible sources balanced with on-page keyword optimization make it easier for search engines to find, index and sort blog posts in search results. If there’s an expectation for a company blog to rank well in search results, be sure to consider some of the following link building tactics:

1. Create content worth linking to. No matter how many tactics you find here and elsewhere, there simply is no substitute for creating content that others may find useful. Take the time to look at blog posts that already rank well in search results and notice their structure, quantity of words and word placement.

2. Conduct backlink analysis on competing web sites or blogs – find out who is linking to competitor sites that are not linking to yours. Ask sites linking to multiple competitors to link to yours as well. If another web site or blog is already linking to multiple competitors, there is a chance they’ll link to your blog as well.

3. Make useful comments on other blogs that don’t have rel=nofollow. Comments should always be useful, but if you become aware of a topically relevant blog that does not discourage search engine spiders from crawling links in comments, it’s work spending the extra time to provide helpful insights a links to resources that you’ve published on your own blog.

4. Encourage social bookmarks & news submissions of your content using services without rel=nofollow. Show links to those services like Folkd, Spurl or Feedmarker in the blog post template code so they are visible for blog readers to use. Some social bookmarking services will make a copy of what you bookmark or a static web page of the bookmark including a do follow link back to the source (your blog).

5. Get listed on other blogger’s blogrolls.  It never hurts to ask another blog that you’re active with to see if they’d consider adding your blog to their blogroll or curated lists of blogs.

6. Guest write on other blogs and include a link to your blog in the bio. In the course of getting to know blogs that already rank well on the keyword phrases you’re targeting, you may notice that they often accept guest blog posts from others. Contact the blog owner and suggest a compelling post that would be first and foremost, valuable to their readers. If it makes sense editorially to link from within the guest post to your own blog, be sure to use relevant keywords as the link text.

7. Submit to blog & RSS directories. Many directory links have no follow links or are not visited by a large volume of people, but making sure your blog and RSS feed are included in niche categories and collections of blogs can be a positive signal to search engines as well as to long tail users. Many bloggers that aggregate large lists of topically specific blogs will cultivate blog directories as a easy way to find blogs on similar topics. If your blog isn’t on the niche list in those situations, you won’t be included.

8. Submit to regular web site directories like botw.org. While there are blog specific directories (BOTW has one of those as well) many don’t discern web sites from blogs. If a quality directory has a relevant category with other reputable web sites in it, then it makes sense for your blog to be among them as a useful information source.

9. Be sure to include your blog URL in profiles and bios on social media sites. While most social media sites that allow users to add links to their profiles add no follow to the links, there are many that do not. Public profile links on LinkedIn and YouTube channels for example, are good links. Rather than focus on registering with 300+ sites using Knowem, just make sure that of the social media profiles you do set up inlcude a link back to your blog.

10. Write testimonials for services and software that you use. They may publish with a link back to your blog.  Testimonials must be well written, genuine and specific in order to be useful for the service/product owner. Get at the essence of what’s great about the product or service and even add something unique. If you’ve written a review of the product/service on your blog, that can also get you a link from their press page.

11. Job listings should always have a link back to your blog. Blogs can be useful recruiting tools that help candidates understand the culture of your company. When purchasing job listings on other web sites, add a link to your blog. The listings may expire, but may also introduce your blog to candidates that write their own blog and decide to write about a listing with a permanent link to the hiring company blog.

12. Event listings should always have a link back to your blog. Blogs can be effective tools for promoting events and if you are listing your event with 3rd party services, a link back to your blog post with more details will be useful to readers that want to know more. That link can also be useful to search engines.

13. Contributions to non-profits often have a donor page with a link. These links are now very rare but you should contribute anyway.

14. Article syndication can still result in a few good links. Include your blog URL in the article bio. Take some of your best tips oriented blog posts and re-write them for specific industry verticals or applications. Then submit them to article repositories. When others re-use those articles, the bio link back to your blog can be picked up by readers and search engines.

15. Distribute press releases via a wire service with a link to your blog included. Our client, PRWeb, is a pioneer in providing competitive SEO value with press release distribution. Many blogs and some news web sites will re-publish your press release exactly as it was distributed, including good links back to your blog.  Journalists use News search to look up past press releases and research on stories, which presents an opportunity to be found and included.

16. Contribute Op Ed pieces to Mainstream Media web sites. Contribute a link to your blog of course.  If you suggest content to another web site such as a letter to the editor, why not keyword optimize the title? Why not include a link back to your blog where you’ve written many more articles on the same topic?

17. When you get media coverage (or placements) in online publications, be sure to ask the journalist for a link to your blog. Again, it never hurts to ask. Many publications have a policy not to link out from stories. Many leave it up to the journalist or their editor. If you don’t ask, you will never get the link.

18. Develop social networks and share especially useful content from your blog where relevant. Be useful to others and they will useful to you by promoting your content and attracting links. Don’t be gratuitous when sharing links to your own content, but when you have something particularly special and valuable that’s highly relevant to a particular network, then by all means, share it with them. Some are bloggers as well and may link to it from their own blogs as well as pass the link along to others.

19. Linkbait. Create or aggregate disparate content that provides value and is not easily found elsewhere. Promote it to those that would be interested and in a position to distribute to the right audience. Again, create useful content, but be thoughtful about packaging it in a way that makes it unique and is easy to pass along. Look at other blog posts in your topical category that have “gone hot” on social news sites and understand their structure, format and tone. Leverage what has worked for others in your own content to be promoted.

20. Sponsor content on web sites or newsletters archived to the web that allow you to include a link. It may be a nofollow link, but it may not.  Many newsletters sent via email are archived to the web or have landing pages on the web. Ask those newsletters if you can buy an ad or even contribute a short article.  The article credits should include a link to your blog.

21. Hire bloggers to write content for you. They’ll often cross-post it to their own blog with a link back to yours. Of course, you should be considerate and simply mention that this is ok, don’t ask them or require them to do it.

22. Run a contest that may involve others deciding to link back to your blog. This can be tricky, but Marketing Pilgrim does a great job of this with their SEM Scholarship Contest. Readers write blog posts and the first cut is based on which posts get the most traffic and presumably, links among other criteria.

23. Offer a widget, when posted to others’ web sites, includes a link back to a credits page for the widget on your blog. TopRank’s Thomas McMahon created a RSS buttons tool and it’s use by other blogs has resulted in over 322,000 inbound links.

24. Review other blogs and offer a badge for those that get included. We’ve done this with BIGLIST and it has resulted in over 64,000 inbound links. Focus on quality and be consistent. Also offer a version of the badge that does not include a link for those that want to display the “blog flare” but don’t or can’t link to it. You should include your logo on the badge for improved brand awarness whether there’s a link or not.

25. Create an exceptionally useful tool. Others will link to it simply because it is useful. (See step 1) TopRank created a Social Bookmarking Tool several years ago and still has over 50,000 links as a result.

Bonus tip: When others link to you, THANK THEM!  Building good will is one of the most underrated marketing skills online. Be genuine, thoughtful and courteous. Also be SMART and driven to get links where it makes sense.

What linking tactics for blogs have you found to be most effective? What challenges are you facing in attracting other sites to link to your blog?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 25 Link Building Tactics to Improve Blog Search Engine Rankings | 45 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The quality of email content is one of the core factors in determining whether an email marketing campaign succeeds or fails. But successful email copywriting is an art — rather than a science — making it different from most other forms of business writing. To start out on the right path, consider these 5 tips for effective email copywriting:

1. Focus on the subject line. The subject line may be the shortest piece of content to write, but it’s one your campaign’s most critical elements. The challenge is to create excitement for a special offer, provide enough information to be clear about purpose and convey a brand’s essence – all in 50 characters or less.

When writing your subject lines:

• Create a sense of urgency. Include timely information to encourage subscribers to open the email.
• Include the most important information first. It’s essential that subject lines don’t exceed the character limits of email servers. But prioritizing the vital information first will ensure that, in case the subject line does run over, the primary message will be conveyed.
• Look to others for inspiration. Read newspaper and magazine headlines for ideas. Consider the email campaigns that you receive. Which ones were you intrigued enough to open and what can you deduce from those subject lines?
• Go with what works. Look to your own past successful email campaigns and replicate the subject lines that produced the highest open rates. Also, test out different subject lines within the same campaign to discover what generates the best response.

2. Include a mix of promotional copy with informational copy. Even if the goal of a campaign is to promote a new product, announce company news or introduce a special offer, complement that information with non-corporate information. For example:

• Supplement a new product announcement with a thought leader interview from a supporting industry.
• If a seasonal offer is being promoted, include tips or a checklist pertaining to that particular season.

3. Involve your readers. Consider the success of blogs, forums and social networks. Those interactive channels are effective because users feel involved and engaged. Build off that premise with email copywriting by keeping subscribers engaged and making them a part of the content. Consider including:

• Reader polls
• Reader case studies
• Q&As with customers
• User-generated content

4. Make the call to action crystal clear. With too many calls to action, email marketers run the risk of confusing or overwhelming subscribers. When customers are presented too many options, they may be less likely to purchase. Instead, focus your calls to action and limit the effort it takes to act. Consider these quick tips:

• Rely on size and placement position to emphasize the call to action.
• Write call to action copy that tells subscribers exactly what they can expect.
• Use copy that reinforces to subscribers that taking action will be quick and easy.

5. Put yourself in your subscribers’ shoes. When it all boils down, an email campaign will only be successful if it addresses subscribers’ needs. Email marketers should look at their campaigns from subscribers’ perspectives. What’s important to them? In a ClickZ blog post on email copywriting, Pat Friesen talks about the importance of understanding an audience:

• Visualize subscribers, whether they are mothers of young children or a corporate executive.
• Picture where subscribers are reading the email copy, whether it’s on a computer at work, on a laptop at home or on-the-go from a mobile device.
• Imagine the distractions subscribers face when reading email copy.

Beyond simply visualizing subscribers, study their open and click-through patterns, and consider their demographic information. If you’re still unsure of what subscribers want, use a reader survey to ask them.

What other tips do you have for effective email copywriting?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 5 Tips for Effective Email Copywriting | 13 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

TopRank has been publishing the BIGLIST of SEM blogs since Jan 2007. We’ve created other BIGLISTs of resources as well including the BIGLIST of 100+ Search Marketing Resources posted in October.  The categories for that list of SEM resources includes books, conferences, newsletters, blogs, forums and many more. We decided it would be interesting to see which resources from that list our readers felt were the best.

In the past 3 plus years TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog has run over 50 polls: Everything from Best Social Media Podcast to best Keyword Research Tool to Best City for a Search Marketing Conference. In that longstanding tradition, we recently conducted a poll focused on Best Paid Subscription SEM Communities. We defined the category as membership and subscription model sites that include forums,  tools and/or training or content focused on search marketing. After asking for additional suggestions in the BIGLIST 100+ SEM Resources post, no additional sites besides SEOmoz, SEOBook, WebmasterWorld Supporters and SEO Dojo were suggested.

After 220 votes, we can now announce that the Paid Subscription Community that Online Marketing Blog readers like best is SEO Dojo. Congratulations!

SEO Dojo was launched publicly over 2 weeks ago, but has been in operation for about 10 months, according to David Harry, creator of the community. While an early stage SEM community, SEO Dojo members are clearly passionate evidenced by the number of votes and comments left on the poll.   Here’s the official description:

We are here to teach, learn, and grow. Every teacher a student. Every student, a teacher. This SEO Dojo was founded to give those with an interest in search optimization, personally or professionally, a place to gain knowledge, interact and even teach others the craft.

The SEO Dojo (or Fire Horse) was started as a place to collect search related documents, interact with others and spread the word of search optimization in it’s highest form. We felt there needed to be a place for the new adventurers and uber SEO geeks alike. For determined website owners, or professional SEOs, the in-house, the consultant… the shirt maker.

The basis of SEO Dojo’s creation is similar to other free and paid communities, to serve as a resource and community for search marketing students and long time professionals. In particular, there’s a passion for testing and openness as well as an appreciation for search as something where the learning never ends.

As the newest paid SEM community in the poll, (Sphinn Members launched after this poll was started) the response was impressive, especially considering the size and tenure of the other SEM communities in the poll. In the end, the enthusiasm demonstrated by SEO Dojo members resulted in winning the poll, a free ad on toprankblog.com for 2 months (we don’t sell ads, so this is very unique) and a press release distributed on PRWeb announcing the poll results.

Congrats again to SEO Dojo and thank you to all who participated in the Online Marketing Blog Reader Poll.

We’ll be running polls on SEM Resources in other categories on a bi-weekly basis, so be sure to watch for the next category to be posted. If you have suggestions for additional sites/blogs/forums/books/conferences/newsletters/etc to be added to the BIGLIST of Search Marketing Resources, please visit that link and add them in the comments. Of course, after we started the Best Paid SEM Community poll, a number of suggestions were made and we’ll include those the next time we run it.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Reader Poll Winner: SEO Dojo for Best Paid Subscription SEM Community | 6 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Social Media Marketing is getting a lot of attention in the media on and offline, causing many business marketers to wonder how to adjust budgets and resources to participate. Others that have allocated funds to Social Media and SEO programs without proper implementation, timelines or measurement may question their return on investment.

While businesses decide to push or pull budgets, companies that are focused on winning market share and driving revenue are soundly and consistently investing in a mix of digital tactics involving search, email, online PR and of course, social media.  Adding to the marketing mix often means outsourcing and good consultants are not cheap.

For many companies, the decision to widen the range of marketing services and get help externally means budget reallocation. For some, it means the blasphemy of cutting tried and true marketing programs in order to chase after shiny social media. The good news is that there are ways to have your Social SEO cake and eat it too. For marketers that want to take full advantage of search engine optimization and social media, here are two of the most important cost saving tips to make both bean counters and marketers happy.

Plan ahead. Setting goals is fundamental to marketing but with a social SEO strategy, it’s important to understand the difference in outcomes as well as the tactics used to reach goals. SEO performance indicators are typically links, rankings, referrer and search traffic, inquiries, sales and other conversions.  Depending on goals, social media KPIs will include brand mentions on other social sites, links, comments, measures of engagement,  media placements, measures of sentiment about brand terms, syndication and growth of networks.

Setting goals for SEO distinct from Social Media is an important first step to creating a Social SEO strategy.  SEO on it’s own can drive sales. SEO can also help grow social networks via discovery through search. Optimizing content for search within social networks improves discovery in places where Google and other search engines can’t reach.

In comScore’s August 2009 Search Engine Rankings report, 3 of the top search engines were social media sites: YouTube, MySpace and Facebook. Companies that focus their optimization efforts solely on Google.com will miss the continued trend towards social search or search within social networks.

Social media facilitates word of mouth and requires ongoing participation to realize the most benefit. Whatever word of mouth can do for a business in the offline world, social media can do online; only faster and to a much larger community. Understand the difference between SEO and Social Media outcomes and you’ll save a significant amount of money on the normal discovery and learning phase of a Social SEO engagement.

Do your homework. With Search Engine Optimization, keyword research and analysis gives marketers valuable insight into the language customers use when searching for their products/services.  Understanding communities and customer behaviors in social media is a very different exercise. It’s possible to do some keyword research that is social media specific by analyzing the most common keyword tags used to label and organize social content. It’s also important to understand what social networks and media sharing sites your customers spend their time on. What are their behaviors and how do they participate? Do they share, create or just watch?

Companies that make the effort to understand search based keywords that are most popular is a great first step for saving on SEO costs spent on keyword research.  Marketers can do that homework through keyword research tools and competitive keyword research.

Additionally, understanding customer behaviors and content preferences on social networks and media sharing sites is equally important. What keywords are most often used in their conversations? What words do they use when tagging, commenting, linking and sharing media?  Social media monitoring tools can help as well as first hand experience with customers through social media participation. Insight from direct observation as well as software that can track and organize the large volume of social content will save tremendous amounts of time when working with an outside consultant as they ramp up the Audience phase of a social media program.

Make no mistake, there’s work involved to save money on high quality Social Media and SEO programs. Think of it as putting sweat equity into your online marketing. Not only will companies save on consulting costs, but the increased knowledge from better understanding search keywords and social keywords will manifest in better relationships with customers and ability to implement on consultant recommendations.

Performing search and social media keyword research isn’t going to replace what consultants will do by any means. But it will shorten the time it takes to ramp up on tasks that can take a large number of consulting hours. The better corporate marketers know their Social Media and SEO goals, the more focused outside consultants can be in helping to reach them.

Other cost saving tips for Social Media Optimization programs include ongoing training, analytics and certain types of outsourcing. We’d love to hear your ideas on these suggestions and your own. How has your company been able to deal with slimmer marketing budgets but still engage in search and social media programs productively?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | How to Save Money on Social SEO Consulting | 21 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Another year in the Search Marketing world, another WebmasterWorld Pubcon in Las Vegas.  Pubcon was one of the first search marketing conferences I attended and where I first met a number of highly talented SEOs in person.

TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog has been liveblogging the Pubcon conference since 2005 and includes a mix of content ranging from interviews with Pubcon owner Brett Tabke to Google’s Adam Lasnik. Also videos (Neil Patel giving interesting tips), photos (see the 2006 Yahoo Party in the Playboy Suite and many, many posts from the sessions offering strategy and tactics of the day.

What I like about Pubcon is that the conference organizers don’t try to be the same every year.  For example, they mix up the keynote speakers from a variety of backgrounds including people from outside the search marketing industry (Author Malcolm Gladwell, Craig Newmark of Craigslist and this year Tony Hsieh from Zappos).

There’s a longstanding community behind the Pubcon conference at WebmasterWorld which slants towards people that focus on search marketing as a client side marketer, SEM consultant or owner/operator of web based businesses. That said, the Pubcon conference content and delegates come from a variety of industries and backgrounds ranging from soloprenuers to big advertising/PR/interactive agencies to brand marketers to domainers to affiliate marketers.

There are many, many ways to get significantly more value from attending conferences than what is paid for, just read these tips: “Conference Liveblogging Tips” and “Increase ROI from Attending Conferences“. The single most important thing you can do to get more out of a conference is to plan which sessions you’ll attend beforehand.  With little time between sessions, you can really miss out on incredible information if you don’t know where you’re going next. Pubcon has an Itinerary Builder for just this purpose.

Recently I was asked by a Digital Strategy guy at one of the biggest PR agencies in the U.S. which conferences he should attend besides SXSW and one of the first recommendations I made was Pubcon. Why? Because the content mix at Pubcon has always involved quality information about search marketing (SEO and PPC), Affiliate Marketing, Webmastering and New Trends, whatever they may be.  It’s a great mix of the practical/tactical with what to expect from the next 6 months to a year.

I started speaking at Pubcon on a session focused on SEO for Public Relations several years ago and over time was invited to speak on up to 4 sessions at each conference including a SEO Bloggers panel that has run 4 years in a row.  This year I will be speaking on 3  panels and TopRank’s Adam Singer will be presenting on a panel about Social Media Marketing and PR.  Here’s the info on those sessions. We’d love to see you there:

Tuesday, November 10th: 2:55-4:10pm

Experts on PR & Twitter

Can Public Relations 2.0 be summarized in 140 characters or less? Don’t let the character count lull you into complacency. To break through, today’s PR efforts must be powerful, targeted and social. This panel of social media and PR professionals will take you on a journey from mid-level public relations to advanced online PR and social promotions in no time.

Moderator: Krista Neher

Panel: Adam Singer, Account Manager, TopRank® Online Marketing, Sean Jackson, CEO/Creator, Ecordia, Lisa Buyer, President/CEO, The Buyer Group, Ben Fisher, President, TechPad Agency.

Wednesday, November 11th: 10:15-11:30am

How Do Social Media & Search Intersect?

With social media seeming to fill the promotional role previously occupied by search marketing, it only makes sense that social media prevents the need for search, right? Don’t fall into this trap. Join this panel of social media and search experts as they detail how these two tactics both intersect and complement each other in supporting your overall marketing objectives.

Moderator: Vanessa Fox

Panel: Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank® Online Marketing, Tony Adam, SEO Manager, Yahoo, David Wallace, CEO, SearchRank, Bill Hartzer, Search Engine Optimization Manager, Vizion Interactive.

Thursday, November 12th: 1:30-2:45pm

How SMBs Can Use PR Campaigns to Grow Traffic

Online public relations makes it possible for today’s small businesses to grow into tomorrow’s major online marketing players. Learn how small businesses can master online PR to drive traffic and achieve business objectives from Odden and his panel.

Moderator: Alex Bennert

Speakers: Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank® Online Marketing, Jiyan Wei, Product Manager, Vocus, Sean Jackson, CEO/Creator, Ecordia

Thursday, November 12th:  2:55-4:10pm

Search Bloggers:  What’s Hot & Trending?

Can bloggers maintain their influence with the emergence of newer forms of social media? With the right strategies, ‘yes.’ Discover what these blogging strategies are, and understand how to integrate them into your efforts, from Odden and his panel.

Moderator: Greg Hartnett

Speakers: Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank® Online Marketing. Michael McDonald, Managing Editor, iEntry Inc.. Barry Schwartz, President, RustyBrick, Inc.. Loren Baker, Editor, Search Engine Journal.

After all those conference sessions there are, of course, plenty of networking opportunities both during the day and afterwards. It’s Las Vegas after all.

For more conference information, be sure to visit the Pubcon web site.

PubCon 2009:  Social Media, Search, Affiliates

Las Vegas, NV

November 10-13, 2009

You can connect with Pubcon socially here:

• LinkedIn –  (Vegas Event)
• Facebook
• Twitter

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Pubcon Las Vegas 2009: Are You Ready? | 7 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The TopRank team loves to have fun – for holidays, on team outings, at conferences, etc. Because tomorrow is Halloween, a few members of the TopRank team decided to dress up for a costume contest. And it’s up to you to decide the winner! Winning includes at least $50 worth of coffee, so be sure to share this post and get your friends to vote too.

We have a winner – Congrats goes to Dana Larson:

Winner! Dana as Minnesota Strawberry Shortcake

Safari Thomas

Bad Angel Julie

Michelle the Football Star

Monkey Audrey and Veterinary Nurse Amie

Mike as Zombie Soupy Sales

Sue After Being Attacked by Scooby Doo

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | TopRank’s SEO Halloween Costume Contest | 11 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

If you’re attempting to improve search rankings for your web pages, these days it’s no longer an option not to optimize digital assets. With search engines incorporating video, images and news into standard search results, marketers have the opportunity to achieve increased visibility by implementing video SEO principles.

These 5 basic tips for video SEO are a good starting point for marketers looking to improve the “searchability” of their videos.

1. Optimize with keywords.
Just like any type of text-based content, video SEO involves optimizing with target relevant keywords — both for search engines and for user experience. Use keywords in:

• File name
• Title
• Tags
• URL
• Link text

Beyond that, include a paragraph of optimized text that provides a brief description of the video. Again, the benefits are twofold: You’ll improve the user experience and your search rankings.

2. Distribute videos on video-sharing sites.
In addition to posting videos on your own site, video-sharing sites are effective tools for gaining visibility and additional links. Remember these few points to maximize results:

• Don’t forget that videos hosted on YouTube and other video-sharing sites should be optimized for keywords
• YouTube channel pages — and those of other video-sharing sites — should be optimized, as well
• Use a video distribution service like TubeMogul to deploy your videos to the top sharing sites

3. Implement a linking strategy.
Video is judged by the same linking standards as all other forms of digital content. So building both internal and external links is crucial for video SEO. Ideas for a linking strategy include:

• Cross-linking to other videos
• Linking to videos from relevant web pages
• Linking to videos in blog posts
• Tweeting the video
• Linking to videos from social media pages
• Bookmarking the video

4. Encourage viewers to share your videos.
First thing is first — if you want users to share your videos, you must create content worth sharing. If your video isn’t interesting, relevant, entertaining or informative, users aren’t likely to share it, let alone view it. From there:

• Allow and encourage users to comment on the video
• Make it easy for users to share your video on You Tube, Twitter, Facebook and MySpace
• Offer video content in multiple formats so users can choose the one that best suited to their platform and connectivity speed

5. Re-purpose your videos.
As with text content, the more optimized video, the better. Get creative in order to re-purpose videos across the web:

• Embed videos in blog posts
• Break up long videos and create multiple shorter ones
• Use transcriptions of videos to create blog posts or content for web pages
• Take screen shots from videos and post them to Flickr and other image-sharing sites
• Turn offline content, such as training videos or videos of a conference keynote speech, into optimized digital assets for your website

What basic video SEO tips do you find useful?

Here are several other Video SEO posts you might find useful:

• Search Engine Watch: Optimizing Video for Search Engines
• ASK Enquiro: How Can I Optimize My Videos?
• Matt Cutts: optimize for search engines or users Google video
• More Matt Cutts: SEO Answers on Google Video
• Lancer Media: Optimize Videos For Search Engines
• Antezeta: 8 Ways to Optimize Video and Multimedia
• Search Marketing Standard: Optimizing Your Video Pages in 10 Easy Steps
• TopRank Blog: Optimizing for Video Search Engines
• Persona Non Gravy: Optimizing Video for Natural Search
• Reel SEO: Basic Tips for Optimizing Video content for Search Engines
• Aus SEO: Optimizing Video for Search Engines
• Rise Rep: Optimizing Video Content for Search Engines

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 5 Basic Tips for Video Optimization | 21 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

We recently posted a list of over 100 resources our readers could leverage to learn more about marketing online through search. One of the categories was paid subscription SEM communities that offer training, forums and often times templates, forms and guides for implementing effective Search Marketing programs.

A pioneer forum that has a paid channel in this area is the WebmasterWorld Supporter’s group. SEOmoz has been wildly successful with their Pro community over the past few years and SEO Book launched their training community after discontinuing the actual book.  The newcomer to this group is SEO Dojo.

Below you’ll find info and links on each community and if you’re a fan, take this poll to vote which is your favorite:

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

WebmasterWorld Supporters
Since: Posts go back to Nov 5, 2002 but I suspect it was started before that.
Cost: 6 months $89 – 12 months $149
Description: A private forum for WebmasterWorld supporters dealing with Webmaster, Tech, and Business issues related to operating and promoting a website.

SEOmoz Pro
Since: Feb 2007
Cost: Pro $79/mo, Pro Plus $129/mo, Pro Elite $229/mo
Description: Access to exclusive tools, processes and knowledge that SEOmoz staff use to provide consulting to their clients. Offers a guarantee.

SEO Book Training
Since: Feb 2008
Cost: $150/mo – Membership is full
Description: Over 100 training modules as well as forums, templates, videos and tools.

SEO Dojo
Since: Oct 2009
Cost: $30/monthly or $250/full year plus other combinations
Description: Community and training resource for search and Internet marketers that includes articles, chat sessions, worksheets/guides and plans for webinars.

What has your experience been with these communities? What are the best features? Training, Tools, Community.  Which paid SEM communities did we miss? Please share in the comments and we’ll update our 100 Resources list as well as include them in next year’s poll.

This poll will run until Tuesday 11/03/09 after which we will name the winner both on Online Marketing Blog, which gets close to 100,000 visits per month and we’ll be issuing a press release for distribution through PRWeb. The winner will also get a free 125X125 ad on the toprankblog.com right side bar for 2 months.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Reader Poll: Best Paid Subscription SEM Communities | 32 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

The search engine industry frequently innovates as do consumer behaviors for discovery and sharing. Those changes require search marketers to take a fresh look at what search engine optimization (SEO) is and why companies should or should not engage in its practice.

Defining search engine optimization is often focused on the mechanics:
“SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.” (Wikipedia).

Even Google offers a definition of what an SEO is along with guidelines:
“Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including: Review of your site content or structure, Technical advice on website, development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript, Content development, Management of online business development campaigns, Keyword research, SEO training, Expertise in specific markets and geographies.”

Since the key components of how a search engine works include: crawling, indexing and sorting, those are the functional focus areas of most SEO efforts.  Most experienced internet marketing professionals will admit that is a limited view of the value SEO brings.

What about link building and promotion of content? What about search for content that isn’t product or service oriented? What about search within closed networks? What about real-time search? What about niche search: vertical, local, mobile, multi-lingual? What about social search?

Readers of Online Marketing Blog and those that have seen @toprank staff speak at conferences know this fundamental premise: “If it can be searched on, it can be optimized”.  No search engine is perfect, so help in making information available and easily understood is incredibly helpful for the engines, for consumers that use those search engines and the content sources represented in search results.

Code, site architecture and server issues that affect how search engine bots interact with and index a web site’s content are certainly important as are keyword research and the subsequent use of those keywords in tags, on-page copy, markup and anchor text links between pages.  These areas all fall under the realm of “on-page SEO”.  The Yang to that Yin is “off-page SEO” which is basically link building. For more of this kind of practical SEO advice, read “Basics of Search Engine Optimization“.

Defining SEO can be as simple as, “Optimizing digital content for better performance in search.”  That’s a broad definition and the implications and value from improved search performance can range from increased sales to lowered customer service costs. It really depends on what customers are searching for, whether available company content is optimized and if analytics are in place to benchmark and measure performance.

Consumers are prompted to use search in a variety of scenarios ranging from research to finding products for purchase.  In most cases, SEO consultants (like TopRank ) are hired by corporate marketing departments to improve the search visibility of products and services being marketed to customers. Improved search engine placement typically results in an increase in traffic (qualified by the search terms used) and an increase in sales.

Marketing departments fund most Search Engine Optimization efforts whether they are executed in-house, by outside consultants or as is increasingly common, a combination of the two.  Companies that take a holistic view of search and approach the notion of “If it can be searched, it can be optimized” strategically, find themselves with an opportunity to not only improve marketing performance and efficiency via SEO, but do the same for other content areas as well.

Most companies only engage, implement and measure SEO efforts to increase revenue as part of marketing. Those same companies often publish many other types of content ON and OFF the site as well as content that has a ROI, but isn’t part of marketing. Customers are searching for this content and if it’s not well optimized, cannot find it. That spells opportunity.

Companies that implement keyword research and SEO efforts for their web sites holistically, typically realize a very desirable combination of benefits that include an increase in sales as well as a reduction of costs in certain areas. If not a reduction in costs, at least an improvement in efficiency and performance.

For example: Most on site search functions for company web sites rate a C to D minus. Google on the other hand, can do quite well with such content.  After the sale, customers often search for company contact info, product support and customer service related info. “How to fix this or that” or “Where to re-order this or that part.”  Increasing numbers of companies have invested in the aggregation and publishing of this kind of information, but the usability inherent to those systems is often flawed.

Making FAQ and Knowledgebase information available to external crawlers like Googlebot, SLURP and MSNBot as well as the systematic keyword optimization of such content makes it more easily available to customers that are looking. Companies invest in aggregating product and customer service / support information to reduce overall customer service costs (call centers are expensive) and hopefully provide better service to customers in a way that is more convenient for them (i.e. 24/7 online).  Making support content perform better in search can facilitate those performance and cost efficiency goals.

There are other examples I could share involving SEO for job listings, news content and others, but I think you get the model. Assess all content being published online (from text to digital assets) to determine the audience and whether improved search performance can help reach business goals. Those goals might be increased sales, branding/reputation, recruiting better employees while lowering recruiter costs or increasing media coverage while lowering PR agency costs.  The thread that binds this kind of SEO effort is that customers are searching for content being published on and off company web sites (inside social networks for example), but it’s often difficult to find. Making content easier for customers to find can help multiple departments reach business goals.

In the end, whether search optimization efforts are for marketing, public relations, talent acquisition, customer service or consumer research, my preferred definition of SEO is a broad one and commercially focused: “Optimizing digital content for search engines and consumers to improve performance and reach business goals.”

What is your definition of SEO? Do you find companies measuring the value of SEO beyond increased traffic and sales?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | Defining Search Engine Optimization | 20 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

These days it seems as if every corporation has tried its hand at blogging. The more corporate blogs that exist in the blogosphere, the more difficult it becomes to gain blog subscribers by creating one that’s truly unique. To ensure your corporate blog stands out from the crowd, follow these 5 tips:

1. Talk about something other than yourself. Too many corporate marketers make the mistake of creating blogs as purely another mechanism to talk about their products and services. While increased sales and improved brand visibility may be two fundamental goals of a corporate blog, there are more effective ways for achieving those goals that just pushing product.

The most successful corporate blogs leverage product and service information with relevant industry news, human interest pieces, case studies and other useful information. That balance is what keeps readers coming back time and again.

PC manufacturer Lenovo successfully mixes product information with posts about business, design and technology on its 8 different corporate blogs. For example, its .Roaring Mouse blog, a resource for small businesses, offers insight on topics such as the use of social media in small business, outsourcing tips and small business statistics. The .Roaring Mouse blog puts itself in readers’ shoes to provide the most useful, relevant and timely information—whether or not that involves Lenovo-specific product information.

2. Keep your blog focused. Whatever message you chose to deliver, stick with it. Unfortunately, some corporate blogs lack a clear message and include posts on topics all across the board. Because goals were never defined, these blogs have a difficult time gaining readership.

Blogs gain strong, consistent followings by giving readers the information they want and expect to find. A reader might visit a shoe retailer’s blog expecting to find information on the latest shoes styles and celebrity fashion news. If the readers have to sift through information on travel, home décor, and health & fitness in order to find what they’re looking for, they may not return.

For example, the GM FastLane Blog successfully sticks to its unique niche. The blog’s goal is clear: to provide readers with information needed to purchase and maintain their vehicles. The blog achieves its goal by posting company news and announcements, along with important current issues such as concept cars, alternative energy, climate change and fuel efficiency.

3. Give your blog a distinct personality. Whether you choose to feature just one blogger or multiple bloggers, let the blogger’s voice come through in the posts. Without a distinct personality, your blog will be just like every other faceless corporate blog.

Let your readers see behind the corporate and marketing jargon, and instead discover the real people behind your organization.

Look to Johnson & Johnson’s JNJ BTW blog as an example. From the tagline “Our People and Perspectives” to the author bio page and use of blogger photos, the JNJ BTW blog humanizes the corporate brand for customers. Individual authors write about the topics that best suit their expertise and interest, letting their own voice come through.

4. Have some fun. Another effective method for letting a corporate blog stand out from the rest is to infuse some humor and excitement. Granted, this technique may not be appropriate for all corporate brands. But if you’re able to, consider creating a blog that can be light-hearted, relaxed and at-times funny. It’s just another way to humanize and personalize the brand for customers.

The Southwest Airlines Nuts About Southwest blog is a prime example. Southwest employees blog about their company and the airline industry in general, but do so in a casual, humorous way. The blog also includes fun, behind-the-scenes videos, produced by the employees themselves. Its latest poll asks readers to guess the Halloween costume of CEO Gary Kelly. The choices? “Gary” Potter, Larry Bird, Ben Franklin, Statue of Liberty or Julia Child.

5. Provide readers with something they can’t get anywhere else. Use a corporate blog to announce company breaking news or highlight original research in order to make the blog truly unique. Assuming the information is interesting and useful, readers will keep coming back for more. The simply can’t get it anywhere else. Plus, your customers can form a close connection with your brand because they feel as if they’re gaining an inside look or exclusive information.

The Editors blog from BBC gives readers a behind-the-scenes look at the daily happenings in BBC newsrooms. BBC News editors share their dilemmas and issues, as well as dissect news stories to provide readers with even more in-depth coverage.

For example, in a recent post, editor Mike Rudin candidly discusses being sent a video accusing him of “producing a ‘hit piece’ about 9/11” after filming the documentary “The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 – The Truth Behind the Third Tower.” He explains to readers his response and thoughts about the video, as well as provides additional details about the making of the documentary.

The blogging technique seems to be working: Rudin’s post received more than 5,000 comments from readers!

How do you ensure your corporate blog stands out from the rest?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. | 5 Tips for Making a Corporate Blog Stand Out | 24 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com