The Maine SEO Blog

It’s a week late but…
I attempted to live blog at the Social Media FTW conference, and my computer died in the middle. The one workshop I got to see; just so happens it was my boss’s (TRB) and low and behold, it’s about search too. Here’s a recap for your Social Media-Search pleasure:

Holistic Web Marketing

• Attraction
• Retention
• Conversion
• Measurement

SEO: Page Content

• Where should you put your keywords?
  - Title
  - Navigation
  - Headers
  - Content
  - On-site links
• Keyword Research
  - Brainstorm key phrases
  - Test your beliefs
  - Rewrite your copy

SEO: Link Building

• Traditional, “juice” carrying links
• No-follow links

Social Media Tools

• Blog
• Social Networking sites
• Microblogging
• Photo/video sharing
• Social Media publishing sites

Three Faces of Blogs

• Actual Blog
• Email signup
• RSS feed

Social Media, “Big 3″:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Facebook

Building a social media audience/community

• Complete your profile
  - Photo
  - Bio
• Upload your contacts
• Build organically [when in Rome]
• Provide value

Importance of Video

• Upload a video of you talking, upload to YouTube
• Videos rank too!

Social Bookmarking

• Digg
• Delicious
• StumbleUpon (“the best way to lose 2 hours of your life, every time you’re on it”)

Social Media Publishing

• Squidoo “lens” – Rich created a collection of videos on Google Analytics, ranks well

Keyword analysis improves your

• Blog
• LinkedIn profile
• Tweets
• YouTube videos, etc.

SE results include:

• Web site
• Blog
• LinkedIn profile
• YouTube videos
• Flickr photos
• Squidoo lenses & Hubpages

SEO & SM

• link juice “carrier” – SM links are nofollowed, but can eventually create follow links
• improves tough-to-optimize websites (i.e. flash)
• helps new sites (by making them viral)

Takeaways

Update: Rich posted this presentation at slideshare.

Nicki Hicks
#ftw09 pseudo live blogger

Yesterday, my boss helped put on the Social Media FTW Conference (no, it doesn’t mean that; but: For the Win!). As sponsors and exhibitors, the flyte crew got to go and help out.

Since we were so busy helping people sign up for Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn at the kiosks, we couldn’t catch many sessions; so I can only assume the speakers were rock stars.

Why? I’ve never seen so many newbies so excited about social media. Any apprehension? Gone. Any questions? Kaput. Simply: “Hi I’m ready to join Twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook. Show me how.”

I can’t say enough about the atmosphere yesterday. While it may have been a little hot and sticky, there was a fairly obvious mixture of newbies vs. social media all stars. It mattered not. Everyone was welcome, and by the end of the day, everyone was on Twitter.

Here’s one of the rock star panels (for blogging) with Sarah Wallace, Carl Natale, and Lynnelle Wilson:

Read other (really great) posts about the FTW conference:

• #ftw09 – HUGE Success for Social Media in Maine by Jason Blais
• Social media gets simplified at FTW by Justin Ellis
• Social Media and Traditional Media FTW by Jeff Parsons
• Social Media #FTW09: Feeds the Hungry by Stacie Chalmers
• Social Media FTW: A Win, Win for Everyone by Sarah Wallace
• UPDATE: Why conferences are successful by Carl Natale
• UPDATE: The Social Media FTW Fall Conference #FTW09 by Rich Brooks
• The official thank you by Social Media FTW

Nicki Hicks
Maine Social Media

Anchor links aren’t for everyone or every website. However, a short list linked to anchors sections below can be incredibly helpful for readers. We use it on our SEO page like this:

With frost eminent, and more lettuce (and other assorted vegetables) than I know what to do with, I searched for “can you freeze lettuce” (knowing full well that even if you could, I probably wouldn’t want to anyway).

When I searched, I found this result (which told me I could indeed freeze it, but the taste would be compromised), accompanied by an even cooler discovery: an extra link to the anchored section I was looking for!

I’m not sure if this is a new development or not – as I’ve never seen or heard of it before. [Update: Because it is new!] But it just goes to show you – those anchors are important!

Nicki Hicks
Won’t ANYONE take this zucchini?!?!

Your SEO just gave you a keyword analysis or a link building report. It looks like there’s a lot to do, but don’t get overwhelmed. The good news is you can do a little at a time, and here’s how:

Website

Update your titles, headers, and meta-descriptions to incorporate your keywords. Each page on the website should target a specific set of keywords – and these three spots are the most important places for them.

Then, work to update your copy. For static websites that may not need many copy changes over time, it’s still a good idea to take a look at every once in a while. Ask yourself: is all of this information correct and up-to-date? What other (new) things might my site visitors want to know? With keyword analysis in hand, see where you can add any to make your page copy more keyword rich – without going overboard.

Finally, add alt tags in order to optimize your images.

Then, constantly try to acquire incoming links to the website. Use your SEO’s link building report as a guide. Then think: who would be interested in linking to you? What could you offer for a link (free sample, free e-book, etc.)?

Blog

Add more content by blogging. Here’s where you can target niche keywords that you may not otherwise in the website. So take your list of keywords and leverage those low competition, highly searched longtail titles.

The blog is also a great way to acquire incoming links – as it’s less of a sales pitch than the website. Then, any links coming to the blog will push link juice to your website, since they are linked to one another.

Articles

As far as using keywords, article marketing is quite a bit like blogging. The difference is, you might post an article with a distribution site that will put your content on a high ranking website. (Again, just another way to rank at the search engines.)

Also, be sure to include a short bio at the end of the article, including a link back to your website and/or blog!

Social Media

I could talk all day about how great social media is for your search visibility, but I’ve always been a hands-on learner. So take the time to sign up. Create a Facebook fan page, Twitter account, and LinkedIn profile for you and/or your business. Then play.

Social media can be leveraged in very different ways for different businesses. So find out what people in your industry (nudge, nudge..your competitors) are doing (right and wrong) and you’ll be well on your way!

To recap: how to put SEO into action…

• Content: No SEO can say it enough – search engines love content. The more unique content you create in the more places, the more opportunity you have to be found.
• Link building: Link building is best done slowly, and over time. Search engines like it better that way, plus it makes it a little easier on you too
• Analytics: Now the fun part – check to make sure what you’ve been doing is working!

Nicki Hicks
Making SEO Actionable

First of all, what the heck is a meta-description, anyway?

Unlike titles and headers, you’ll never see the meta-description when you’re on a website. It’s only in the code:

<meta name="description" content="A blog by flyte new media about Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, and Web 2.0 snippets everyone is entitled to know." />

Your description should do just that: describe what is on that particular page. Ideally, no two meta-descriptions on your website should be the same.

So why should you have a meta-description?

There’s another place you can see meta-descriptions: search engines.

That’s right. More often than not, you decide what goes there.

From an SEO perspective, the meta-description is where you should include keywords you’re targeting, your geographic location, as well as your contact information (just in case someone is searching on their smart phone and can click on either your phone number or email right then and there.)

From a usability standpoint, the meta-description is where you have the opportunity to entice visitors. What can you say in order to get people to click on your website rather than the competition?

What happens if I don’t have a meta-description?

This is why I said more often than not you choose what goes there. Other times…

• You might have a meta-description, but the searcher’s query didn’t apply to your meta-description. In this case, Google might take a snippet of your copy to display.
• If you don’t have a meta-description at all, again, Google will usually choose applicable bits of your copy.
• I recently noticed Google will pull descriptions from its own Google Directory. So if you have a listing there, make sure the information is accurate and reads like you want it to.

So what are you waiting for? Get going and write those meta-descriptions!

Nicki Hicks
Descriptive is as descriptive does

Google is still king, but Microsoft’s Bing has been getting a lot of press (I do enjoy the Bing! noise). So while I will forever optimize for Google first, it’s important to understand what other search engines care about.

For the most part, Bing follows the trends of other search engines: title tags, headers, meta-descriptions, and links (both incoming and intra-site) are all important. There are, however, some differences that Bing appears to hold near and dear; and here’s what you can do to accommodate the newest search engine…

1. Get the Bing Toolbox

Like Google’s Webmaster Tools, the Bing Toolbox is a great way to discover errors more quickly. It also has a unique set of interesting data for your statistical pleasure, including backlinks and outbound links, crawl dates, and a keyword tool to show how well your site is optimized for them. You can also submit your site to Bing through the Toolbox.

2. Focus on your URLs

Bing is especially aware of keywords in domains and URLs. Just take a look at the screen shot below. A search for “Maine SEO” lands this blog in the first two spots!

As I’ve talked about before, Google puts little, if any, weight on keyword rich domains or URLs. Established URLs are the name of the game for Google, but it seems that if you want to rank well at Bing, you’d best get yourself some keyword rich URLs.

3. Rely on exact match

Similarly, Bing focuses on exact match keywords. While Google is of the school of related match, you’d best know which keywords your customers are searching for. Obviously this has both benefits and downfalls.

4. Age matters

Unfortunately for bloggers and new sites, it seems that Bing is focused on older sites that have built reputation with age. Not a whole lot you can do here other than sit around and wait. It does cause you to think twice before creating a new domain, rather than sticking with an established one (hint: always pick the latter).

5. Think about anchor text before quantity…or quality

Anchor text is important to all search engines, but evidently with Bing it’s even more important than the quality or quantity of backlinks. Most likely, this is the reasoning behind #3 and coincidentally #2, as more often than not, sites will link using the same keywords used in the domain/URL.

See how the two compare for the same “maine seo” query:

Nicki Hicks
All search engines were not created equal