Have Content Worthy Of Linking To

If you’ve been listening to or engaging in conversations regarding web marketing, you’ve probably heard this mentioned as often as the Pittsburgh Steelers have been to the Super Bowl: you’ve got to have great content to build links.

Having just one piece of content won’t be enough to sustain value over time. It’s vital to have a content strategy. By having a strategy, you’re able to build a following that generally consists of your target audience. If you create well-researched and well-written content around their needs, you’ll naturally build links and become a source of authority. Blogs can be a great platform for sharing content, but there are many other innovative content types.

Get Your Social Shares in Front of the Right Eyes

Again, this will take time, but find out who the influential voices are in your niche. Begin to interact with them on social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn to build a relationship with them. Read and add thoughtful feedback on their blog posts. Share their content on your social streams.

In creating those connections, it’s highly likely that they’ll begin to follow you. And, to make sure I beat the dead horse, I’ll remind you to have desirable content for them to link to.

If You Build the Relationship, They Will Retweet/Repeat

Social shares aren’t worth much if they aren’t distributed by those with clout (or is that spelled “klout”?). That’s why it’s necessary to build contacts who provide some swagger. In Todd Heim’s post, Social Media Link Building he writes, “Even if your content is appropriate and of acceptable quality, you still need to have some influence and a network of users for it to spread. Otherwise you’re wasting your time.”

Your ROI will be more significant if you spend your time building associations with prominent people. These free tools that can help you find people to follow:  Twitter Advanced Search, Followerwonk, Tweepz and Twellowhood just to name a few.

Look to see how many followers/friends/likes an account has, as well as the frequency and substance of their posts. These are helpful indicators to figure out how noteworthy a person is. Often, the more people following them and the fewer they follow, the more authoritative they are.

So What?

If you take these ideas and make them actionable in your social media link-building strategy, you’ll know the likes and tweets have value, not only because of what they contain, but also because of the network of people that will re-share them.

Feel free to disagree with me in the comment section, or let me know the ideas you have.

I’ve read that the best way to win an argument is to tell a story, so I got one for you. Well, no. I’m not a good story teller, but I can throw together a pretty decent analogy.

Let’s say you have a pile of money and you need to “invest” it. As with any investment there is potential to fail. The question is, where to invest?

You have two options:

1) Invest the whole pile in one place.
2) Split it up and invest in multiple areas.

The saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” comes to mind. After all, when playing poker, you usually don’t go “all in” on the first hand. You spread it around, (hopefully) winning more as you go.

Online marketing isn’t all that much different. Diversification is a good thing (unless you have very little to diversify to begin with, then you have to build up to that). Before diversifying, you have to make sure you have enough to invest in one area to ensure its successful return on investment. If your budget is frog-butt tight, this post probably isn’t for you. If you have–or dream of having–a larger marketing budget, then keep reading. The good stuff is yet to come.

Diversifying Your Online Investment

I want to preface this section by repeating that you can only diversify your online marketing if you have enough budget to ensure the success of each. If you invest too little into SEO or PPC, ultimately your ROI will be a loooong time in coming, or you will find yourself outpaced by your competition that is investing in business growth.

Aside from the fact many businesses are not willing to invest enough in online marketing, the next biggest issue is having an unbalanced approach. Throwing your entire marketing budget at SEO may reap you HUGE rewards. But, you’re still missing out on a significant portion of business, and therefore profits, if you ignore PPC altogether. Similarly, if you throw everything at PPC and ignore SEO, again, you’re missing out on a lot of lower-cost conversions that SEO delivers.

Let’s not forget to mention that if all your money is in one and something goes bad, you have no secondary source to keep the revenue flowing! The key is to take a more balanced approach to your online marketing efforts. That’s where the 3-3-3 approach comes in. Or, as I like to call it, the 3-3-3 Online Investment Model. Catchy, isn’t it?

The 3-3-3 Online Investment Model

There are three key areas of online marketing investment:

• SEO – search engine optimization
• PPC – pay per click
• CSML – content, social media and link building

The idea here is to split your spending between these three areas pretty equally. If you have $30,000 to spend on marketing each month, as tempting as it may be, don’t throw it all into your PPC ad spend. It boggles me when I see companies spending that kind of money on PPC but only a couple thousand on SEO.

Why does this kind of discrepancy happen? I think mainly because PPC is so much more trackable than SEO. This makes PPC appear much more lucrative than SEO, when, in actuality it isn’t. PPC accounts for only about 1/3 of the total clicks in the search results. Plus, it usually isn’t as cost-efficient, delivering conversions at a higher costs than you’d get with SEO. This means that it would be wiser to put more money into SEO than PPC.

I wouldn’t recommend dumping PPC for SEO entirely, but splitting up your budget between the two is smart marketing. You could easily get away with throwing $20,000 of your $30,000 budget toward SEO. But this doesn’t fit the 3-3-3 model. Or does it?

In a way, it does. Often times, content marketing, social media and/or link building are wrapped into SEO. All three are tied closely together as linking is, or at least should be, a part of any successful SEO contract. The problem is, linking is difficult and time consuming so it can often get bypassed by the sexier on-page optimization aspects.

By using the 3-3-3 model, you are placing equal investment into linking as you are on-page optimization. Again, that is smart marketing. Take your $30,000 budget, put $10K to content, linking and social, $10K to SEO and leave the last $10K for PPC. That gives you a robost on-page, off-page and PPC marketing strategy that is drawing traffic and building reputation through not one, but three different sources, all adding to the value and overall growth of your business.

Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

So, without a plan for how to create and optimize your video content, you may end up a Sisyphus. (Just saying that word makes me giggle like a junior high girl.) In Greek mythology, Sisyphus pushes a gigantic boulder up a hill every day only to watch it roll back down again. Every day. For eternity. That’s a rough gig.

Naturally, you don’t want to be a Sisyphus. So, before you run headlong into video production and online posting, consider these 10 tips that can give your video a chance – and perhaps even an edge – online.

1. Decide where video fits with your business goals.The worst thing you can do is spend lots of time and (if you’re going for quality) lots of money on a video, only to figure out that the topic doesn’t support any of the goals you need and want to accomplish. So, revisit your goals first, and then determine how a video might fit.
2. Figure out who your target audience is, what they like, what they want to know and what they might share.This is all part of building buyer personas, which is not exactly a new marketing concept. But, it is critical and applies to every aspect of your marketing plan. Creating personas takes time, effort and research, but it will pay off in the end.
3. Outline what would make your video successful, based on your goals.Guess what? Your video doesn’t need to have a million views to be successful! If it gets the number of shares within your industry that you want, brings potential buyers to your site or generates a certain number of leads, that may be exactly what you’re looking for.
4. Know your online influencers. Who would be most interested in your content and in a position to help you promote it? You need to do this research before or while you’re making a video. That way when it’s time to post, you’re ready to reach out and ask these influencers to help get the word out.
5. Create good content. No one has to get hit in the crotch with a baseball or do voice-overs with animals for your video to have success. Yes, humor is helpful, but informative and how-to videos also do extremely well online. After all, people turn to the Internet for information. So, don’t be afraid to give it to them!
6. When you upload a video, don’t forget to embed it in your blog. According to Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR, 44% of videos are discovered on blogs. (Let me add that I owe Mr. Jarboe thanks for several other great tips in this blog post.) This gives you the best of both worlds. If you upload to YouTube, your videos will be available on the world’s second most searched website, and the content is available and searchable on your own site. Plus, any time someone views the embedded video on your site, you get credit for that view on YouTube (counted as part of total views).
7. Optimize, optimize, optimize. Video content itself is not visible to search engines. That makes the text that surrounds each video very important.

   The title of the video becomes the page’s title tag. You have up to 100 characters, so make sure the title is both compelling and contains keywords. But, the sky’s the limit with the description. You’ve got 5,000 characters! Include lots of keyword-rich content, as well as links to other videos, your social media channels, customized landing pages and more. Make sure you use the http:// prefix; otherwise, it won’t become a link.

   If you’re not sure what keywords you should use, try YouTube’s keyword tool. Or, use the autocomplete algorithm that’s part of YouTube search. Start typing keywords into the YouTube search bar and see what other terms YouTube suggests. Tags should also be as detailed as possible. Be sure to use the keywords you want the video to rank for.

   Consider putting the URL you most want viewers to visit first in your description. That way even when the description is collapsed, the URL can be seen.

   Don’t forget to do all this for your channel settings, as well!

8. Take advantage of “recency” in YouTube’s algorithm, designed to help good new videos rise to the top. Jarboe says this recency factor lasts for about a week, so, before you post, make sure you’re ready to promote the video on a blog, on social media channels, in a e-newsletter and more. Don’t post and then decide to publicize later.
9. Experiment with YouTube’s captions and annotation features. They can help your video stand out in the crowd and provide a way to link to other videos, include a call to action and generally be more interactive.
10. Monitor what’s going on with your channel using YouTube insights. After all, at the end of the day, you need to know if your video accomplished what you wanted it to.

Final Lap time again! Check out some of the great stuff our team The Pit Crew read during the week of October 24.

Stoney deGeyter (@StoneyD)

Proof that Google’s Secure Search Now Affects More Users
by Rachael Gerson

Google is rolling out the new secure search to more users, and we all need to be prepared for the outcome.

Mike Fleming (@mflem25)

Dear Internet Marketers: Stop Building Your Careers On A Single Commoditized Skill
by Scott Cowley

I like Ian Lurie’s list of skills internet marketers should have because it represents a transformation that our entire profession has been seeing over the last several years, not just the copywriters. It is not enough to be copywriter or community manager or customer service specialist. The truth is, people are hiring cheaply for these positions at a time when every dime matters.

Advertising Companies Fret Over a Digital Talent Gap
by Tanzina Vega

When the Ad:tech advertising technology conference hits New York next week, marketers, advertising agencies and recruiters may spend less time listening to the panelists and more time working the floor to find new employees.

Annalisa Hilliard (@ahilliardm)

Get the Marketing Basics Down Before Worrying about SEO
by Nick Stamoulis

Too often site owners jump the gun when it comes to SEO. While I appreciate an enthusiastic site owner, it’s important to make sure that the rest of your marketing basics are in order BEFORE you start worrying about rank, visitor growth, bounce rate, conversion rate and so forth. If you don’t fully understand exactly what you are trying to accomplish for your business and brand, SEO isn’t going to be able to tell you.

Viral vs shareable: Do you know the difference?
by Hugo Guzman

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had an executive at a Fortune 500 company (or an agency stakeholder for said company) skim through the real meat of a social media plan or strategy and then assert that they what they really need the next Old Spice idea, etc. and so forth.

A New Way of Looking at Ranking Factors
by Danny Sullivan

SEOmoz readers are no strangers to the concept of search engine ranking factors. In general, much of the community that comments seems to delight when some new factor is discovered that may provide a potential ranking boost. Who wouldn’t, right? But in this post, I’d like to suggest that perhaps some refocusing on the “forest” of the ranking factors world, rather than the individual “trees” that populate it, might be in order.

Jen Carroll (@martijen)

The Smartphone Wars Are Over
by Kit Eaton

Statistics, arguments, sales figures, and passionate explanations claiming one or another smartphone platform has sold or will sell more than another in a specific market might litter the web for a while to come. But, really, it’s all over but the shoutin’.

Google Penalizes Overstock for Search Tactics
by Amir Efrati

Google Inc. is penalizing Overstock.com Inc. in its search results after the retailer ran afoul of Google policies that prohibit companies from artificially boosting their ranking in the Internet giant’s search engine.

An honest look at being a Social Media consultant
by Mack Collier

Typically, I am loathe to write personal posts here, because I think I am boring y’all to tears, but I wanted to do so today. Over the past few months, I’ve had several discussions with people that are working in this space as the umbrella term of a ‘social media consultant’. What prompted me to write this post was because several times I have heard from friends that are struggling, and they assume that since they are struggling, that it’s a direct reflection on their abilities as a consultant. They also assume that most consultants are doing extremely well, so if they aren’t, that further cements the idea that they just aren’t ‘cut out’ for this type of work.

 
What’s the best thing about online marketing that you read this week? Leave us your comments.

If social media is the darling Cinderella of the current marketing world, then link building might be the u___ (unrecognized?) stepsister. When I describe link building and its important role in creating a company’s Web presence (see SEOmoz’s What is Link Building? for a definition/details), most people furrow their brows and say, “Sounds like you’re talking about social media.” (Cinderella gets all the glory!)

So, we’d like to end, once and for all, this unnecessary cause of forehead wrinkles by tackling the FAQ: What’s the difference between link building and social media?
 

Stoney (@StoneyD): Link building and social media have a lot in common and, in many cases, share similar goals. I would say that pure link building is a sub-set of SEO. The goal is to get keyword rich links on external sites pointing to your keyword-optimized pages. There are a lot of link-building methods, several of which cross over into social media: building relationships, creating great, linkable content and broadcasting it to bring eyes (and links) to that content.

Social media is an outlet for link building, but it also has its own goals, one of which can be getting valuable links. But social media has concerns far greater than just getting links, and any social strategy that doesn’t look beyond links is bound to fail.

You can have a link strategy that uses social media, as well as a social strategy that has a goal of links. But to maintain that narrow of a focus on either is ultimately not using each one to your greatest advantage.
 

Annalisa (@ahilliardm): Social media should be an important part of a business’s link-building strategy. It’s a way to engage an audience. In a sense, it’s relationship building. If you share information that is relevant and unique to your niche, you’ll be able to build relationships, and those relationships can lead to natural links.

Links are an outcome of a well-established social media presence. Here is an analogy to explain the difference between social media and link building. An athlete must train in order to compete. The goal of training is to be able to win the competition. Social media is the training and preparation. Link building is the reward or pay off. Now, don’t get me wrong, links are not the only purpose of social media. It’s important to create relationships in online marketing for many reasons. And, through those relationships, you can get links.
 

Jen (@martijen): Before I started with Pole Position Marketing, I had never even heard of link building. And, I suspect there are many in the marketing industry (particularly the “traditional” side) who are just as clueless as I was.

Thankfully, I’ve learned a few things about link building, including its primary Web marketing goal – to improve the rankings, visibility and credibility of your organization’s website. The more quality links to your Web content, the better your online presence looks to search engines, as well as readers. Think of them as love and hugs pointing in your direction.

But, it’s difficult to get that kind of attention without going where your potential “linkers” (and customers) are. Social media sites are vehicles for making connections and sending out your message. Think of them as online places where you give out love and hugs (with some specific goals in mind).

Social media can support your link-building strategy in two primary ways:

• Helping you identify and engage industry influencers who may want to collaborate with your business or promote it by publishing content or advertising. In either case, you have the opportunity to negotiate a link!
• Serving as a broadcast medium for your quality content that influencers may want to share and link to.

When you blend social media and link building together, they form the foundation for great online PR. Unlike the traditional discipline, online PR actually focuses on the public, not just a small group of media gatekeepers. Your news releases (with links) are for every online reader! For publicity, reputation management, coverage and more links, you can turn to not only social media, but also news outlets, bloggers, directories, partner websites, industry associations and even to yourself. (You, too, can become a publisher!)

So, while link building and social media have distinct functions and “directions,” they work better in tandem as a part of an overall online PR strategy.

Look for our Q&A posts about online marketing each month. Or, if you have a question you’d like to ask our team, just send it to ask@polepositionmarketing.com. We’ll be glad to answer via our blog.

Final Lap time again! Check out some of the great stuff our team The Pit Crew read during the week of October 24.

Stoney deGeyter (@StoneyD)

Discussion: Should SEOs Accept Clients That Compete With One Another?
by Matt McGee

Whether you’re a solo consultant or part of a bigger agency, chances are good that you’ll eventually be faced with this situation: the opportunity to provide consulting for two companies that are in competition with one another. In our “Discussion of the Week,” we’d like to hear your advice for handling that situation. Should SEOs accept clients that compete against one another? If so, what are the best ways to deal with potential risks of doing so? The floor is open!

Mike Fleming (@mflem25)

How Search Conversions Are Driven By Display Impression Frequency
by Manu Mathew

Along with the most obvious campaign attributes that impact cross-channel marketing performance — traits like publisher, size, creative, keyword, placement, etc. — are a number of less intuitive factors that can significantly influence your results. Among these more ancillary factors is “frequency” — specifically the frequency with which online users are exposed to a given marketing tactic in advance of an eventual conversion.

5 ways to use the new Google Analytics Real Time features
by Helen Birch

In certain situations real-time data can be a very powerful tool in the analyst’s kitbag. I’ve been testing the real-time reports for a few weeks now and whilst there is still room for improvement, I’ve been able to help a client find out some great insights on events that have been occurring which otherwise would have been a lot harder to discover.

LANDING PAGE QUALITY SCORE
by George Michie

As Pamela Parker described at SEL earlier this month, Google has announced that going forward, landing page quality will be a larger factor in an ad’s overall Quality Score. Given that my last post for SEL was on Quality Score and suggested that landing page quality was mostly a hammer used to beat up bad actors and didn’t have much meaning for legitimate businesses, this announcement was a bit embarrassing. It also made me curious as to how quality will be defined.

Jen Carroll (@martijen)

Pinterest stands out in crowded social media field
by Adam Belz

Time magazine called Pinterest — a website where users post collections of images of their favorite food, clothes, places and everything else — one of the five best social media sites of 2011, along with Google-Plus and Klout. The company has raised $27 million in venture capital led by the firm Andreessen Horowitz, which several tech news outlets have reported as valuing Pinterest at $200 million.

Nobody Gives A Damn About Your Klout Score
by Alexia Tsotsis

Klout’s pervasive problem is that the deeper among us are never going to judge anyone based solely on some arbitrary decimal score. Especially when that decimal number ranks teenbot Justin Beiber at 100, but precludes me from claiming Windows Phone 7 “Klout Perk” and tickets to a Matt and Kim concert because I don’t have enough technology Klout.

Google Plus Finds Sweet Spot Between Facebook & Twitter
by Jon Mitchell

Google Plus got a few more fun features today in addition to workplace ones. There’s a new feature called What’s Hot that surfaces popular posts (don’t call them “trending”), and a very cool visualization tool called Ripples that lets you watch Plus conversations flow out across the network. These are neat ways to track social activity that Facebook and Twitter don’t offer.

What’s the best thing about online marketing that you read this week? Leave us your comments.

In each phase of this cycle, the searcher is typing in a unique set or words or phrases. Each search is designed to provide more relevant information than the last. As the searcher learns, the search phrases reflect what they know and what new information they need.

There is value in building a website that provides information to each of these searchers, but the value in each isn’t the same. By understanding the full marketing value and potential of your website, you can build an effective sales funnel that provides each and every visitor the information they need to make the decision you are hoping for.

Your website is a pre-sell channel

Not every visitor who comes to your website is ready to buy right now. In fact, many searchers are merely curious and are looking for knowledge they don’t already have. These researchers could turn into buyers, but the chances of making a sale today are slimmer than me turning down a free lunch at Chipotle. It can happen, it’s just not likely. (Try me and find out!)

Instead of trying to force your visitors to give you what you want, why not give the visitor what they want?

Every business website should implement a variety of pre-sell strategies. If you think about it, only your product/service pages are doing the actual selling. This leaves the rest of your site to walk people through the research and shopping cycles, pre-selling them on what you offer, so that when they are ready to buy, they come you.

Your home page, product category pages, about us pages, etc., are great places to engage in active pre-selling. They provide a goldmine of opportunities. Use these pages strategically to talk about your brand, your product selection, your value, quality of service, and whatever else will give your visitors confidence in you and your products. This won’t sell any single product by itself, but it will reinforce to the searcher that you are a reputably and trustworthy site to purchase from.

Content: Enter stage right

A lot of ecommerce business owners tell me they don’t like SEOs that want to add a bunch of text on the page. Instead, they just want to push the visitors to the product. This is the right strategy for those searchers already in the buying phase of the cycle, but most aren’t. At least not yet. And those that are – they are likely using search phrases that deliver them directly to your product pages!

If you’re not writing great content for your category and sub-category pages (or are hiding it), you’re not using your website as a pre-sell tool. This leaves you only with the sales channel after the visitor has already performed all their research searches on Google. Ultimately, you’ll have missed out on a lot of potential traffic and branding opportunities that would likely have brought many of the buyers back to your site for a purchase.

Your website is a sales channel

The sales channel is where the majority of the “value” of any website comes in. It’s certainly the most trackable and justifiable. Implementing analytics and conversion testing will allow you to tweak your conversion funnel to capture more sales and generate a higher ROI.

A lot of websites focused on selling products or services fail in this area. It’s almost like they tried to recreate the magical experience of the paper catalog online. File that under ‘FoMP’ – Failure of Monumental Proportions!

Your website sales channel must express your unique value to your potential customers. This is especially true if your products are sold at any number of other outlets. Why should they buy from you instead of that other guy?

Your customers should feel you know your products better than the manufacturer does. You can do this by writing unique product descriptions and value-based headlines and using language that is customer-needs centric. Telling your customers what you or your products do is good. Telling your customers the benefit you or your products provide is better.

Building up your tips, tools and helpful article database can be an asset to the active sales funnel. If a potential customer has a question that can be answered right from your website, helping them finalize their purchase decision, you both win.

Your website is a post-sales channel

When the sale is done, the sell isn’t done!

We all know it costs far less to keep a customer than to get a new customer. Unfortunately, too many online marketers fail at pursuing the customers they already have and continue to spend, spend, spend on acquiring new ones. (A great book about this is Flip the Funnel by Joseph Jaffe.)

A good portion of your online marketing budget should be used to maintain customer loyalty. There are a lot of ways you can do this; you can provide customer loyalty and rewards cards, re-marketing through PPC, coupons and discounts for a follow-up purchase, email follow-ups with “on sale” updates, etc.

Give your customers a reason to come back to your site, or, at the very least, a reason to stay in contact with you.

Social Media: Enter stage left

A great way to do this is with regular blog updates providing helpful tips and tutorials that let your customers know you care about them, not just their wallets. Use Twitter and Facebook to engage your customers and deal with potential PR nightmares before they get a chance to take a foot hold. Make sure your website allows customers to easily contact you when there is a problem.

If you’re not implementing some kind of follow up or engagement after the sale, you’re losing thousands of dollars worth of profit. Who better to convince to buy from you than an already happy customer?

We often build websites with a singular thought in mind: selling our products or services. Unfortunately, we usually do that with a singular method–getting a sale. But we don’t think about what happens before the sale is ready to be made, or after it has been completed. We have to be willing to lay a little groundwork to build credibility, build branding, and lay the foundation for a potential sale in the future.

And once the sale is complete, why give up there? Continue to pursue the customer. Let them know just how much you appreciate them and wish to continue a mutually beneficial relationship. Don’t just focus on getting new sales. Focus on building customer relationships before, during and after the sale.

Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

Our team The Pit Crew has read some informative and helpful articles on Web marketing this week. Here are our picks.

Mike Fleming (@mflem25)

PPC Streamcap – Dealing With PPC Struggles
by Matthew Umbro

In the transcribed Streamcap from live chat, Matthew explores questions like, “What proactive measures do you take to ensure client satisfaction when results are less than satisfactory?” and “What has been your primary reason for losing PPC clients?” Lots of insight here!

Best Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause, Economic Value
by Avinash Kaushik

I am going to break one of my unspoken cardinal rules: Only write about real problems and measurement that is actually possible in the real world. I am going to break the second part of the rule. I am going to define a way for you to think about measuring social media, and you can’t actually easily measure what I am going to recommend. So why break the rule?

How To Save Money On AdWords Placements With Google Analytics
by Brad Geddes

Google’s display network can bring you tremendous amounts of clicks and conversions if used correctly. If it is not used correctly, you can quickly spend mass amounts of money and have nothing to show for it.

Annalisa Hilliard (@ahilliardm)

The various forms of influencer currency
by Hugo Guzman

One of the hot new catch-phrases in social media marketing circles is the word “influencer“. In a nutshell, it’s a person or entity that can influence consumers, readers, etc. and marketers large and small are trying to figure out ways to identify these influencers and then get them to behave in a manner that benefits branding and marketing efforts.

Link Building for Bloggers
by James Harper

Whether you’re a pro or amateur blogger, everyone wants traffic to their sites. And building links to your website is a great way to do this. Not only can it improve the visibility of your website in the search engines, but also if you pick your sites wisely you can benefit from referral traffic.

4 Reasons Blog Comments Are Great for Link Building
by Nick Stamoulis

Blog commenting is one of the best components of a link building campaign for numerous reasons. Aside from the obvious value of the link, there is a lot of long term value associated with developing a strong blog commenting campaign that can impact the overall success of your SEO and website. Here are 4 reasons why you should amp up your blog commenting.

Jen Carroll (@martijen)

Jobs’ Apple Standard vs. Page’s Google Standard
by Scott Cleland

The worldwide outpouring of respect, admiration and eulogies for Steve Jobs, Apple’s legendary leader and creative genius, proves his standard and legacy of innovation is one to measure other aspiring tech industry leaders by. Given that Apple and Google are the #1 and #2 most valuable brands in the world and that Google has invaded all of Apple’s markets in the last few years as a new competitor, it is illuminating and instructive to compare and contrast the radically different visions, values, and standards, of Apple’s former leader Steve Jobs and Google’s current CEO Larry Page.

5 Page Quality Indicators That Can Outweigh PageRank
by Bradley Zarich

PageRank would be a great indicator of page quality and relevancy if there is no link selling or artificial link building involved. Lacking that, Google has to implement a quality scoring system independent of link popularity. Let’s explore how to gauge page quality in a more sophisticated way using these 5 metrics.

The Holy Grail of Globalizing Editorial Planning
by Pam Didner

Social networks and search engines have changed the behavior of Intel’s business marketing audience of IT managers who are constantly searching for information and evaluating new technologies even when they are not purchasing them. As marketers, we need to engage with them on topics they care about and that are relevant to Intel on a timely basis. This is where an editorial planning process comes into play.

What’s the best thing about online marketing that you read this week? Leave us your comments.

On September 30, Facebook will do away with fan message updates, which probably weren’t all that effective anyway. So, what does Facebook suggest that fan page admins use instead?

As of September 30th you’ll no longer be able to send an update to fans using Facebook Messages. We want you to connect with your audience in the most effective ways possible, and updates that go to Facebook Messages may end up unseen in the “Other” folder.

Here are other ways you can expand your reach:

• Post content on your page Wall so people see your updates in their news feed. You can target your posts by location or language by choosing Customize from the audience selector dropdown before you post.
• Consider using targeted Facebook Ads or Sponsored Stories to help grow and highlight your message within the Facebook experience.

Paid ads and sponsored stories! A great suggestion to bolster a company and, by extension, a CEO with “mostly paper net worth.”

While researching this change, I stumbled across a Forbes interview with Vivek Wadhwa, tech entrepreneur, academic, researcher and writer. He predicts Facebook will look like MySpace in two years when the next tech bubble breaks. How many ads will Facebook have to sell to forestall this prognostication?

Do you agree with Wadhwa? Share your comments below or follow me at @martijen or at @PolePositionMkg.

For me, the focal point of the conference (beyond curiosity about Lady Gaga’s bizarre meat dress, currently on display at the Rock Hall) can be summed up in this phrase: fascinate, compel and convert your audience using the power of story. If you want to succeed in online marketing today, content must be a foundational pillar, not some website architect’s last-minute add-on.

Now, just four short days after leaving Cleveland, I’m living in the dénouement, wondering whether I can fit all this juicy beef on the skinny little stretched-out bun I call my normal life. As I continue to chew on ideas that have the greatest potential to empower Pole Position Marketing and our clients, I see five key challenges that many organizations must face in the process of implementing an effective content, search and social campaign.

1. Time.
   Despite the Rolling Stones’ claim that Time is on My Side, that’s not true for a majority of business owners, marketing managers and communication coordinators. Writing blogs, snapping pix, staying on top of social media and capturing videos – even in “real time,” as David Meerman Scott calls it – all takes time. And not just once in a while. To see any fruit from your labors, you must devote time each day on a consistent basis and be prepared to handle the unexpected opportunity or crisis. All quick tips aside, how committed are you to garnering online attention and sales? You’ll need to prove it with your time.
2. Resources.
   You’ve Got a Friend, right? Hopefully, more than one because running a successful content+search+social campaign means having access to the “write” resources. With fewer FTEs on staff these days (or perhaps no other FTE but you), less must be more. However, a marketing specialist isn’t necessarily a writer. And a writer isn’t necessarily a programmer. And a programmer isn’t necessarily a writer or a marketing specialist. (You can usually be guaranteed of the last one.) So, if you need help in these areas, whom do you turn to? Agencies are good, but what if you can’t afford one on an ongoing basis? (That’s another resource issue!) If you are one of the few resources – or the only resource – at your company, you will need to determine just how much you can do or afford on a consistent basis.
3. Creativity.
   While Natasha Bedingfield is staring at the blank page (I can relate), Sally Hogshead makes it clear how important it is to “fascinate” in the world of online content. After all, we’re appealing to readers who, according to Hogshead, have the attention span of a gold fish. But, it’s tough to be creative when you’re working on 10 different projects at once or only had a few hours of sleep. And, if you don’t feel that you’re naturally fascinating (Hogshead says we all have to unlearn how to be boring), what will it take for you to get “in the zone”?
4. Know-how.
   Shania’s not impressed much by rocket scientists, so people who are into online marketing are in luck: it’s not rocket science! But, it IS a rapidly changing field that requires some technical knowledge or (back to #2) knowledgeable resources. Good news here… If you’ve got the time (#1), you can find all the information you need to create, monitor and measure a content campaign, often for free. You just have to wade through tons of online content to learn!
5. Speed.
   High Speed ”you on” in the of world of digital marketing. Things may happen and be over before you even realize anything of importance occurred in your industry. So, to compete online, you must constantly monitor what’s going on and be, at the very least, responsive. Proactive would be better. Do you have all the tools in place that will allow you to create, implement, broadcast and share content quickly (see #4)? Or, may perfectionism, fear or lack of time and/or resources hold you back?

I’m pragmatic by nature (or perhaps by nurture), and I much prefer to acknowledge the foes I face in all areas of life. It gives me the advantage going in, as well as a darn good chance that I’ll prevail in the long run. These challenges – time, resources, creativity, know-how and speed – are my Content Marketing World dénouement, and I will have to overcome them to achieve success in my career as a content marketer.

In the end, I wonder, “Have I bitten off more than I can chew?” It doesn’t matter. I want to taste victory.

Did you attend Content Marketing World last week? If yes, tell me about your experience. Share your comments below or follow me at @martijen or at @PolePositionMkg.

Throughout history, communication has evolved. Common vocabulary has gone from “thou” to “you” to “u”, and in some cases, to “fu!”

Once common words change spelling, meaning and even become obsolete. (Anyone remember wearing “slacks”?) New is the new old.

Soundbites have become essential to anyone wanting to make a point. If it can’t be said in nine seconds, you’re SOL!

I think it’s policy that no policy is good policy unless it can fit on a bumper sticker.

Paragraphs in old books sometimes go on for pages. Paragraphs today are usually no more than a few sentences.

Even long chapters appear too difficult for our quick-takeaway minds to absorb. Why else would Dan Brown be so popular?

We’ve been spoiled by social media. Some might use a different word. #ruined

In the internet age, we have to look beyond the 9 second soundbite and start thinking in 140 character twitterbites.

We must communicate in standalone points. Anything more than 140 characters can’t be tweeted. (120 for retweets.)

If your point is tied to larger concepts that can’t be quickly summarized, it’s difficult to get it socialized.

We have to write–and often even speak–in a way that allows our thoughts to be socialized as easily as possible.

Instead of just getting your post title tweeted by a few, isn’t it better to get your point retweeted by many?

Tweeting a post title is cool and all, but if you can make your point in a tweet, well, you made your point.

Post titles say, “This might interest you.” Twitterbites say “Here’s a good point.”

Twitterbites pass your “authority” without someone having to be read (or scan) your entire blog post.

Do twitterbites prevent clicks? No more than free SEO advice loses clients. Sounds good in theory but doesn’t pan out.

You don’t have to blog in exact twitterbites, but the more you provide, the greater opportunity for re/tweets.

The more re/tweets your twitterbite gets, the greater the exposure, and more your authority builds. #allgood

Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise.

My company has recently ramped up our own social media efforts and I have to tell you I find it overwhelming and difficult to understand. I lack the time and resources required to really make it successful for us. But as with anything new, you just gotta push through. Pulling the plug would be conceding defeat in an area where a victory is needed.

Never give up. Never surrender.

Let’s take a look at these common complaints of social media and what can be done to make social media successful.

Social media is overwhelming

There are dozens, if not hundreds of places to engage socially online.

Facebook.

Twitter.

Linked In.

Google+.

Blogs.

And that doesn’t include the social tracking services, third party tools, posting tools, organization lists and who knows what else I’m missing. Each social service requires it’s own level of commitment and interaction that must be actively maintained.

Social media is difficult to understand

How, when and where you need to post, engage or communicate isn’t always straightforward. It’s important to provide value in each stream without creating a “me too” stream in another. Each social platform will reach a different audience with different levels of engagement and that must be taken into consideration.

A separate strategy for each social platform is required. In order to do it right, you have to learn the nuances of each.

How often you post, what you say, how you say it and who you connect with are all important in building up your social media presence. Connecting in one stream works differently than connecting in another. Same with engagement. They all have their quirks and you’ve go to learn each in order to manage them appropriately.

Lack of time and resources needed to make social media successful

This is the big one. There is more to social media than writing the occasional blog post and throwing a link to it out on Twitter or Facebook. You have to be actively engaged with your community. Engaged on Twitter, engaged on Facebook, engaged on Linked In, engaged in your blog comments and engaged in other people’s blogs.

Phew! That’s a lot of engagement!

And the most difficult part is very little of this can be done by an outside service. Consultants like us can help you develop a strategy, but it’s always best if an actual person from the company handles the engagement. After all, you know your product or services better than anybody else can, and you are uniquely qualified to handle complaints and customer satisfaction.

Whats the best way to manage your social media campaign?

That will be different for each company. Not everyone can afford to hire a full-time social media person. But even among those who can and do, it’s essential to have someone help organize and build strategy.

If your in-house person has been managing social campaigns for any length of time and is fully dedicated to social media, then you might have just what you need. But for many businesses, hiring a consultant to either manage, implement or just strategize with can be extremely lucrative.

Even if you have someone to carry out the plan in-house, it’s helpful to have a consultant who can work with you to develop a solid strategy for each social stream and then work with your team to implement it.

Don’t let social media suck the life out of your business

For many, social media is fun. And it should be. But it’s easy to get overwhelmed, throw up your hands and walk away. But this isn’t an area where you can concede defeat. While social media can be a pain, and these complaints have legitimacy, you can overcome them. Time, patience and practice make all the difference in the world.

More and more people are getting social. That’s where they get their information, news, pass tips, strategies and recommendations. If you’re not engaged with them, someone else is. Your competitors are building brand, answering questions and becoming an authority. What are you doing?

You may be top in your field, but these things change. It’s all a matter of perception. MySpace used to be the top social site, now Facebook is. AltaVisa was once the top search engine, now Google is. K-Mart used to be the top retail store, and you get the picture.

Things shift. If you don’t get ahead of it you’ll be shifted out while someone else is shifted in. Any new strategy can be a challenge, but you can learn to use social media to enhance your business (as opposed to sucking the life out of it).

Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

In the last few years social media has jumped to the forefront of online marketing for many small businesses. Some business owners aren’t even bothering to market (or in some cases even build) their websites anymore.

They can just create a Facebook page.

Or a blog on Blogger.com

Or tweet on Twitter.

Or build a Google Places page.

Are we entering an age where SEO just doesn’t matter?

You can now get a local ranking on Google just by having a places page. No website needed!

When all these other avenues are available, many without all the added marketing “expense,” is SEO still viable?

The short answer is yes, SEO still matters.

SEO Still Matters

That was important so I made sure to say it twice!

There are many reasons why SEO should still be on the forefront of your online marketing efforts. I’ll make the case below, but before I do, I want to stress that I’m not trying to take anything away from Facebook, Google Places, Twitter or other social media efforts. I’m sure someone *cough@martijencough* could write a post titled “Making the Case for Social Media in an SEO World!”

But since social media is the new big “it,” I think it’s important to revisit the case for SEO, as a solid reminder as to why it still matters.

You have Ownership of Your SEO

If you own your own domain name, your website belongs to you. It’s yours.

The same can’t be said about your Facebook, Places or Twitter profiles. Whatever marketing you do on these other profiles may be building your business today, but what if any of them go out of style? (Anyone remember MySpace?)

The marketing you do TO your social media profiles is temporary at best. At any time you can be removed, be kicked off, lose your profile or see the site disappear. If your web host doesn’t like you, you get to take your site (you do have a backup, right?) and find another hosting company. You get to keep it, and no one can tell you otherwise.

That means the SEO you do for your site is also yours. All that work, effort and money invested is yours to keep as long as you keep your site hosted.

SEO Gets You Noticed by Your Customers

Social media is great for getting the word out and building your brand, educating your audience and even providing information about your services. All good. But SEO puts you in front of your buyers. Top rankings put you in front of people that are interested in what you have to offer but don’t already know about you.

One of the goals of SEO can be to get people to engage with you on your social networks. This helps build long-term relationships. But SEO gets you in front of people who don’t already know where to get what you offer. That’s why they go to search engines.

Top rankings put you front and center for searchers who have an active interest in what you do. These are potential customers, not just information seekers. This is your money audience!

SEO Has a Mighty Long Reach

Your reach with SEO can be far greater than your reach in your social networks. Sure you can build a lot of followers and friends and they can repost or retweet your content to get an even wider audience… provided they are looking at the time your tweet or post goes out.

You may have 10,000 friends and followers, but are they all looking at you moment you need them to be? If not, your message is lost.

SEO puts you in front of your audience when they search. Even PPC can fail here as ads roll in and out depending on your available budget. But with SEO, once you get those top rankings, your link is there for all the world to see.

Not only that, but the more keywords you optimize, the bigger your reach can be. Optimizing your site for well-searched keyword phrases puts you in front of a larger audience. Optimizing even low-volume phrases in large quantities can boost your reach even more while increasing your ROI. (More on that below.)

SEO is Relevant Now

Driving someone to your social media page gives them only limited amounts of information. It’s kind of a one-size-fits-all approach. Driving visitors to your site, through SEO, gives them all the information they need to make a purchase decision.

One of the beautiful things about SEO is that you can also drive each searcher to the most relevant page on your site, based on the query. That’s what optimizing is all about. Each page is optimized for a set of keywords that are most relevant the searcher. This is custom-fitting at it’s best!

SEO Focuses on the Conversion Experience

When a properly strategized SEO campaign is implemented, your website should see a boost in user experience. Your SEO should be looking further than optimizing keywords onto a page. They should be analyzing your site architecture, calls to action, internal links and conversion processes.

When your SEO focuses on the conversion experience, your site becomes much more about getting your visitors the information they need while making them confident in their purchase decision. The better user experience, the more loyal customer you create. Driving traffic to a site without considering usability can be akin to pouring water into a leaky bucket.

Your Competition is Performing SEO

Your competition is ranking for the keywords that would otherwise be driving business to your site. If you’re not competing for those keywords, search engine traffic is being diverted to them. That sound you hear is your profits going to your competition!

If your competition is investing in SEO, shouldn’t you be? If they are working hard at earning top search engine rankings, don’t you want to be right there next to (or above) them? And if your competition isn’t there today, they may be there tomorrow. Don’t let them get the competitive advantage on you.

SEO Delivers the ROI

The return on investment in SEO has been proven time and time again. It’s different for every industry and website, but in the long term, because SEO is long-lasting, the ROI validates itself. Compared to other forms of advertising, SEO can be a bargain.

The ROI on social media has yet to be fully proven. Its great for building an audience and driving brand awareness. It’s even better in conjunction with your optimization campaign, to create links and build off the SEO. As a standalone service, however, the benefit of social media is extremely limited. It’s only one piece of the marketing pie.

SEO has Extreme Longevity

SEO is (almost) forever. A page properly optimized today is a page properly optimized after the next four Google updates. On-page optimization is good for a very long time. Once you have that then you just need to continue to build your site and keep your audience interested. This is where social media, link building and content strategy really helps; they help maintain your position once your site is optimized.

This is why so many are flocking to social media. They think this is the way to get in front of your audience. And it is, but it’s only part of a smart marketing strategy. Getting your site optimized internally, and using social media and link building externally, gives you a long-lasting optimization campaign that withstands the tests of time.

Focusing on SEO, even as social media is the new, shiny thing on the block, still makes a lot of sense. If you bring in the right people to do the job, your optimization campaign should be one of the primary drivers of traffic, conversions and new customers.

Of course, you already knew all this. But it’s nice to have the reminder.

Follow me at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

Moving your PR online opens up a whole world of new adventures. Not only do all the old rules apply, but many new rules are created to ensure that your content can effectively reach your audience.

So far in this series, everything we have discussed has to do with the set-up and creation of your online PR. All of the online elements need to be taken care of before you can push your story out online. Pushing it out before it’s ready will lead to a colossal failure. However, how and where you push your message out is just as critical for it’s success.

In this final post, we’ll look at the details around how you can broadcast your message to get the most value from your audience, search engines and the social sphere.

Broadcasting Your Message

It’s not enough to craft the perfect PR piece, or optimize it to the hilt using your visitors’ keywords. Where you push it out to, the tools you use, and how much you allow your visitors to engage with your content are all critical to having a successful online PR campaign.

In the offline world, good PR necessitates a heavy focus on pushing content out to news sources. It also involves creating relationships and currying favor with journalists who may or may not write about your news. Online PR greatly expands the target of your efforts. On the Web, your content needs to appeal to more than just journalists; you’re also trying to get the attention of current and potential customers. A submit-it-and-forget-it strategy won’t work. You need to submit-it-and-engage-it!

It’s Not Just News

Moving your PR online also means moving beyond the news mentality. Sure, you can get your PR piece noticed by traditional news outlets or have it hit the search engine news sites, but that’s just the tip, not the bulk, of the proverbial iceberg.

A well-crafted piece of PR should be able to reach far more people than news searchers. This is where social media comes into play. Sites like Facebook and Twitter, and tools such as RSS and +1 can help you reach well beyond the traditional news borders. These tools not only reach a broader audience, but they encourage engagement, which can improve the socialization aspects of each piece.

Online PR Submissions

There are a number of online PR submission sites that you can use to help build, distribute and track your online PR. Each service has it’s own unique features, so do your due diligence, and find the one that has the best bang for the buck.

Figure out what tools you want and need for each piece. You may find that one submission service is handy for some content and another is better for other content. Where it gets distributed can have a substantial impact on the success of each piece.

Tracking each piece is critical to following and understanding it’s level of success. You may not be able to fully grasp what success means until you’ve had a chance to submit and track several pieces and compare the results.

Social Pushing

This is where engagement with your online PR becomes critical. You need to use your social media channels and connections to get more eyes on your content. Facebook, Twitter, +1, and other socialize buttons allow your visitors to promote your content into areas you have no way to reach.

The key is making sure your content is “retweetable.” Or in other words, it is something worth sharing? Then leverage these options via your company social profiles, and by adding the socialization icons on the page. The idea is to make it as easy and desirable as possible to have your content socialized around the web.

You also want to make sure you engage with anybody that is talking about, asking questions about, or commenting on your content. Don’t just sit and relish the tweets and retweets; talk to people, and use this as an opportunity to build relationships. You may find these relationships valuable later on.

RSS Feeds

One of the drawbacks of active social channels is that, if your content isn’t pushed out at just the right time, it will often get missed. Of course, the right time means when each person from your audience is looking at their social stream!

RSS allows you to get your content to people on their own time. If they subscribe to your RSS feed then they can get notified of new content whenever they open up their feed reader. You may be competing with hundreds of other feeds, but at least you know that your content headline will get scanned rather than completely buried.

If you are not familiar with RSS feeds, I suggest you do a little homework on this, and ask your developers how to implement an RSS feed for your content.

Bringing It Home

Now we’re at the big, “So what?” We understand that getting your online PR piece is great for making sure people see our content. But is there anything more here than just getting one piece of content after another published and read?

Well, yeah. There is a much grander purpose to online PR, and this is what makes the online aspects so great. Each piece of content, if incredibly crafted, can serve as an entry point into your website, drawing in new visitors, customers, clients and information seekers.

Your PR piece isn’t just about PR. It’s about building a more visible website!

Everything Flows Back To Home

Everything you do online should serve one purpose: drive traffic and customers to your website. News for the sake of news is pointless. News with a goal of increasing readers and those engaged with your content is fabulous. News designed to increase profits is even better!

Everything you do all boils down to building, branding and marketing your website. Anything less ultimately falls short of it’s potential.

See all posts in this series:

Part 1: Intro / How Print Audience Differs from Web Audience
Part 2: Goals of Online PR
Part 3: Background Research
Part 4a: Crafting the Story p1
Part 4b: Crafting the Story p2
Part 5: Broadcasting the Message / Conclusion

Follow me at @StoneyD and @PolePositionMkg.

When taking your public relations strategy online, there are some similarities to the “traditional” way of doing things, but there are also a lot of differences. Going online opens up a whole new world of opportunities that, if leveraged properly, can make your PR campaign far more successful than the old-school ways of doing things.

So far in this series we’ve looked at why online readers are different from offline readers, clarified the goals of online PR, and then dived into the background research needed to craft a good story. The following two posts will focus on developing your story in a way to maximize your reach through search and social.

Crafting the Story, Part 1

Any good writer knows that there is more to a good story than meets the eye. Anybody can throw some words on a page, but it takes a lot of thought and prep work to take a story and turn it into something that is valuable, or succeeds at fulfilling it’s intended purpose. Writing online PR content isn’t much different than offline PR content. Many of the staples remain the same.

However, because you’re dealing with a different audience than you might otherwise have dealt with offline, you have to take the nuances of this new audience into consideration before, during and after crafting your story for consumption. While the tenants of good writing remain, the action of carrying out those tenants can sometimes be very different.

Grab Their Attention

Getting someone’s attention is the first step in getting your proverbial foot in the door. If you have the best piece of content out there but fail to grab the attention of your audience, then you have a fantastic, but unread, piece of content! Getting your content read is more than just having a catchy headline, it’s about saying something that really get’s people to sit up and take notice.

One of the ways to grab your audience’s attention is to use their search phrases throughout your content. When your readers see the keywords they actually searched for in your headline and in your content, it continues to reinforce the idea that this is what they were looking for. When you use words other than what the searcher uses, then you are, in effect, speaking an entirely different language. Some readers may get the correlation, but many will be gone before you can say “Hey, wait, this is what I really mean!”

Attention grabbing headlines are important, but again, keyword usage here is important. A cool headline that isn’t keyword focused can often fail at delivering the right traffic. Headlines for online content need to focus more on keywords than on “shock” or entertainment value. Those elements can still be useful, but without keywords, your content will be bypassed altogether.

You also need to make sure the content itself grabs your audience’s attention. You can’t just throw out a headline that isn’t backed up by your content. If your headline get’s their attention, the content has to keep it. If the headline entices someone to read your content, make sure your content entices them to keep reading. If your headline makes them sit up and take notice, make sure your content makes them grab a cup of coffee and read every last drop, er, word.

Make it Interesting

We all know that if we want our content to get read we have to make it worth reading. Nothing new here. But because online readers are so fickle, lack focus and have a short attention span (see part 1), there is a lot more work that has to go into making your content interesting.

As I mentioned above, grabbing your audience’s attention goes beyond a good headline. And you have to do more than throw a phrase in every now and then that shakes them up. Everything in between needs to be interesting, compelling, and valuable. Anything that’s not should be cut and (figuratively, of course) dropped onto the editing room floor!

There are four key things you can do to make almost any content interesting:

Be Unique: Put out something new. Don’t write about the same thing in the same way, instead find a way to write about something new and different.

Take a Different Approach: Tackle your subject in a different way. Even if you’re writing about the “same ole, same ole”, do it in a new way that addresses the topic in a way that no one else is addressing.

Make it Compelling: Make sure your approach is compelling. This isn’t about change for the sake of change, but about finding a more compelling way to present the information at hand. Keep them interested.

Create Value: Finally, make sure every reader walks away having learned something new. If the information isn’t valuable to them then you’ve wasted a great opportunity. Your primary goal is to make sure your audience feels they have gained something by reading your content.

Title Tags

Everything noted above can apply to any content, regardless of the forum. Here is where we get into the specifically web-related stuff.

Title tags are probably the most important real estate for producing optimized content. They are often the first signals the search engines see when determining the topic (and therefore the rankings) of a page. They’re also what the search engines display in their search results. Your title tag is the clickable link in the search results. If it’s not both keyword rich and compelling, you’ll either have a lower ranked page or one that gets clicked fewer times. Or possibly both.

The page title isn’t necessarily the title of your content, though they can often be the same. Regardless, you’ll want your optimized title to be more keyword rich, without sacrificing it’s ability to get attention. Try to keep the title tag under 63 characters, as this is the limit that the search engines display in the search results. Longer won’t matter, just so long as you know that it may get cut off.

Meta Description

While not critical to getting good rankings for your content, the meta description does have value. For the most part, the search engines will use the meta description as the descriptive text below the clickable title in the search results. This gives you an opportunity to craft a keyword rich and compelling language that will give searches additional insight and reason to click into your content.

If you are targeting a very specific keyword or group of keywords, you can create a meta description that targets those phrases. However, there are cases when a meta description may actually hinder the click rather than help. In these cases, where your content is going after what is considered the “long-tail” phrases, you can leave off the description and let the search engines pull a snippet of text from the content to display in the search results.

This allows the description in the search results to include the specific keyword the searcher used without you having to have foreknowledge of the exact phrase that might be entered in. Since long-tail keyword variations are so abundant, trying to craft a meta description with every possible variation is impossible. Let the search engines do it.

We’ll continue in Part 2, looking at other elements that are valuable in crafting a strong online PR piece.

See all posts in this series:

Part 1: Intro / How Print Audience Differs from Web Audience
Part 2: Goals of Online PR
Part 3: Background Research
Part 4a: Crafting the Story p1
Part 4b: Crafting the Story p2
Part 5: Broadcasting the Message / Conclusion

Follow me at @StoneyD and @PolePositionMkg.

Of course, the lines between business and personal use of social media are often blurred. According to a 2009 report from Forrester Research, four out of five American adults who go online use a social media outlet at least once a month, and half participate in social networks like Facebook. Plus, small business employees usually wear many hats. So, you may have your service tech tweeting, your office manager facebooking and your sales team blogging. It’s all in a day’s work!

Naturally, in the midst of all this positive buzz, there has to be a downer. That downer usually comes in the form of negative comments (I’ll talk about handling these in a future post) or updates from employees who may not be thinking a whole lot about the consequences of what they’re posting. People often forget that social media (and other forms of electronic communication) aren’t private. It’s like using a megaphone, and the fallout has the potential to damage your company’s reputation.

That’s why virtually every business needs a social media policy. This is not a new concept, of course, but it can easily get overlooked.

You’re busy. (Never a good excuse.)
You just got started with social media. (Is there a better time to create a policy?)
You don’t think you need one. (Review the second and third paragraphs of this post.)
You aren’t sure how to write one. (OK. This one is understandable.)

A recent article by Diane Stafford, writer for the Kansas City Star, notes that “case law and regulatory opinions are building more slowly than the social media use they’re trying to control.” So, right now, there are no hard and fast rules with social media policies – which makes this whole prospect a little nerve-wracking.

Back in 2009, Sharlyn Lauby of Mashable.com published 10 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Policy. I think she put together an excellent list, and it was one of several sources that helped inspire me when I wrote Pole Position Marketing’s policy.

Here’s my take on crafting a workable social media policy for a small business. These tips serve only as a baseline and can, of course, be tailored to your culture and environment. They are not intended, however, to take the place of legal advice. (Yea, lawyer fees!)

Stay Positive and Focus on Good Communication
Social media is not inherently good or bad. It’s how you use it. So, when you write your policy, keep it centered on what good and appropriate communication is, as opposed to trying to list every possible negative thing people should avoid. However, employees (and teenagers everywhere) do need to recognize that every post, blog or comment is public and, thanks to search engines, will live forever.

Define What Social Media is
Social media is more than just Facebook and Twitter. You need to consider YouTube, Flickr, social news sites, social bookmarking sites and blogs. Employees should be aware that you define social media more broadly and include any type of website or forum where conversation or comments occur in the online world.

Define Why Your Business is Using Social Media
For most small businesses, there are five primary reasons to participate in social media:

1. To engage current and potential customers in authentic conversation and positively influence their buying decisions.
2. To generate traffic (blog, website or, if applicable, a brick-and-mortar location), leads and conversions.
3. To establish thought leadership in your industry.
4. To share the company’s culture and brand in a genuine, professional manner.
5. To take customer service to a new level.

Since social media has Walmart hours, these functions may be taking place any time of the day or night – stretching far beyond the traditional 8-to-5 business day. So, whatever an employee’s personal reasons for using social media, they need to understand what the company expects out of its social media presence and support that at all times.

Emphasize Personal Responsibility
I alluded to this earlier in my post, and it was probably the most important take-away from Lauby’s article. Employees need to be responsible for what they write, even when they’re not working. Your policy should remind them that, any time they interact online, the information may be read by people who have, had or may someday have connections to your company. Employees speak for themselves, but their actions represent your company.

Provide Points of Reference
It would be nice if you could tell employees to use common sense and good judgment online, and just leave it at that. But, people’s opinions about common sense and good judgment differ, so it’s a good idea to give them some guidelines. Here are a few ideas:

• When making a comment online, employees should somehow use their name or identity. This can help your company establish authenticity and will hopefully enable you to create relationships with prospective clients.
• Employees should focus on adding value to any conversation. This will help establish your company as a thought leader in your industry.
• Follow copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws. Give credit where credit is due.
• Share opinions respectfully. Employees should avoid posting anything they would not want their mom (or spouse or boss) to read.
• Employees must protect your company’s confidential and proprietary information. Let them know that failure to observe this may be hazardous to their job.
• Employees must protect your company’s reputation. You don’t want to take yourself or the company too seriously. But, employees should avoid insulting the company and their co-workers, even as a joke. They should also keep sensitive or potentially controversial work conversations private. Encourage them to ask if they are in doubt.
• Remind them to balance personal and professional social media time. For any social media campaign to be successful, a reasonable time investment is required. However, time spent on social media should not interfere with performing the core competencies of their job.

Do you have any good ideas to add to this list? Tell me about them. You can also follow me on Twitter at @martijen.

In the first two parts of this series, we looked first at how the online audience differs from the traditional off-line audience. There are several distinct characteristics one has to take into account before pushing content out onto the web that was designed for print.

Next, we looked at the goals of online PR in order to identify key things that online PR must do that are both similar and different from offline PR. Good writing is still good writing, whether you are on- or offline, but when writing online content, you have to treat each piece a bit differently.

Now let’s move on into the next phase of writing online PR.

Background Research

Every good story starts with some background research. After all, we don’t just jump right in and start telling a story we know nothing about. We have to do a little digging first to understand the issues, pros, cons, benefits, who the audience is, what their needs are, etc. Only when you have this information can you begin to craft your story.

In addition to the normal background research one does for a good story or PR piece, there are some additional factors that must be considered when publishing content online. You’re not just trying to get your content to your audience, but you have to make your content available for your audience to find.

Instead of always pushing information to people you think need to see it, you want to be able to pull in those who truly do want to read it. This is a bit of a different strategy than most people are used to, but it’s one that does bring in more targeted customers than the “traditional” method.

How People Search

Finding content online is all about keywords. We like to believe people think in terms of concepts and ideas, but when it comes to online content, everything gets boiled down to a few words. If someone sees a commercial on TV, they watched a full 30-seconds of information. But, if they go online to look for more information, that entire 30-seconds is going to be narrowed down to a very short 2-, 3-, or 4-word phrase.

The search engines have made finding information so easy that almost anything can be found using just a few words. Sometimes we might get more specific with a 5- or 6-word phrase when necessary, but the starting point is usually those 2-3 words that we feel best captures the information we are looking for.

Because keywords are so important to our online searches, people tend think and hear in terms of these keywords. We listen and reduce everything down to it’s lowest common denominator of what it will take to find the information we are looking for. This makes it important that we integrate keywords that our audience uses into each piece of content.

If you’re talking about “pre-owned cars” because that’s a nicer sounding industry buzzword, you’re going to miss out on a lot of potential traffic. Of course, you only realize this once you know that your audience is searching for “used cars”.

This is the problem. We get caught up using our own internal industry lingo when our audience is using street lingo. While you tout your internal lingo to feel smart, sophisticated, classy, or whatever, your competition is outselling you because they are using words that people actually think, hear, and search for.

If you don’t use the language your audience uses then you’ll be missing your audience altogether.

Find Keywords Your Audience Uses

If you want to use the language your audience uses you have to find out what keywords they type into the search bar to find the information related to what you do.

There are a lot of tools that will help you do this including Wordtracker or Google’s Keyword Tools. Some tools are more helpful than others and each will give you different information. But parsing through that information is well worth the time. I have a blog series outlining keyword research strategies that is worth the read.

The value of keyword research cannot be understated. Not only will you find the broad terms that your audience uses, but you’ll also find a lot of specific phrases that people are interested in. This information can give you ideas and angles to address to ensure you’re targeting as many searchers as possible with your content.

What we often find is that words we would think would be valuable are not, while words that may not have been considered jump out at us as something we should be targeting. By finding these keywords, you are able to develop content that speaks more directly to your searchers rather than to the people who think up fancy words with little meaning to your audience.

It’s up to you to focus your content toward those that are seeking, but you have to use their language, not your own.

Keywords Don’t Always Mean What We Think

One of the downsides of the keyword research tools is that they only tell us the popularity of any given phrase. What they can’t tell us is what the visitor is thinking when they type that phrase into the search engines. Keyword phrases often have different meanings depending on inflection, word order, or even singular or plural variations. This is when we have to use our heads to think through the relevance of any given phrases.

One of the best examples of this I have is when I was shopping for a headset for my cordless telephone. Walking through the isles of the Office Depot, I saw a box that read “cordless telephone headset”. Just what I wanted, right? Well, no. I needed a cordless telephone headset, what was in the box was a cordless telephone headset. Same three words, but entirely different products!

The meaning of a phrase can also change just by adding a qualifying word to it. In the image above, all the words in the circles have a single word in common. Can you guess what it is?

The word is “bag”. But the meaning of the word “bag” changes significantly just by adding each of these qualifiers to it. This is an extreme example, but it makes the point that we cannot accept every keyword at face value, we have to look deeper into the potential meaning of the searcher.

(This also illustrates why targeting single word phrases is a bad idea! Just sayin’.)

Knowing Your Audience

Knowing your audience isn’t always as easy as saying, “my audience is interested in x.” Just because someone is interested in a particular topic doesn’t necessarily mean they are your target audience, nor does it mean that they are all searching for the exact same reasons. Different searchers have different goals. It’s up to you to figure out what those are.

In the illustration above, I have created an example of three different types of searchers, three different types of interests, and three different types of needs. Each searcher may have a different interest and a different need. For example, a particular business searcher may be interested in education in order to develop a strategy, while another may be looking for ideas to give her a better direction. That’s not even to discuss the students or hobbyists!

Your job will be to put together your own list of possible searchers, interests, and needs, then determine which combinations lead to your audience(s). This won’t necessarily be used to eliminate particular segments of searchers, though, it likely will, but rather it can be used to make sure you are speaking to your audience based on who they are, what they want, and what their goals are.

Target Your Entire Audience, Not Just Journalists

The one thing PR professionals need to remember is that, when putting out online content, your target audience is not just journalists. Your online audience should be much bigger than a small group of people who may or may not be interested in writing about your PR.

Aside from journalists and information seekers, there are three types of searchers that may be interested in your content. These three groups are built around how people shop for online content, but the principles can apply to all different kinds of searchers, depending on what kinds of phrases they are using to search.

Researchers: The first group of searchers is researchers. These are people looking for information, but they may not quite be sure as to what exactly they need. They are using broad terms that will pull up a vast array of websites and types of content. Many of these researchers are using the search results to help them refine their search criteria. As they scan headlines and content, they get a better idea of what kind of information they are seeking.

Shoppers: This group has gotten enough information to begin to narrow down their search. In the shopping world they are no longer looking for a TV, but have decided on the Sony TV. As they continue to search, read and scan content, they are learning more about their topic and using that to decide what further details do they want or need and then taking that information to perform even more specific searches.

Buyers: This last group are those that are looking for very specific information. Not just a Sony TV but maybe a 52′ Sony 3D 1080p. They’ve gone through the research and shopping phase and now know exactly what information they need to be satisfied. Shoppers use 4-6 word phrases that give them a very specific set of search results to ensure less scanning of worthless content and a greater focus on getting this last bit of info.

Targeting researchers, shoppers, and buyers is critical in drawing in a larger audience, and an audience that might actually be a “converting” audience. Some of these will become customers, some will socialize your information, and others will report on it. All of these are important targets to reach.

Having done your background research on your keywords and your audience, you’re then ready to begin to start writing your content in a way that will reach the maximum number of people on the web. We’ll look more into that in Part 4.

See all posts in this series:

Part 1: Intro / How Print Audience Differs from Web Audience
Part 2: Goals of Online PR
Part 3: Background Research
Part 4a: Crafting the Story p1
Part 4b: Crafting the Story p2
Part 5: Broadcasting the Message / Conclusion

Follow me at @StoneyD and @PolePositionMkg.

I started this series looking at the differences between print readers and web readers. This is critical to understand before moving forward with your online public relations material. We cannot expect to reach online readers the same way we reach those that are offline. We can’t just do the old-world methods in a new-world medium.

The differences between the two readers is vast, and, without that understanding, there will be no way to hit the goals you are trying to achieve. But once you have a firm grasp on who your online audience is, and how they react, you can begin to set attainable goals for your online PR.

Goals of Online PR

Every piece of content you create should have a goal in mind. What is it trying to achieve? What do you want people to do? How is this going to benefit your company? These and many other questions need to be answered before you even begin writing.

Being online, we have to look at specific set of goals that are unique to the web. As we noted at the end of Part 1, there are three things we have to keep in mind: Search, Social, and Conversions. What goals do we need to have in place in order to be successful in each of those areas?

Let’s look at four goals of your online PR. These should help you in crafting better pieces of content designed for the internet audience.

Goal 1: Get Noticed

The idea of generating any piece of content is to get noticed. What’s the point of writing if no one is going to see it, right? I mean, this isn’t just an exercise in futility… we want people to read what we write, dang it!

What you’re looking for is the double take. Imagine driving down the highway and suddenly you spot a purple cow. What the?! You’re going to do a double take. That’s what you want your online content to do, to stand out in a way that people go, “Holy purple cow, Batman, did you read that!”

Now be careful. You don’t want to lead people down a false path here. Don’t pull a bait-and-switch. Once they do that double take, make sure the second take is every bit worth it.

So, what happens next? What should your piece of content do once you get some eyeballs on it? That’s brings us to goal number 2.

Goal 2: Get Traffic

Traffic is essential to having a successful PR campaign. Your content may do a great job of getting noticed, but is that translating into traffic to your website? If not, then your “hot” piece has utterly failed.

You want to make sure that people don’t just read your single piece of PR then move on to something else. Your content should only be the teaser. It should act as a doorway into the real content: your website. Speaking in terms of food, you want people to move from the appetizer to the main course.

Is your content interesting enough to keep people engaged with your brand? Is it creating traffic beyond the piece itself, or is it just a (dead) end unto itself? No content should be the end. Heck, even after an order for a product is placed, the goal then is to bring the visitor back to start the purchase process all over again.

While your PR piece may be designed to inform, it also needs to have a reason to be informative. Information for the sake of information is what we call “useless knowledge.” I already have plenty of that!

Once you start moving people through the process from reading to engaging with your site, you have to then look at whether you are delivering the right traffic to your site. Which brings us to goal number 3.

Goal 3: Get Customers

Getting customers is one of the key goals of any online business. Now I use the word “customer” loosely. That can be whatever is meaningful to you. A customer could be someone who buys your product, or someone who downloads your white paper, or engages with you in Facebook. A customer can be anything you determine it to be. It really depends on your industry and what you are trying to accomplish with your business.

If you’re not getting customers, whatever those are to you, what are you getting? Traffic? Hits? Page views? A round of applause?

Is that enough for you, or do you want more than that? What is the content delivering for you, and how do you use your PR piece to bring new customers into the fold?

“You mean I actually have to produce something that produces something?” Well, yeah. Content just for the sake of being read is nothing more than a bunch of words on the page. Every piece of content should speak to your potential customers, encourage them to engage, and ultimately lead them to that conversion point.

Of course, not every visitor can turn into an instant customer. But there is a way to get them to become an evangelist for you, which leads us to goal number 4.

Goal 4: Get Links

The web is fueled by links. If no one linked to anyone, how would you find any content? Search engines? Well, they use links to find the new content. So, if they can’t find it, then your audience can’t find it either. That means your content not only has to produce customers, but it also has to get customers, and non-customers alike, to pass it on via links and social shares.

So, how do you make link-worthy content? Well, there are three steps. 1) Get noticed. 2) Get traffic. 3) Get customers!

Huh. Those look familiar.

If your content is doing those things, and the visitors that read each piece find the information in it valuable, then it is more likely to be passed, linked, or shared. And that’s what you want. Why? Because the more your piece of content is linked or shared, the bigger potential it has of reaching more customers.

More links means better rankings and more traffic from your target audience. More traffic means more customers. More customers means more links. It’s a magnificent cycle to be in!

Every piece of PR may have a different set of immediate goals, but the four goals mentioned above shouldn’t ever change. These are your universal constants in the online marketing world. If your content isn’t hitting these four goals, you need to rethink what you’re doing. It’s not that there is anything wrong with the writing itself, but perhaps you’re not writing with the right goals in mind.

Refocusing your content onto these new goals will help ensure that your online PR strategy lines up with a search and social world, which really just means it’s doing the job it was intended to do.

See all posts in this series:

Part 1: Intro / How Print Audience Differs from Web Audience
Part 2: Goals of Online PR
Part 3: Background Research
Part 4a: Crafting the Story p1
Part 4b: Crafting the Story p2
Part 5: Broadcasting the Message / Conclusion

Follow me at @StoneyD and @PolePositionMkg.

Several weeks ago I was asked to speak to the Cleveland, Ohio chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). In all my years of traveling and speaking in different venues, this one is near the top of the list of great experiences (SBMU still holds the top spot!)

I don’t know much about public relations, but I do know SEO and Social Media. My task was to communicate the value of SEO and Social Media to this group of public relations experts. What follows is the result. I owe a debt of gratitude to my friend Jennifer Evans Laycock, as she worked with me on parts of this presentation. If any particular slide is valuable (or pretty), it’s probably due to her!

How Print Audience Differs From Web Audience

There is a big difference between reading things online versus offline. We often want to think that reading is reading is reading. But reading here isn’t the same as reading there. The mindset between on- and offline is vast.

Think for a second. When you grab a book, a magazine, or even a printed piece of material, what do you do? Most of us find a comfortable place to sit, have a tasty beverage within reach, and our feet kicked up on an ottoman or coffee table. We’re settling in. But, when reading online, we generally don’t get that luxury. We’re at a desk with a keyboard and a mouse, probably piles of paperwork within eye shot and our list of tasks is fighting for our attention.

Two experiences, two different mindsets. Before we dive into some of the PR specific issues, let’s look at some of the differences between print readers and online readers:

Print Readers are Purposeful

As I alluded to above, print readers tend to be more purpose-oriented. We go out of our way to make sure our setting is just right. Maybe we turn the TV off, maybe we grab a blanket to cozy up under or maybe we take our reading material outside or to the park to enjoy a bit of nice weather.

Many of us have our “reading time.” We wait until the office is quiet, the kids are in bed, or a time of day when the distractions are lower than normal. We generally set out to accomplish something. “I’m going to read 50 pages in my book.” You want to read the daily paper, or that weekly magazine before the next issue arrives. Or maybe you’ve got a pile of work papers you want to get through before going into the office tomorrow.

This is the mindset of print. It’s goal oriented. You’re going to get through this and be done with it. It’s completed. Web readers, on the other hand, think very differently.

Web Readers Have a Lack of Focus and Intent

When we read on the web, many of us are sitting at a desk in front of a computer screen. While mobile devices are getting more popular, I don’t think this is doing anything to focus our reading. In fact, it may even be less focused as we’re on the mobile device only because we are doing something else at the same time. Hence the “mobile” part.

But either way, web reading on any type of computer tends to be much more haphazard. It’s not like a book or a magazine. It’s more about finding small snippets of information, quickly digesting it and moving on. Our intent is usually more about immediate interest rather anything else. We may read a blog post, scan our twitter stream, scroll through our RSS feeds, or follow some links to a piece of content that looks like new information. And sometimes doing all these things at the same time!

Ultimately, we’re not settling in to read. We’re searching or scanning and we’re reading just enough to get what we need before we move on to another task or another piece of content. And that’s where it becomes a battle for those of us that produce content. We’re struggling to get the attention of a goldfish!

Internet Readers are Highly Distractable

One of the issues with people reading the web is that it’s usually a secondary activity. There is something, or often many things, going on around them at the same time. While reading a piece of content, an important email might come in to their inbox (or an interesting piece of spam, for that matter!) Or maybe their kids are throwing a football in the house and they need to be talked to in a nice, calm, rational way. Or perhaps someone IMs them and they start up a conversation.

When I’m on my work computer, I’m distracted by four monitors. Email, tasks, IM, Twitter, facebook and who knows what else is open in front of me at any given (or more likely, all the) time. Most people don’t have that many things open in front of them, but there is still plenty of distraction happening.

When on the web, our attention spans are shorter than normal. We don’t invest time to reading web content, and we’re often doing several other things at once. This makes it ever more difficult to get the attention of our audience. Bizy, bizy, bizy!

Internet Readers are Usually Multi-Tasking

Not only are we easily distracted when reading, most web readers are doing multiple tasks at once. That IM conversation that starts up may be going on simultaneously as we are reading. Or the article content we are writing leads us to research the topic to gather some thoughts and ideas. Or maybe we’re planning a vacation and reading up on locations and things to do.

This is the nature of the web. We go read (or search) not because that’s what we’re settling down to do, but because we’re doing something else and we’re using the web to accomplish that goal. Frequently, web reading is the secondary activity to the primary activity or goal we’re working on.

And since we’re using the web to complete a primary task, we go out looking for information that helps us achieve that goal. But instead of finding a few resources, we find, well, millions of pages of content at our fingertips, all clamoring for a piece of our divided attention.

The Internet is Highly Competitive When it Comes to Content

Billions of new pages of content are being added to the internet every day! Think about every new website, blog post, product page, twitter stream, facebook profile, or Google Place that gets created, and it quickly adds up. Billions of pages! That is a lot of new competition on a day-to-day basis.

Imagine turning your TV on one day and finding a billion new channels! Try channel surfing that! But that’s what we do on the web. We surf, search, follow and “like” our way through new content on a daily basis. The competition for our attention isn’t only endless, it’s growing!

This means we have to treat web content differently than print content. We have to write for the online audience. Taking into consideration all the things above, we have to know what our goals are and write in a way that enables us to not only get our audience’s attention, but to also make sure our content fulfills our intended goals.

Three Major Considerations for Online Content

When writing content for an online audience, there are three primary things we have to consider: search, social and conversions. Content that is designed for any one of these can succeed greatly at the one, but fail spectacularly overall.

Search Engines: Is your content developed with searchers and search engines in mind? If not, then you’re losing out on a significant portion of your audience. You need to make sure your content can be found, spidered and that it uses the phrases your audience is using. More on that later in this series.

Social Media: While not all content needs to be social content, social content has the ability to reach a much bigger audience. The question becomes, how do you turn “meh” content into “yay” content that gets passed around the social sphere. We’ll look at how to build content that gets noticed as well.

Conversions: Conversions is just another way to say “goals.” But on the web, the goal is to get your reader to take some kind of action; to “convert” from a reader to a subscriber, purchaser, communicator or whatever else you need them to do. If you know what your conversion points are, you need to make sure your content does more than inform, but drives each visitor to that point of taking action.

Good content accomplishes all three of these. Not only will it be well-optimized for rankings, but it will also be content that people find valuable enough to pass around their social profiles. On top of that, it’ll convert them into customers!

In the next post, we’ll look at the goals of online PR and what you want your public relations pieces to achieve on the web.

See all posts in this series:

Part 1: Intro / How Print Audience Differs from Web Audience
Part 2: Goals of Online PR
Part 3: Background Research
Part 4a: Crafting the Story p1
Part 4b: Crafting the Story p2
Part 5: Broadcasting the Message / Conclusion

Follow me at @StoneyD and @PolePositionMkg.

Question 6. Which provides the greatest benefit, on-page SEO or link building?

This is a tough question to answer because both can play a significant role in the success of a site trying to get to the top of the search results.

Here’s the basic rundown. A site that isn’t linked from any other site doesn’t stand a chance in the search results. It doesn’t matter how well-optimized it is, the links matter. At the same time, a site that is well-linked, but not optimized, CAN get good search engine rankings, but performance will always be sub-par.

Links are important to get on the map, but once there, the optimization plays a much more significant role in helping establishing good rankings. But, then there comes a point, again, where a site can only be so optimized, and the links are what is needed to tip the scales.

Got that? Links > SEO > Links!

7. How important is social media in relation to SEO?

Social media marketing is becoming increasingly important to the success of a website. Search engines are now considering many different social signals when determining relevance of a website, or even a particular web page.

The main issue isn’t whether or not to use social media, its how to leverage social media properly. Many businesses are using social media, trying to get that extra advantage. Unfortunately, they are not leveraging the social media channels in a way that maximizes their efforts into an effective marketing strategy.

When utilized properly, social media can be a strong link building strategy. A well-run social strategy can cover multiple aspects of the off-page link building efforts that search engines consider when determining the value of a website.

8. How does usability factor into SEO?

Search engines don’t have access to the usability data of every website. Though, as more people install Google Analytics or Adwords tracking code onto their websites, and surfers install the Google Toolbar into their browser, Google is able to get more and more of this information and can incorporate it into their ranking algorithms (though they claim they don’t and won’t.)

Short of using that data, search engines can see visitor bounce rates pretty well. Every visitor that clicks over to a site, then hits the browsers back button, sends a signal to the search engine that the visitor didn’t find what they were looking for.

Bounce rates can certainly be an important signal to the search engines. Making sure your visitors get the information they searched for, on the first, click is imperative.

Given access to enough data, I think the engines will look more closely at on-site usability issues. If few people make it to the conversion page, the engines may determine that your site isn’t a quality or trusted site, especially if it is compared to another site that does have better conversion rates.

9. My site is perfect and I don’t want to change anything? What can I do to get better rankings?

Well, in this case, the only thing you can do is to build links, employ social media, and build content. All of these are good strategies, but they also might not be enough. Sometimes you just have to come to the conclusion that your site isn’t as perfect as you want to believe it is.

If you want your site to be keyword optimized and have a significant chance of outpacing your competition in the search results, you have to be willing to make changes. I’m not talking about keyword stuffing or anything like that, but you do have to be willing to make tweaks and adjustments in order to ensure your content delivers for the searchers and provides enough signals to the engines for your targeted keywords.

10. I keep hearing about personalized results, local results, and blended results. How does this affect rankings?

In more ways than you probably realize. There is really no such thing as a #1 ranking anymore. Every search is essentially a unique search requiring a unique set of results. This means the search you perform on your computer will produce different results than the search your friend performs on their computer, even if they are in the same room as you.

Localization, personalization, and blended results have really changed the game. Not only do you have to optimize, but you have so many more options for getting your site in front of your search audience. If you’re a local company, then you’ll likely see traffic drop as your site no longer comes up in searches outside of your local area. But, you lose audience if you’re not coming up in their personalized results. This can be good if it weeds out those who are not part of your target audience, but can also help you if it puts you in front of a more targeted group.

Blended results give you more opportunities to get noticed. Video is the big “it” right now. If you create and optimize a video, it can get you additional exposure on the first page of search results. Same with optimized images, and even mentions, from those in your social circle.

Stay tuned for the last group of five answers…

If you’re in the market for a (quality) SEO, you’re going to find providers that go well beyond services aimed at achieving top search engine rankings. In fact, if your SEO only knows how to throw keywords you want to rank for onto your site pages, I can tell you that you’re NOT getting your money’s worth (even if you are only paying a few hundred dollars a month).

SEO, in today’s world, is much more about online marketing than it is about manipulating a site to achieve top rankings for a few keywords. Here are some key components to a well-rounded optimization campaign:

Keyword Research

Keyword research is one of the most important elements of the optimization process. While it’s not as important as the site architecture, you need to perform some initial keyword research in order to build your site architecture properly.

Spend some time to research your core terms, and then figure out how they will apply to your site. Be sure to build your site with your main keywords in mind, creating sections and pages around user search patterns.

Later, you’ll do more research and organization in order to make sure each of your pages is targeting your search audience in the best way possible.

Website Architecture

A solid architecture is the foundation for all your online marketing efforts. If your site isn’t built in a search engine friendly way, then you’re going to have trouble optimizing the site for search engines to index your data properly. You’ll also run into trouble with visitor usability.

It’s a good idea to start with some basic keyword research and information architecture (the site flow chart, if you will) to figure out how your site navigation and pages will be structured. Build this around your keyword research, while also keeping your industry and visitor expectations in mind.

Usability & Testing

You can get more sales by bringing more people to your site, or by improving the conversion rate. Bringing more people in before improving your conversion rate is like trying to fill a bucket with holes in it. Sure, if you pour fast enough, you’ll eventually be able to fill the bucket. But, if you plug the holes, you’ll fill it much faster and with a lot less waste.

In this case, instead of wasting water, you’ll be wasting money. Most companies fare far better by plugging the holes in their site to bring in those immediate sales, then worry about delivering more traffic to the site once that issue has been corrected.

Testing is an important part of this process. You can’t just make a change because it feels good. Test every change to see if it actually improves the bottom line or not. If not, change it back. If it does, keep it and move on to the next improvement.

Copywriting

A good Copywriter is essential to being sure that your content performs its conversion duties properly. Far too many people create text for the sake of text, not realizing that it is an extremely important part of convincing and converting searchers to become buyers.

If you lack good copy on a page, you just have a bunch of words and/or pretty pictures. Visitors read copy because it helps them learn about what you offer, the quality of the products or services, and what they can expect. It also tells them what to do next or provides them more ways to find needed information.

On-Page Optimization

On-page optimization is critical for optimization success, but it’s not a stand-alone process. It’s more of an oversight process. The SEO needs to have a balance between keyword targeting, usability, site architecture and more. SEOs have their hands in all of it, hopefully with the goal of creating a perfectly balanced page for both visitors and search engines.

Social Media / Links

I like Social Media over traditional link building because it is far more audience targeted. Link building is about getting a link purely for the “link juice” it provides. Social Media leverages your target audience to get links, name recognition, and branding. So instead of a link for link juice, you get a link for your audience that comes with link juice.

Using Social Media, each link gets passed around and broadcasted, which generates even more links, therefore reaching even more of your potential audience. When it comes to customer acquisition, the value is in Social Media. But, sometimes you just need a link. Either way, links are an important part of the process.

Analytics

Optimizing without analyzing is like getting all dressed up for a date, but not looking in the mirror before going out. Sure, you see people giving you a double-take as you walk by, but do you really know why?

Analytics provides you with the feedback you need to see why people are reacting they way they are. It allows you to plug more holes and open up other opportunities for success.

SEO Maintenance

SEO isn’t set-it-and-forget-it. It’s an ongoing process of optimizing, reviewing, analyzing, tweaking, and optimizing some more. There is always some new problem that can be uncovered and fixed. There are always more keywords that can be targeted. There is always something that can be improved.

SEO maintenance allows your SEO efforts not to go stale. Competitors are actively engaged in bumping you for those top spots. Inactive SEO makes that all the easier.

PPC

PPC isn’t necessary for an SEO campaign, but it can be a valuable asset. Roughly 30% of searchers click into the paid ads. That’s 30% of traffic you can be missing. Not only that, but running PPC ads with SEO efforts helps fill in gaps where the SEO is under-performing (there is always something, somewhere) and increases brand awareness where the SEO is performing strongly. This results in more traffic and higher sales.

As you can imagine, rolling all these into a single optimization campaign can be quite pricey. But, take any one of them out, and you’re missing a crucial component. Cut corners on any of them, and you’ve got half measures that may move you forward, but not necessarily as fast as you want.

This is where you have to balance budget with expectations and results. Lower your budget, and you have to lower your expectations… because you will get lower results. Increase your budget, and you can increase your expectations because that will increase results.

Leave something out, and you may get good results in one area, but it won’t necessarily translate to good results in another.

For example, even if you get rankings, but no one is converting, what’s the point? Or, you can test and make sure your pages convert well, but if you’re not driving traffic to your site, then you’re just all dressed up with nowhere to go. If you build traffic through Social Media, but the site isn’t optimized to target specific types of keyword searchers, you’ll see higher than normal bounce rates. I could go on and on…

Unfortunately, too many people look at all of these as separate entities that can be added or removed ad hoc. And while they can, they are best when working together for a common goal: your business success.

Understanding expectations for business growth is important for any business owner. If you don’t have some idea of what to expect, you’re kinda flying blind. You can’t plan, budget, or hire, unless you have an idea of what’s coming down the way.

Setting client expectations isn’t easy. We live in a sales oriented world and people want to hear how you’re going to bring them vast sums of wealth with the magical arts of SEO. Unfortunately, it’s never that easy.

This client’s first site had dramatic success when we took over their SEO several years ago. Of course they are in a niche industry, and this was in the early days of SEO. But, we’ve successfully fought back some pretty high-profile competitors over the years.

The new site is in a much bigger niche, and therefore more competitive. Some of the same companies that compete against the first site also compete here, but because of the popularity of the niche, the competition is much more fierce. In addition to that, the competition is also firmly established now, so the game has changed, and the recipe for success is different than before.

I’ve explained all this to the client so they don’t have the same expectations as before. They simply can’t.

But, they still want to know something. They have a business to plan for and want to know if they can expect to make a profit the first year. They need to be found on the search engines and social platforms.

Therein lies the problem. They wanted to be aggressive, so we laid out an aggressive plan of attack that included SEO, link building, social media, and even pre-promotion, to get the ball rolling early. But, the cost for all that was too high for them, so they scaled it back considerably.

I get that… budgets are important. You can’t over-spend and expect to stay afloat. But, with online marketing, you can’t under-spend and expect to move up in the search results quickly.

Over the years, this client has kept an eye on the competition. When they feel that someone is closing in on them, they let me know, and ask what we are going to do about it to make sure they keep their positions. Well, there is only so much we can do within the budget allotted. So far we’ve done a great job of holding them off, but it’s just a matter of time that someone with deeper pockets, or at least willing to spend more on SEO, will come along. That’s a tough battle to fight.

The investment factor is just as important as any other in SEO. You can hire the best SEO in the world, but if you’re only paying them a few hundred dollars, they won’t be able to build success from that. You might get some good tips and advice, but it won’t be a full-scale SEO plan.

Even if you’re spending several thousand dollars a year on SEO, you eventually reach your limit of what you can achieve. That investment is good for so many hours, and those hours will only take you so far.

Periodically, the client keeps coming back to me asking for an expectations update. I am trying to give them the information they need, but it’s difficult. The on-page SEO will be an ongoing process. We’ll do as much as their budget allows. It’ll be solid, but limited by hours.

It is important to note that this client also took social media and link building into their own hands. So a lot depends on how they handle those aspects in-house and how aggressive they are; whether they attack it correctly or are just self-promoting (which doesn’t go over so well in social media). It also depends on whether they are just pumping out social content or actually engaging with the community.

A lot is also riding on them implementing the SEO recommendations. With the first site, there are still things we have been struggling to get implemented that are crucial, but we keep getting rebuffed. Again, for them it’s a time/money issue. The cost of making architectural and CMS changes can be significant. But, the cost in lost momentum can be greater.

Ability, time, and willingness to invest in your SEO is crucial. The success of a business doesn’t just rely on the SEO, or just the social media, or any one other thing. It relies on a combination of many things that all need to work together. And, it relies on how aggressively each of those will be pursued.

So, is setting client expectations difficult? It sure is. Does that mean we can write it off? Nope. Clients need to know these things, so take your best shot! Just keep in mind that expectations are a crap shoot. There are so many factors at play. But, you’ll always have your best chances of success if you move forward aggressively.

What do all of these companies have in common? They all want to grow, but are pulling back on their investments when they should be investing more.

Let’s take a look at each of these to dissect where they are going wrong.

One More Step to Conversion

The first company will definitely get some traction from increases in Social Media efforts. But, with a site that isn’t fully optimized, they are pouring water into a leaky bucket. I’m certain that they’ll build some brand name recognition, see their traffic increase, and make more sales as a result of increasing their Social Media budget. But, will it be the same amount of increased traffic and sales if had they kept their SEO budget in tact?

Hard to say, but my guess is no.

Social Media is a great vehicle to drive relevant traffic and build links. Like a good infomercial, it gets people’s interest. SEO is about attracting those who are already interested. The difference between the two is huge. With Social Media, you have an additional layer of conversion. You have to get them interested and then make them want to buy, and then convince them to buy from you. With SEO, they are already interested, and you just simply show them that you have what they want.

The process of optimization is building a site that gives searchers more of what they want. You want to make sure your site meets their needs, not just peaks their interest.

Saving Money Means Having More Money to Lose

The second company, the one pulling their PPC and bringing it in-house, is also likely to lose ground. Not that there is anything wrong with doing things in-house, unless of course you really don’t have the knowledge, skill, or manpower to handle it. And, that is the case here. From what I understand, the hourly rate this company was being charged had not changed in the last 5 years. The company managing their account, at long last, wanted to bring the rate in line with their current pricing. For the company being managed, the new “expense” is just too much.

What’s likely to happen is, as their in-house team struggles to learn the ins and outs of PPC, they’ll start to see their click troughs decrease and cost per clicks jump. It won’t happen overnight, but unless they have the time to invest fully into their PPC knowledge and management skills, and include ad and landing page testing, their campaigns will begin to suffer, as most inactively managed campaigns do.

In the attempt to save a few dollars, any savings will be lost in poorer PPC campaign performance. Instead of a campaign that continually increases profit, it’ll stagnate, at best, and lose money, at worst.

Moving Forward Isn’t Always Progress

The last company has a good SEO campaign going, and they have been advised for some time to engage in Social Media, a plan which they have back-burnered for years. Only recently have they begun moving forward with it. The problem is, that even though they know about Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, blogs, and the like, they have no idea how to leverage them properly.

In sports terminology, they know who their best players are, but they don’t know what positions they play, or, for that matter, how to create a winning play using each player properly. Will they figure it out? Well, they may manage to stumble along long enough to learn a few tricks. But, will their Social Media profiles be optimized to reach the most people the quickest? Highly doubtful.

When moving forward with Social Media, the set-up is the most crucial part. Setting it up wrong is like building a house on sand. It works great for a while… until you realize that you need a better foundation. The whole house has to be moved, and that’s not an easy task, nor does it always allow for a seamless transfer. And, often times, pieces get lost along the way.

They’ve already made a number of rookie mistakes that, if not corrected, will cost them dearly later on. Again, they are saving a few dollars by having their in-house employee get their Social Media together, but this is no expert. It’s someone who’s knows how to use Social Media, but not how to market with it. That’s like hiring a coach based on his extensive experience watching sports on TV!

Online marketing is no little league game. This is the big leagues. Whether it’s SEO, PPC, or Social Media, you can’t play tee-ball when you are trying to compete in the majors. If you’re lucky, holding back on your online marketing investments can prevent you from building up the momentum you need to overcome your competition. If you’re not lucky, it’s gonna cost you a lot more money to fix it later than to do it right to begin with… right NOW. That’s not just money lost, that’s more profits lost too.

Note: Recently I’ve gotten some ribbing from friends and colleagues about my exceedingly numerous multi-part posts. In order to wean myself off my favorite form of not-having-to-think-about-what-I’m-going-to-write-about-next, I’ve combined all 12 parts of this series into a single post. Enjoy!

Part 1: Guilty of Crimes No One Committed

A lot of people subscribe to the “Guilt by Association” theory in online marketing. This theory suggests that you are who you associate with. I agree there is some definite truth to this mindset, but, like a lot of things, it can also be taken to a paranoid extreme. This fear leads some people into a paralysis that ultimately hinders their online marketing efforts rather than helping them.

“Guilt by Association” extremists work hard to keep themselves squeaky clean. They tread extra carefully with who they associate with in an effort to ensure that they are never found guilty of crimes they haven’t committed. In order to stay “pure”, they avoid having online relationships with some who they believe may have broken some rule at some point that, likely, nobody even cares about.

Part 2: Google’s Guidelines Don’t Rule the Web

With Google controlling so much market share, many business owners and online marketers are scared of doing anything that might seemingly violate Google’s Guidelines. We know Google looks at both positive and negative attributes, including your associations, when developing your overall trust profile. But we often do ourselves a disservice when we let Google’s Guidelines dictate everything we do on the web – even in areas that don’t have any specific connection to Google.

There is nothing wrong with keeping a clean profile and ensuring you don’t do anything that violates the search engine guidelines. There is also nothing wrong with making sure you associate your online profile with people you know will help you and not hurt you. But there comes a point where it borders on paranoia, at best, and counter-productive, at worst.

Part 3: You Have No Control Over Who Associates with You

One of the problems with worrying too much over your online profile is that you have little to no control over who associates themselves with you. Anybody can link to you, anybody can scrape your content, anybody can share your post with their friends, and anybody can retweet you. If you’re unhappy about who’s doing any of these things, your sole recourse is to contact them, ask them to stop, and then cross your fingers.

Google (and the other search engines) know this. They knew it back when they made links a part of their algorithms. They knew it when people started scraping and duplicating your content. And they know it now in an age of RTs, Likes, Mixxes, Stumbles, and whatever else we do with content we like.

Google will not hold you responsible if someone promotes you and then goes off and violates Google’s Guidelines.

Part 4: You are Responsible for Who You Associate With

If there is one constant in the world of online promotion, social media profiles, and search engine rankings, it is that you do have some responsibility for who you choose to associate with. In the real world, it is often said that you can tell a lot about a person by the friends they have. If you’re associating with thieves, liars, spammers, and cheats, you don’t have to be a thief, liar, spammer, or a cheat to get the reputation of one (or as an enabler of one). Either way, your associations affect you.

Part 5: You Are Not Responsible for the Entire History of Who You Associate With

There is some truth, both in real life and on the web, that you can learn a lot about a person by who they associate with. But it is also true that you cannot not be held accountable for the actions of every person you’ve shaken hands with.

In the social sphere of the web, retweeting or liking someone’s single message is not an endorsement of every tweet, post, thought, or blog they ever published. Even the worst offenders do something right! Making note of the positive doesn’t suddenly hang all their negative around your neck as if you’ve endorsed it all.

Parts 6-10: yada yada yada

Part 11: Everyone’s Got Some (Negative) History

No matter how squeaky clean you want to keep your social media profile, the only way to stay squeaky clean is to not associate yourself with anyone. The only person who does not have something negative in their profile is likely the person who has no profile whatsoever.

Or you can check the complete historical profile of every person before you RT, Stumble, Like, or whatever. Of course, even with those who pass the test, what guarantees do you have that they won’t do something shady in the future? Not only do you have to check the historical profile before you connect with them, you have to keep checking back to make sure you still want to be connected with them.

Part 12: We Are All Violators

Sooner or later, whether you like it or not, you’re going to violate some guidelines somewhere, including Google’s. It’s inevitable. Which is why we can’t live and breathe by every guideline that Google puts out.

Keep in mind, those who try hard to stay violation-free are often those that violate guidelines the most. They just hide it better.

And the search engines likely know this too.

I’d love nothing more to see a backlash over the vast amounts of free crap available online and the sites that provide it. Searchers and internet users would begin to demand quality and search engines wouldn’t reward those sites with the greatest amounts of crap over those with smaller amounts of quality content.

I love that the Internet is free and there is tons of free content available at my finger tips. Sites such Search Engine Guide provide a lot of free content to their readers and make their money by selling ad space. The idea is this: the higher quality of content, the more traffic the site will receive, the more visitors will click on ads, the more ad space can be sold for, the more money can be made.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work that way. Enter MFA sites.