07 Jun 2010
by Glenin Online Marketing, Social Media, tips Tags: advantage, authority, Essential, first, success
Plunging into social media for the first time can be a bit daunting for individuals or businesses. There is a learning curve when it comes to becoming more social online, and it can take a while to learn what works and what doesn’t. Here are a few of the best Do’s and Don’ts that can save you time and help grow your social media authority more quickly.
1. Start small
You’ll want to start small and try a couple services out at a time. Oftentimes newbies sign up for every social network under the sun and try to grow each of them. Guess how long they last? Building profiles for multiple social sites is hard work, so it’s best to start by only tackling a couple at first.
Once you find the right ones for you or your brand, then start to narrow your focus on those. Eventually you may want to scale your social media strategy to include more services, but you have to crawl before you can walk.
Start small, and then grow to other social networks as your confidence grows. Success breeds success.
2. Get a widget
Put a widget up on your site for your social networks.
The best place to find followers is your own blog or site. Also, it’s much easier to get your readers and friends to vote or retweet your content than strangers. Adding a widget next to your content can help.
Facebook has a
widget generator you can use, and the
Tweetmeme badge is easy to add to your site as well.
Read full pust on toprankblog.com
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Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
9 Essential Social Media Tips for Beginners | http://www.toprankblog.com
03 Jun 2010
by CMO.com | Social Mediain Alaska Airlines, Analysis and Measurement, Branding, Branding and Communications, Companies, Consumer Behavior, Digital Branding, General Management, Innovation, Insight, Kodak, Market Research, Marketing Measurement, Online Media, P&G, Reporting, Social Media, Strategic Planning, Strategy, T-Mobile, microsoft Tags: Alaska, Branding, measurement, microsoft, theory
Going beyond theory to fundamental changes in practice, senior marketers from brands such as Kodak, Alaska Airlines, T-Mobile, Microsoft and P&G shared how they are taking steps to transform online branding, digital measurement and creative execution.
26 May 2010
by Greg Jarboein Analytics & ROI: Web Analytics Tags: Chief Strategy, Click, Coremetrics, Hall, Seton
The best presentation at last week's
Social Media Strategies conference in Santa Clara, CA, was the keynote by John Squire, Chief Strategy Officer of Coremetrics, on measuring ROI in Social Media. He presented the latest research into social media and a quick case study from Seton Hall University.
Click to read the rest of this post...
26 May 2010
by Adam Singerin Enterprise SEO, IMSmn, Integrated marketing summit, Local SEO, Marketing PR Conferences, Online Marketing, SEO, SEO Tips, search-engine-optimization Tags: Blog, CEO Lee Odden, Chief, group, SEO
At the recent Minneapolis Integrated Marketing Summit, TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden moderated an exciting panel of a diverse group of SEO professionals:
- Alex Bennert – Chief Search Strategist at The Wall Street Journal
- Brian Kleisner – Search Engine Marketing Manager for FindLaw
- Bill Leake – CEO of Apogee Results
The focus of the panel was on search engine optimization best practices, and panelists discussed everything from leveraging web analytics for decision making to how to scale efforts and many topics in between. Following is a summary of each presenter’s top points:
Alex Bennert – Chief Search Strategist at The Wall Street Journal
Alex spoke on the important of using data to make decisions, including leveraging sources such as Google webmaster tools. The information provided in webmaster tools has grown significantly since they have implemented it.
Her favorite addition is the “breaking data” feature, which tells you all of your top keywords driving traffic to the site. You can use this to see terms that gain a high volume of impressions but a low volume of clicks. From this, you’ll know that the page can be optimized better to potentially get more clicks.
And it doesn’t even have to be on page or changing keywords. Sometimes, just testing changes in meta description can help gain additional clicks. It’s something we have control over and can see near immediate results for changes. Leverage meta descriptions for clicks, and to help promote your brand and spread key messages.
Have you given access of webmaster tools to members of your team? You should consider this so they can act on data.
Additionally, branded searches and navigational queries are extremely valuable for a brand and should not be discounted. At the WSJ, hundreds of thousands see our search result monthly from brand terms.
Alex then proceeded to speak on sitemaps. She noted, if you have a large enterprise level site with frequent information that’s added/deleted, a sitemap is vital. That’s because you don’t have to wait for search engines to re-crawl your site, you’re providing it to them in a format they’ll immediately get. At the Wall Street Journal, we organize our sitemaps into specific types of content – i.e. stock queries, articles, etc. Then we can see immediately when problems crop up.
In terms of getting “old school” reporters to create additional content, like to help them see the value of SEO by showing examples of their own content. For example, I find a headline they wrote and show them how not at all findable in search, whereas others are easily findable. By showing examples, Alex is able to be persuasive and help reporters create SEO friendly content.
Brian Kleisner – Search Engine Marketing Manager for FindLaw
Brian spoke on the balance between search, and how search interacts with usability.
“Arriving from search is to enter the unknown:”
1. The searcher’s expectation for what they think they’ll find must be met.
2. Information must be presented to enable a decision or make choices.
3. The next steps must be clear.
4. The entire experience must feel safe, secure, authentic and believable.
Usability and search both share common concerns:
- Findable
- Credibility
- Usable/useful
- Valuable/desirable
- Offering choice
Addressing this, Brian went on to cite several SEO tips:
SEO Tip #1: Use a keyword oriented tagline with the “Who” and “What answered.
SEO Tip #2: Use content to answer the questions naturally making sure to include the appropriate keyword. For example:
- Where is your company located?
- When is the next release for “keyword”?
- Why are you an expert on “keyword”?
Asking these questions helps generate fresh content, better defines anchor text, provides new ideas for navigation text link labels and increases understandability for humans, search and those using assistive technology to interact with your website.
SEO Tip #3: Consider local SEO
Local search has special rules for SEO:
- Claim your listings on the search engines and beyond (Yelp, CitySearch, etc.)
- Be consistent, use the same address and phone number across the web.
- Monitor and manage you and your competitor’s reputation.
Bill Leake – CEO of Apogee Results
Bill spoke about integration opportunities between Search and other marketing tactics.
He started by speaking at a high level, and that “more arrows are generally good.” Marketing works best when it works together. As we talk about ways to improve search, remember it is just another piece of marketing.
Start by defining what you really want from your marketing efforts and create a key objective.
Bill then shared integrated tactics that will improve ROI of search.
1. Integrate paid media and “earned media” for better results.
2. Consider event and name driven paid and natural search.
- Leverage a national events and names for dirt cheap search traffic.
3. House list/direct mail tie-ins: integrate online marketing with more traditional focused direct marketing (think online mail-merge).
4. Create a more integrated search – use PPC traffic with your web analytics and your lead forms for list building and enhances lead generation. Leverage services such as
- DemandBase
- Jigsaw
- Other list building via web traffic
Most B2B terms are not looked at “for fun” they are looked at due to pain points on the part of the searcher.
5. Improve spending by using down-funnel data.
One client was spending 110K per month with well understood and optimized CPL metrics. They started doing PPC optimization using human scrubbed lead data (not web forms). Results: 43% shift in PPC spend allocation, 31% software sales uplift.
6. Choose keywords on conversion metrics, not on search/reach/volume metrics. If you have paid search data, use that to determine what the money keywords are.
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Best Practices In SEO And Marketing: IMS MN 2010 | http://www.toprankblog.com
24 May 2010
by Splashpress Mediain Blogging Tips, Business Blogging, Business Logs Tags: blogging, Industry, information, Share, Value
It’s important that the content on your business blog is interesting, entertaining, useful, or helpful. In other words, your business blog posts must add value to the user-experience on your blog.
So what should you write about on your business blog?
That’s a common question that many businesses struggle to answer. Fortunately, I compiled a list of 20 business blog posts that add value to your blog, which are listed below:
1. Industry news
What’s going on in your industry? Write about news, changes, and so on.
2. Company news
Is there anything interesting in your company’s future? Share an insider’s perspective of your office or store on your business blog (without revealing proprietary information).
21 May 2010
by adminin Google, Google: Logos Tags: cool, game, Google, pacman, page
It’s google’s 30th anniversary and google is celebrating it big time. They have replaced the mighty google logo on their search page with an actual pacman game! You can play it with your keyboard cursor. Enjoy!
Toy Discoveries
Allo Famille
Équipement de hockey
Tags:
game,
pacman,
Google: Logos,
cool,
page,
Google
21 May 2010
by Glenin Online Marketing, SEO, SEO Tips, small business, small-business-marketing, small-business-seo Tags: SEO, SME
When it comes to marketing in the current economy, small businesses need all the help they can get. They don’t have the ad budgets, the personnel or the time that the bigger competition has. But none of those factors really matter to search engines, and SEO is a great way to both level the playing field and steal marketshare.
Here are a few tips that small businesses can use to improve their SEO and user experience.
1. Turn everything into content
Content is still King. Search engines still love unique content, and the more useful content there is on your website, the more opportunities you give searchers to find your products and services. Rob Snell gave a fabulous presentation at PUBCON South, and one of the main takeaways was how to turn everything on an e-commerce site into content. Here are some ways to “free” extra content on your site. Here were some of his tips:
- Record everything and transcribe it all into text. Interviews, conversations, product DVD’s, personal opinions, etc.
- Turn support emails into FAQ pages on your site
- Turn PDF’s into HTML pages (although PDF files can rank on their own)
- Start generating videos of everything
2. Make it personal
Small businesses have a major advantage that most bigger businesses don’t: A personal voice. By making your voice heard, you’re showcasing your authority in your market, and adding trust. Buyers love hearing recommendations or reviews, and are more influenced to buy from those vs. product feature and benefit pages. Consumers use search engines to research products, and other than the lowest price, they’re looking for recommendations. Give them some! If you have a catalog, make a buyers guide in addition to product listings. Show you’re an expert and turn your knowledge into personalized business. Teaching is a great way to make sales.
3. Optimize for local search
Odds are that your small business can take advantage of local search. 63% of consumers use search engines to research information about local companies. Start with Thomas’ excellent guide on local SEO tips that range from claiming your profile to adding media to submitting to content aggregators.
4. Improve your site’s speed
Small business sites can be notoriously slow. Site speed is usually one of the last things that small business owners care about. But now that Google has introduced speed into the ranking algorithm, it’s time to seriously start checking out how fast your site loads. But more importantly, when you improve your site’s speed, you’re also improving your customer’s experience. Don’t make users wait to buy your products! You can use tools like Web Page Analyzerand the Firefox extension YSlow! to see what’s taking your pages so long to load. If you’re using a blog or shopping cart software, search for caching plugins for your software.
5. Refine internal linking
Internal links can add value to your site considerably, but many small businesses don’t understand that you have to develop a linking mindset in order to really capitalize on it. It takes extra time to research old post links and include them in your articles, but the benefits are great. Sites like Copyblogger do an excellent job of referencing older posts in their articles. Not only does this strategy help with SEO, it also adds to the user experience, giving them more Think long and hard about your site’s linking architecture. Is your navigation schema getting to all of your content? Aside from adding sitemaps, related products and posts keep both visitors and search engines happy. Popular posts lists are also great for making sure your best content is getting seen and linked to.
6. Create content for people
If you’re generating content specifically for search engines, you’re missing a major chunk of your market. Humans don’t like to be bamboozled, and when they come to a page on your site that was obviously made for a search engine, they’ll leave in a hurry and never come back. Plus, only humans can link to your site. If you want to get more inbound links and retain customers, you need to write for customers. The goal to higher search results is still to get more people to your site. After all, search engines can’t buy anything from you.
7. Don’t fret about getting nofollow links
It’s easy to get carried away with only trying to get incoming links without the dreaded nofollow. But really, a link is still a link. If that link can bring in a potential customer, then you want it. If you’re only looking for specific types of incoming links, than odds are you’re missing lots of the low-hanging backlink fruit and worrying about the wrong things.
Who knows how long the nofollow link will be around? If you’re smart, you worry about what’s most important: creating great content. You can’t control how Google ranks things in the future. Focus on things you can control, like creating a killer experience for your customers. In the end, if you focus on giving your customers and visitors great content, many aspects of SEO will take care of itself. Great content attracts great links, especially when you promote it and leverage social SEO channels of distribution. If it’s good for your potential customers, odds are it’s good for SEO too.
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
7 Essential SEO Tips for Small Businesses | http://www.toprankblog.com
20 May 2010
by Jessica Dolcourtin Flash, Uncategorized, adobe, android Tags: adobe, android, Atlas, beta, Flash
Even before Adobe revealed its first full-fledged Flash Player for smartphones on Thursday, we got a chance to play online games and video from an Android phone.
Originally posted at
Android Atlas
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