The Maine SEO Blog

Yesterday, I attended a webinar from eMarketer with their CEO, Geoff Ramsey. Per usual, eMarketer boasted a ton of great statistics – many of which I won’t get into, but a few I will.

I’d like to start with a great quote Geoff gave during the presentation:

Think less about buying social media, and more about how you can earn and own it!

Geoff provided a ton of great stats showing that marketers are indeed thinking about social media - it’s at the forefront of most marketing strategies for 2010.

The base of social media spending, however, is small:

• Social media ad spending = 5.5% of total US online ad spending (eMarketer)
• For average US B2B/B2C marketer, social media = 5.6% marketing spend (Duke University)
• Among 73% of US social media marketers, budgets are <$25,000

What are people doing socially?

• Placing ad dollars on social sites = 40-48% of social media marketers
• Building on social presence = 57-74% of social media marketers

10 Best Practices for Social Media

1. Think social marketing, not media.
2. Know your objectives. (Top two objectives: enhance relationships with customers/clients, build company’s brand.)
3. Leverage trust.
4. Listening comes first.
5. Join the conversation – but add value.
6. Be authentic, humble, transparent.
7. Recruit from your core,
8. Target the influentials.
9. Adopt a long-term, real-time approach.
10. Integrate with other communications.

A few fun facts:

• Friends, family, and face-to-face personal interactions still trump “Social site” interactions.
• Less than 1/5 marketers are measuring social media ROI.
• Biggest problem w/ social media: lack of clear objectives.
• David Berkowitz’s post – 100 Ways to Measure Social Media

7 Guidelines for Achieving ROI from Social Media

1. Establish clear marketing goals (and then identify social metrics that directly support those objectives.)
2. Organize your metrics (and measurements) into a logical framework
   1. Exposure->Engagement->ROI/Outcome
3. Take a long-term outlook with social media interactions and measurements. It’s a commitment, not a campaign
4. If hard ROI metrics are difficult to track directly (like sales, leads, cost/sale, profit), consider a range of softer metrics (like consumer sentiment, video sharing rate, # followers/fans/brand searches) that can be linked to desired outcomes.
5. Determine a dollar value for customers who choose to opt in and engage with your brand via social networks.
6. Listening can save you market research dollars.
7. Build the technological capabilities to measure your customers’ complete digital footprint – in real time.

Geoff Ramsey, CEO of eMarketer

You can purchase the report here.

Recently I noticed one of my posts had 47 pingbacks. Forty. seven. Most of them were just filth – simply plugins that pull “similar” content. (And by similar, I mean that when I mention the word engineering, that my post shows up on Engineering blogs.)

Like this blog, many blogs mix comments and pinkbacks by default. Amongst all of the pingbacks, you can imagine how comments are lost.

So…are pingbacks worth having?

A lot of blogging platforms (WordPress included) automatically nofollows trackback, pingback, and comment links; so you aren’t losing any link juice or SEO value. Other than (maybe) a diamond-in-the-rough link, I don’t see much value in pingbacks.

The argument for pingbacks

There is always the other side of the coin. The one time I’ve seen value in backlinks is when I link to authoritative websites, like the official Google blog, that allow pingbacks. Here’s the traffic I got after linking to the Google blog for an April Fools Day post:

Lesson learned? It’s ok to link to others, but that doesn’t mean you have to allow pingbacks.

How to shut ‘em off

If you use WordPress, turning off pingbacks is easy. Just go into your Admin under Settings > Discussion. Uncheck “Allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks.)”

Remember, any old posts will still have pingbacks activated – so you can either manually delete any new pingbacks or manually uncheck pingbacks among specific posts.

Nicki Hicks
Anti-pingback

This morning, I attended my very first Social Media Breakfast Maine (or more commonly hashtagged #SMBME).

Today’s panel talked all about creating valuable (and creative) content. The speakers/topics included:

• Dave Weinberg – cellphoneSketchPad behind the screens
• Chris Cavallari – Creating Video Content for your Business
• Jaica Kinsman – Guiding Stars: Creating Our Brand Through Community Centered Content

Here are my takeaways…

Dave Weinberg

cellphoneSketchPad™ is Dave’s “digital pen on a virtual cocktail napkin.” When he started the website, he had one goal in mind: post one photo per day. From a simple start of broadcasting the post’s link on Facebook, Dave now has his content sharing ritual down to a science:

• First, he posts the photo. The photo includes both a teaser title and a description (sometimes, Dave teams up with the community to create witty titles/descriptions and even photos).
• Then, he tweets the title and bit.ly link to the blogpost.
• Next, he’ll Facebook it, and often create entire photo albums dedicated to photo stories.
• He’ll even post it on LinkedIn and other social media sites like plaxo.
• Dave will then post the photo to other image sharing sites, like Flickr.
• Finally, he tracks all of his bit.ly link traffic and monitors site traffic with Google Analytics.

He had some great one-liners, including ”Social media doesn’t cost you anything…but time.”

Dave’s best advice for connecting with his community? Be genuine, and respond when someone comments on your Facebook page [or Twitter...or LinkedIn...].

You can follow Dave on Twitter, like cellphoneSketchPad on Facebook, and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Chris Cavallari

Q: Guess what the #1 question Chris gets when people find out he’s a cameraman?

…Give up?

A: “What camera should I buy?”

Ok, on to the good stuff…

As Chris is a cameraman (at Filmosity), he talked all about video – and its content opportunities. Chris says content isn’t king - instead – he says sharing, sustaining, and creation are all equal.

Create

• Equipment – Use these tools to create value. (If they aren’t good or right, it can be a huge distraction!)
  • Lights
  • Camera
  • Tripod
  • Audio
• Production – Every good story starts with words.
  • Write (Pre-planning is essential.)
  • Shoot
  • Repeat
• Post-Production – The bane of Chris’s existence? People who say “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it in post LOL”
  • Editing
  • Graphics
  • Music (just not too loud!)

Share

• Live?
  • USTREAM
  • Livestream
  • Qik
• Taped?
  • YouTube
  • Vimeo
  • Others
• Location, location, location
  • What’s your subject?
  • Where are you going to shoot?
• The social medium – don’t forget about the social/social media (that doesn’t mean forgetting traditional media)

Sustain

• Stats
  • comScore – October 2009
    • 167 million views
    • 27.9 billion videos
  • comScore – December 2009
    • 178 million views
    • 33.2 billion videos
• Interactivity – Putting faces to names
  • Be social
  • Be informative
  • Be reliable
  • Understand
• Quality
  • Audio
  • Video
  • Writing
• Content
  • Grab attention (you have 7 [to 10] seconds to grab someone’s attention in a video)
  • Inform
• Consistency
  • Brand loyalty
  • Word of Mouth Marketing
• Relationships – Consistency is key to all relationships
  • Recognition
  • Loyalty
  • Trust

You can follow Chris on Twitter, Filmosity on Twitter, like Filmosity on Facebook, and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Update: Here is Chris’s presentation.

Jaica Kinsman

Guiding Stars‘ focus is to increase consumers’ health consciousness using a 3-star model (the more stars, the better!). They’ve found that, when faced with two competing products (one with stars and one without) consumers will more often than not choose the product with Guiding Stars.

What has that led to? There’s been a movement to make healthier products, so that they have stars!

Guiding Stars focus

• Become a trust agent
• Engage with the community
• Increase exposure

Approach

• Before:
  • Selling
  • Large campaigns
  • Control message
  • Hard to reach
• Now:
  • Connecting
  • Small acts
  • Transparency
  • Available everywhere

What have they been doing?

• Connecting with key influencers
• Reaching out to the community for an eclectic group of blog contributors, including:
  • Writers and Moms, like Sarah Wallace and Heather DiSimone
  • Clients, like Jon Plodzik
  • Guiding Star team members, like Jaica herself
  • Chefs, like Expert Chef Erin Dow
  • Personal trainers, like Mark Nutting
  • And others simply interested in wellness, like Amanda O’Brien and, ahem, moi
• In turn, those community contributors help spread the message on Facebook, Twitter, and beyond
• With no budget, Jaica gets images from resources like Flickr (using Creative Commons) and iStockphoto
• Guiding Stars has also been doing a great job keeping up with their YouTube campaign, videos which Jaica reposts back into the blog

Jaica’s takeaway for putting content out there? Add value, make people apart of something, and make it fun!

You can follow Jaica on Twitter, Guiding Stars on Twitter, like Guiding Stars on Facebook, and connect with her on LinkedIn.

To follow the #SMBME conversation…

• Make sure you check out the Social Media Breakfast Maine website.
• Follow the hashtag on Twitter.
• Follow the creators – Amanda O’Brien and Kyle Pouliot.

Clients often ask: I understand and appreciate the value of blogging, but shouldn’t I keep some things a secret?

The answer is two-sided. Obviously, you should keep classified information to yourself – even product or service pricing, if you prefer. Otherwise, as long as you feel comfortable (from both a moral and business sense) to share, share!

Think about it: your competitors, industry leaders, and others who are sharing information, ranking well, and getting leads. That should be you.

Here at flyte, we write about everything from what a good bounce rate is in Google Analytics and advice on keyword rich URLs to how to print Keynote presentations and what #ff is exactly.

Why?

Well just take a look at the Analytics for the Maine SEO blog. Here are the top five keywords that bring this blog traffic…

…or the top 6 keywords over at the flyte blog…

So you see, putting information out there is a good thing. You might just be able to give someone the tip they’ve been scouring the Interwebs for.

Does it mean do-it-yourselfers get my service for free?

Yes. But, then again, a lot of people don’t have time to do what you do. Which is why they have to hire you.

Nicki Hicks
Sharing is Caring

What is the Goal of your News Release?

1. Communicate a message for public relations

• Choose broad key phrases
• Careful attention to submission categories (News sites and syndication networks use these categories to pick up releases)

2. Optimize content for search engines

• Choose broad key phrases for branding and reputation management
• Choose well-targeted key phrases for specific SEO effort

Goal -> Keyword -> Release Topic

Backwards from traditional news releases

• Goal – Public relations or SEO or both?
• Key phrase – Use tools for help
• Release topic – Decide how to frame your effort in a way that matches your goals

Don’t forget the “Triangle of SEO”

• Keyphrase
• Text backlink
• Optimized web page

Keyword Tools for Effectiveness News Releases

1. Google AdWords Keyword Tool

• Easy to use
• Important data
• Free
• From the source

2. The Wonder Wheel

• Visual representation
• Based on Google historical data
• Spawn new ideas

3. Market Samurai

• Great keyword research
• Quick, easy download
• Some other useful tools

Which key phrase should I use?

Keyword phrase profitability = High traffic & Low competition

• Don’t forget the art – it MUST make sense
• You know your business and your clients
• Look at the Top 10 – can you break into it?

Steps to finding a solid key phrase target…

• Google Keyword Tool – start broad and narrow
• Use Wonder Wheel to get ideas if necessary
• Plug phrase into Market Samurai for index and ranking competition
• Choose a phrase with: High traffic, low index competition, market viability, and accessible Top 10

Latent Semantic Indexing – What is it? Can it help?

• Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
• Latent – in the background
• Semantic – what does it mean
• Indexing – how the search engine organizes your content
• Don’t necessarily expect your target key phrase to be the most important
• The long-tail…again
• Where to find good words to help with LSI? Google!

How to use LSI?

Rule of thumb: Use one or two semantically related words (LSI) in your summary, and in your first sentence or two of the body copy. Use related word as a second link to an interior page.

Adding key phrases to your News Release

Headline

• Should you think like a robot or a person?
• Rule of thumb: Insert main key phrase

Summary

• Introduction and central purpose
• One or two sentences
• Rule of thumb: Insert key phrase and variation of your key phrase

Body Copy

• Variation of key phrase in first or second sentence
• Rule of thumb: Make sure key phrase is in first sentence or two and then forget about it!
• Rule of thumb #2: It’s all about the link (for SEO, that is)

Adding links to your Press Release

How many links?
Editorial guidelines allow for 1 link per 100 words of text

Really, how many links?
Match guidelines up to 5 (or 6) links

What links?
Rule of thumb: Make sure you have the following:

• Your company name linked to your Homepage
• A broad version of your main key phrase linked to your Homepage
• Targeted key phrase linked to interior page
• Targeted key phrase linked to interior page – LSI words!
• Fully qualified URL to your website

Your Key Phrase Plan – Your SEO Strategy

It all starts with your website content

• What key phrases are important to your content?
• What content will you build?
• Determine content and key phrase plan for 6-12 months

Identify your target key phrases

• Use various tools to find target key phrases

Your strategy should focus on the Triangle of SEO

• Get the key phrase, build the optimized page, get the targeted backlink

Use News Releases!

• Expert and authority source
• Backlinks are valuable
• You control the anchor text
• Own the SERP!
• Recommend minimum 1/month

Harry Brooks, President and Founder, Search First Internet Marketing

One of the first rules for keyword research is use more than one tool. Lucky for us, Google’s got a whole suite of tools – and better yet – they’re completely free!

1. Keyword Synonyms

I quite honestly don’t use the Google Synonym Tool as often as I probably should, but it will give you some great ideas when you start your keyword research.

2. Google Insights and 3. Google Trends

Google Insights will give you a good idea of what is popular right now (including similar “hot” keywords and phrases); while Google Trends gives a better indicator of how a keyword performs over time (Google has data as far back as 2004).

4. Google Analytics

You didn’t realize your Analytics could give you insight to what people are searching for?! Sure! Look no further than the keyword section. The bottom of the list will more than likely be rich with long tail searches. Maybe you could do a better job optimizing for those keywords, or maybe they’ll give you ideas for even more keyword research.

Another great place to look for keyword inspiration in Analytics is within your site search keywords. What were people looking for that they couldn’t find on their own? You might find some opportunity there.

5. Search-based Keyword Tool

Google’s Search-based Keyword Tool is based on AdWords bidding prices and competition, but you can get a great idea of search volume using it. It’s important to remember that this tool uses keywords in conjunction with existing websites. (So, if you don’t have a website yet, pop in one of your competitors’ sites!)

6. Google AdWords Keyword Tool

To date, Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool has been one of my favorite research tools. Again, based on AdWords competition, you’ll get the added benefit of global and local monthly search volume statistics.

7. (The New) AdWords Keyword Tool

I couldn’t be more excited for this new addition to the keyword research toolbox from Google: the new AdWords Keyword Tool. That much more robust, this tool adds a new column: local search trends. Even in a few short days of using it, I’ve found that, while you have to sort through the irrelevant keywords a bit more, you’ll get a ton of helpful synonyms and related search terms.

8. Google Sets

Ironically, I saw that Kasi Gajtkowski from Hall Web Services just put up a new blogpost about Google Sets – a new keyword research tool from Google. This tool will give you more loosely related (but still relevant) keywords related to the search terms you enter. That way, you’ll really be able to expand your keyword research and get some ideas you’d never thought of!

9. Google Suggest

While it’s not traditionally a keyword research tool, Google Suggest is an out-of-the-box way to get keyword ideas.

With so many free tools to choose from, you’re bound to be a keyword pro in no time. Which is your favorite to use?

Nicki Hicks
Google Tool Savant

Last year, I did a presentation for the seniors at St. Joseph’s College about how to get a job using social media. This semester’s class was kind enough to invite me back.

I spiced the presentation up a little and here’s the new version. Even in six month’s time, the takeaways are ever so slightly different:

• Be yourself online. If you’re witty, be witty. If you’re serious, be serious. It’s not worth trying to be someone you’re not.
• Always add value. No matter the video, photo, post, or tweet, make sure what you’re putting out there is valuable. (No one cares that you’re brushing your teeth right now.)
• For graduating seniors, doing a little clean up on their social profiles might be important. My rule of thumb? Don’t post something (post, tweet, photo, etc.) unless you’d feel comfortable showing your Mom…or your boss.
• Engage with your network online – especially job posting sites and potential employers. Don’t discount the value of face-to-face networking.
• Show potential employers you know how to brand yourself and can therefore brand your potential employer.

Recently, we launched a blog for P3ProSwing, a golf enthusiast’s dream company that specializes in golf simulator technology. P3ProSwing has everything and anything you could possibly need for your indoor golf escape – or practice arena – from golf stance mats to the analyzers themselves to the technology that powers them.

After optimizing the site, P3ProSwing wanted to take content creation to the next level: with a blog. Already, they’ve got a ton of great posts – from golf tips to technique drills – under their belt. Here are just a few recent posts:

• Indoor Golf: Do you have what it takes?
• Practicing putting is boring. Putting with eggs is fun.
• Golf Simulators: Fad or Here To Stay?

With the blog, P3ProSwing will be able to create targeted tidbits of information – that are not only helpful for golfers (from novice to expert) – but can also help increase their website’s search visibility.

So if you’re interested in improving your game with a golf swing analyzer or simulator, get in touch with P3ProSwing.

If you’re interested in creating targeted content, contact flyte new media.

Nicki Hicks
Maine SEO

Reverse Engineering the Search Rankings: Determining How the SERPs are Ordered and What You Need to To Do to Rise to the Top

Rand will cover:

• What is reverse engineering
• Search ranking factors
• Applying the process
• Examples in action

What is reverse engineering and why do it?

It is: a process to determine how a system is constructed. In this case, Google’s ranking algorithm for a particular query & result list.

Why do it:

Search Ranking Factors

There are over 200 ranking factors, some more important than others. This is the biennial survey SEOmoz conducts on ranking factors:

Trust & Authority of the Host Domain

Homepage Toolbar PageRank? – Rand cautions against this. Homepage PR is not about the domain, it’s on a URL basis.

(By the way, this URL will give you nice, clean search result screenshots.)

Domain mozRank – will give you the actual rank of the domain

Domain mozTrust – similar tool,

# of links to a domain – search on Yahoo for “linkdomain:yoursite.com”

Domain Authority – another SEOmoz algorithm (including Google’s ranking algorithm, page authority, domain authority, and many more). Puts all of these important stats together.

Links to a specific page

Toolbar PageRank – will give you a good idea of how many incoming links to a specific page

mozRank – if mozRank is high and PR is low, most of the time that’s because Linkscape updates far more often OR Google is not counting all the links to the page (might be a good indicator that that site is manipulating incoming links)

mozTrust – good anti-spam metric

# of links – relatively good metric, but you’ll want to break up internal/external links and nofollow/follow. Yahoo Site Explorer gives you raw number, but SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer.

# of linking root domains – are there just a few with a ton of links from individual pages? Not good. Or a ton of links from a ton of different domains? Good.

Anchor Text

Exact Match Counts – you can see this under “Anchor Text Distribution” in Open Site Explorer

On-page/On-site Optimization

Important places for keywords:

• Exact Match Root Domain Name
• Keyword Matching in URL
• Title – in the front and together

Other important on-page element:

• H1
• Alt tag
• Body text

Don’t worry so much about keyword density. Instead, look at link metrics, etc.

Data isn’t perfect; Sometimes…we speculate.

Know what actions to pursue (and/or) What you need to Compete

Do you need:

• More anchor text rich links
• more domain diversity in your links
• More mozRank/PageRank
• More trusted link sources
• Better on-page optimization
• Freshness/Social & Sharing
• Something outside metrics (branding optimization)

Reverse engineering isn’t about trying to figure out why a site ranks where it does – it’s about figuring out what you need to do to do better (using your reverse engineering data).

Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz, @randfish

A while back, I wrote about the importance of anchor text. To bring you up to speed, the words I just linked (“importance of anchor text”) are anchor text. Anchor text is the words you use in a link. That post will go into a little detail about the importance of anchor text for users and search engines.

But there’s a hidden reason anchor text is so phenomenal: for the skimmer.

That’s right, the skimmer. We all do it – we read ingeniously entitled blogposts and articles, skimming through for interesting information.

With anchor text placed naturally and intuitively, you can take advantage of the skimmer (in a good way). How can you make a difference? Use anchor text.

Think about it: if you link “click here”, the skimmer will have no context for what that link goes to. But a link that says “Click here for a free, no obligation SEO consultation” will let the skimmer know exactly where they’re going.

Likewise, bold, italicized, bullets, and headers can draw in the eye of the skimmer. If a click to contact you, sign up, or buy is the goal…make sure your anchor text makes it happen.

Nicki Hicks
Sneaky Skimmer