The Maine SEO Blog

PageRank may be dead (dying?), but the authority powerful links give to a website is certainly not. But…where do you find these powerful links? Certainly not link building farms, but they may be easier to find than you think.

Submission

Directories. There’s a question as to whether directories have much value. They have little to none. That doesn’t mean they hurt though.

You can get a free listing (after more than likely waiting a very long time to be approved) at DMOZ, so it seems like a no-brainer. The most worthwhile paid listings are from the Yahoo Directory and Business.com (both $299 per year).

Forums. Every time you submit a forum post, you can attach a signature (not unlike an email signature) with links back to your website. Depending on the rules of the forum, you might also be able to include links within your post (although they are probably nofollowed).

Article Marketing. Submitting articles to article distribution sites (like Article Marketer and Hubpages), you can leave a signature just like you can with forums. Plus, these services (while usually paid), will distribute your article to the masses – and you don’t have to lift a finger!

Research

Competition. This is one of my favorite link building strategies. Head over to Yahoo Site Explorer and type in your competitor’s domain. After you sort by inlinks, except from the domain, and to the entire site, you’ll see all of your competition’s incoming links! Luckily for you, Yahoo will (generally) list the incoming links in order of authority, so (for the links that make sense), start going down the list!

Blogs and Articles. Google yourself. You might find old articles or blogposts that mention your company but don’t link to your website. Contact the webmaster and see if you can’t get them to fix that for you.

Then try Googling your best keywords and phrases using Google’s Blog search. Sometimes, you have to filter through the filth, but you’ll find the gems in no time!

Be proactive

Events, Sponsorships. Speaker at a conference? Sponsoring an event? Make sure the conference/event website is linking to yours. More often than not, those links are mighty powerful.

Social media. Links from your Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts may be nofollowed (LinkedIn’s are not nofollowed, but redirected), but you only have to take one look at your Analytics to see the traffic coming from them. What’s more – social media websites are fantastic for viral aspects – and they might lead to other links!

Comment, comment, comment. Likewise, comments are also nofollowed, but still count as a link! Again, someone else commenting sees your insightful thoughts; theoretically resulting in a link!

What are your favorite ways to discover new possibilities for incoming links?

Nicki Hicks
Link Building for Dummies

Do you know who they are?

Sadly, many business owners don’t know who their audience is. A local Mom-and-Pop variety store may be entirely unaware of who they should be targeting.

So step one: figure out who your customers are.

Just ask

Seems silly, but why do all sorts of research and do little more than guess when you can find out for sure? Simply say, “Oh by the way, I was just wondering where you spend your time online. Do you have a favorite social network?”

Maybe your audience isn’t online, and therefore you don’t need to spend time there. You’ll find out pretty quickly where most of them lie: whether it’s on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or maybe a niche social media site that you’ve never even heard of. Asking is the easiest way to find out – and it’s far easier than guessing.

Be where your people are

After you find out where people are…go there. They may be on multiple channels, and that doesn’t mean you have to devote your time to all of them. Pick one if that’s all the time your resources allow; but sign up for all of them.

MySpace

For the right kind of business (and audience), MySpace could be lethal (in a good way). For musicians and new bands, MySpace has been a huge key to success.

With the ability, unlike most social networks, to customize backgrounds and profiles, MySpace is truly a brandable network.

Facebook

Create your personal profile first, then a business fan page. Starting suggesting that friends fan your business, and then start reaching out beyond your friends. You can search for specific keywords within your network; or simply keywords within profiles – depending on privacy settings.

Facebook ads are another way to gain fans. Right now, they’re ultra-targeted and relatively cheap per click.

Twitter

If your customer base is on Twitter, sign up and build out your profile (including a custom background). Search for people you already know and start following them. Then go to Twitter Search and find some gurus in your industry by searching for keywords in your line of business. Check out Nearby Tweets for tweeps in your area and start following them.

Download an app like TweetDeck and track keywords in either your industry or your physical location. By doing this, you’ll no longer need to search constantly on Nearby Tweets or a similar geo-locating tool. Also, make sure you track your business name. That way, if someone talks about you (positive or negative), you’ll be right there, ready to respond accordingly.

LinkedIn

If your audience is on LinkedIn, you should be too! Create a personal profile page, along with a business profile page. Then make sure everyone in your organization is on LinkedIn and become connected with them. Then, look for your audience. Start with people you know.

Begin joining groups – even creating some around your line of work. Be sure to check the Answers section in order to become the expert in your industry. Both Groups and Answers are great places to find people to become connected with.

You’re not done yet

Now that you’ve found your audience, make sure you continue to search for new fans, friends, connections, and followers constantly. Consistently engage with these people – no matter what network you’re on.

Nicki Hicks
Go where the people are

Just the other day, a prospect said this to me.

And I got to thinking about it. She’s exactly right.

Every day, old websites, blogs, heck even social media profiles, are being optimized. Most, obviously, not all, new websites launched are optimized to a certain extent.

So while, for the moment, there are plenty of sites to optimize…it may not be like that forever.

Instead, content creation is king. Constantly putting out new, fresh content is the way things have been, and will continue to be, headed.

You’ll hear time and time again that Google loves fresh content. What’s fresher than a blog? Or social media? Or social bookmarking?

More and more, people look for small, sweet snippets of information: easily digestible and quickly answering whatever query they may have.

What’s the lesson for you?

If your website isn’t optimized, start there. Get that puppy search engine friendly.

If you don’t already have a blog…create one. Then answer questions you get all the time, whatever industry you may be in; include images and video. Make lists, how-to’s, even step-by-step guides.

If you’re not on any social media network, first find out where your audience is. Then get there! Start putting out fresh content – some self serving, but more importantly information your audience wants to know – whether it’s stats, local updates, or even a piece of witty humor.

Nicki Hicks
Optimization may be dying, but content is thriving

Photo by subcess

This week, I gave two presentations (or rather, the same presentation, twice) for a senior Business Seminar class at Saint Joseph’s College. Though it’s always nice going back to my alma mater, more so than usual, I feel for the senior class.

A year and a half ago, it was easier to find a job. Obviously, it took some work, but it’s nowhere near the type of competitive environment these soon-to-be grads face in the next 6 months of their job search. So how are you supposed to differentiate yourself in such an atmosphere? Why, with social media, of course!

The full presentation is in Slideshare below, but here are some of the key points:

• On Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter already? Great…now go in and clean up and fill out your profiles. Not on them? Join! (Note: only join Twitter if you can devote the time to it.)
• The next step: go above and beyond. Engage people by friending/fanning, following, and connecting with the right people and groups.
• Jobs in ME/VT/NH and many of your other favorite job listing sites have a presence on all of the major social media networks. Why go to their website everyday when you can engage them via Twitter? or Facebook? or even an RSS feed?
• A really neat find: when I was doing research for the presentation, I stumbled upon some video resumes on YouTube – what better way to add depth to your resume? But be careful – you have to do your video resume the right way; check out the presentation for tips and tricks for YouTube!

Ever come home from a conference, start sorting through your notes and think I know I learned something, but what the heck was it? Closely following will often be: Now I remember what I learned, what can I use to help my business?

There’s a lot of information in the SMX live blog recaps, a lot of which involves quick note taking and scattered thoughts. So in an effort to consolidate (in an admittedly very long post) and walk away with something helpful, here are my takeaways:

(more…)

Chris Bennett, Co-Founder, BLVD Status

What should you track?

• Traditional metrics
• Micro conversions (non traditional)
  - Outgoing clicks
  - RSS subscribers
• Indirect results (aftermath)
  - ROI

Traditional metrics

• Referring traffic
• Conversions
• Brand and search type
• Google Analytics
  - Visits and page views
  - Compare to average traffic for day/week/month previous
  - Visitor loyalty/time on site
• Referring sites/sources
  - quantity?
  - quality?
  - new? (leveraging future campaigns)
• Conversions occurring more?
• Identify top referring sources
• Surge in brand queries
• Increases in direct traffic

Micro Conversions

• Outgoing link clicks (RSS subscribers, Twitter, Facebook fans)
• Newsletters, opt-in list
• Google Analytics > Profiles settings> Goal settings > Head match, put onclick: java code in WordPress code

Indirect Results

• Backlinks
• Total search traffic
• Search keywords
• Conversions that come with search
• Keyword vitals – tool to keep track of stats

David Berkowitz, Director of Emerging Media & Client Strategy, 360i

David’s got a lot of great pictures and case studies, so here’s the presentation.

Augustin Vasquez, Analytics specialist, NVI

Case Study: Client Description

• Major men’s magazine, Cosmo for women
• Received over 10 million visits/month
• Target men 18-35

Goals

• Increase page view visits
• Increase incoming links

Other client info

• Multi-page articles= 3 x more average page views per visit
• Multi-page articles containing 2-11 pges

Problem? The social mob: negative comments on longer multi-page articles

Luckily, backlinks weren’t harmed because of negative comments.

Social Traffic vs. All Traffic

• All traffic drops off after 2nd page of article
• Social traffic to articles is much more steady than the rest of the traffic

Long term success threatened?

• Recruitement of new readers
• Brand perception and promotion of site: seen of drop of natural submissions to social plaforms

To calm the mob

• Find a reasonable length without compromising page views (3-4 pages for a normally 10 page article)
• Introduce existing fans to social media sites

Be creative with metrics

• Vertical of the article: sports, finance, science, etc. Benchmark with each other
• If pushed on a particular platform, try segmenting by submitter
• Effects on different platforms

Questions

• Helpful tools for social analytics? Twitalyzer, URL shorteners, Twitter metrics on followers, Omniture Twitter monitoring tool, Social Media Firefox plugin, Scout Labs, Radiant 6, People Browsr
• Determine sentiment on blogs? Very subjective, best done manually.
• Watch live what’s going on with Analytics if you’re in the middle of a campaign.
• Reddit likes business, world news, finance; Digg likes sports, science, health; StumbleUpon anything works in a moderate way

Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search, The Americas

We were in a media delivery world, but now a media discovery world.

Consideration funnel

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Preference
• Action
• Loyalty

Three forms of media today

• Paid
• Owned (website, PDFs, white papers, videos)
• Earned

Graham Mudd, Vice President Search & Media, comScore, Inc.

• Heavy searchers tend to be heavy social media users as well
• Social media users tend to be:
  - younger
  - more educated
  - enthusiastic
  - use internet more than non-social media user
• “exposed consumers” two times more likely to search
• influenced social + paid = significant CTR increase down the funnel
• searchfuel.com - white paper of research

John Antognoli, Senior Director, Account Management, M80

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

…or as spammer would have you believe: How to get 200 followers a day!!!

#FollowFriday or #ff

When done properly, FollowFridays are a great way to increase your Twitter network. The way it works is simple: on Fridays, you suggest your followers follow a certain tweep in particular. You can see that there’s the added benefit when the reverse is true: recommendations from the people you follow.

Look for the icon

Some time ago, Twitter launched its Verified Accounts for businesses and celebrities. With all of the copycat Tweeps out there, this is how Twitter is attempting to set your mind at ease.

Tweetups

I’ve talked about the utterly incredible #MEtweetups we have here in Portland, and they really are a great place to meet new folks on Twitter – both to meet some you follow already IRL (In Real Life) and others you hadn’t been following before!

Search for ‘em

• Happn.in – find out what people are tweeting about in the world’s largest cities
• Nearby Tweets – search this very cool interface by keywords in tweets or location
• TweepSearch – search through bios for keywords or locations.
• Twellow – the “Twitter Yellow Pages” is another good source for searching by geographic location.
• Twitterholic – my favorite source to find tweeps by location.
• Twitter search - You can use Twitter search for a particular keyword, for your company, or even your location.

Nicki Hicks
Follow me on Twitter

FriendFeed

The original tool for the social media multi-tasker. However, it does just the opposite of the other sites listed here: it actually gives you the ability to keep track of your friends on all of your other social networks. See what Johnny is doing on Twitter, what Billy is doing on Facebook, and what Sue’s doing on Flickr. It literally is your friend feed.

Ping.fm

To this day, Ping is still my favorite social media managing site both on the computer and on the iPhone. They have the largest number of available networks to quite literally “ping” a message to.

Here’s the list of networks I subscribe to via ping, with many more popular networks available too.

TweetDeck

TweetDeck makes it easy to reach out to my two favorite social networks: Facebook and Twitter. TweetDeck also has a great groups interface to split the Twitter folks I follow into certain categories. For example, two of my categories are SEO and Maine.

HootSuite

The newest tool I’ve been testing out. Initially built as a Twitter collaboration tool, with v 2.0 you can now track your statistics – enabling you to see who clicked what link you posted, as well as many other cool features! HootSuite is ideal for a company’s Twitter account, as it easily gives multiple members access to a single account.

These are just a few of the social media management sites and tools out there – and only ones I use at that. Which are your favorite?

Nicki Hicks
One-stop social media shopper