Highlights « Webmarketing123

Webinar Recap: Your Toughest SEO Questions Answered

April 20th, 2011 by Barbara Dizon

First off–thanks for all the great participation on today’s webinar! It was refreshing to be able to answer so many questions live and on the chat, so we’ve highlighted some key questions and answers for those who couldn’t attend.

Q: How many keywords should you generally target per page?
A: 3-5 variations and derivatives of the same term

Q: What is breadcrumb navigation?
A: Breadcrumb Navigation is a way for both users and search spiders to see how they reached the current page of the site they are on. Let’s use Nordstrom as an example: as you shop, you click links HOME>WOMEN>CLOTHING>SHOES>HEELS…this helps keywords on the page and helps the user revert if necessary. Let me know if this makes sense!
(Readers: does this make sense?)

Q: If people are searching for a really oddly phrased keyword that’s hard to directly incorporate into the content, does it really matter how the words are arranged? For instance, a keyword like “tennis shoe red nike”
A: Google picks up derivatives and variations so you shouldn’t worry too much. Make use of the metas, though.

Not really a question, but interesting topic we’re staying on top of:
Q: Google can read text from img, it is still experimental but they are already reading imgs in pdf files. Bruce Clay announced this at last pubcon.
A: Yes, still in beta. Once we find significant data in our research we will be sure to present it on a webinar!

Q: What is “anchor text”?
A: Anchor text is the term in which a hyperlink is embedded. It is the term that is on the page which is highlighted and click-able, and should take you to the respective page.

Q: If you are a local company, is it important to put geographical info (City, state, etc.), or do local and registering with Google local take care of this for you?
A: If your business is geo-specific, yes include those in your terms. Google local will show your business listing, but keep in mind this will NOT help your primary domain rank organically!

Let us know if you have any other questions and/or topics you’d like to discuss further and we’ll be sure to add to this post.

–Barbara | @barbaradizon

Tags: anchor text, breadcrumb navigation, Google, Google Local, Highlights, keywords, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Webinar, webinar recap
Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Webinar Highlights | No Comments »

Social Influence on SEO

December 10th, 2010 by Webmarketing123

Yesterday, Ben Cheng, our SEO specialist and Barbara Dizon, our Social Media expert, presented an analysis of the Google and Bing revelation that social media does influence search. The majority of the webinar was spent discussing the different ways social media affects your search rankings, and what Google and Bing take into account when incorporating social media posts into your website’s ranking. Below are some key take-aways you probably won’t find on the slides .

Barbara reminds us that:

Social media engages with a community, not a specific generation. The point of Twitter, for example, is to give relevant information that will be helpful for your followers.

To continue the topic of Twitter, it is generally used for specific information and/or as a news filter. When people realize that you are consistently sending them to pages and links that they consider relevant, they start to trust your company.

Social authority does depend on the quantity of fans and followers you have, but they MUST be relevant and active as well! In other words, having 100,000 followers where 50% of them are irrelevant spammers will do no better than having 1,000 followers that are completely relevant, and actually engage with your content (RT, @ reply, etc.).

Social Media for B2B is less about marketing and more about thought leadership. The best way to get people on your brand’s bandwagon is to have great content that will make the ride much more pleasant.

Ben reviews:

The links you share on your Twitter or Facebook have a direct impact on your rankings. Why? Because they can be shared and Re-Tweeted, which impacts the level of authority you have.

With enough social/author authority, your company will be indexed. Getting your website pages mentioned on Twitter, for example, is synonymous link building.

Another important component of authority is not just the amount of friends or followers but also how often they visit your site, or ping it!

Make social waves through Bing and Google’s discussion tab. This allows real time tweets to be in the feed if you are well-followed and connected.

A product page can be crawled by Google spiders up to three times quicker if it is tweeted (tested in-house at Webmarketing123).

The main point in integrating social and search now lies in your social authority. If you are a trusted authority with decent amount of fans/followers that all repurpose & engage with your relevant content, your rankings will benefit from social media. Repeat after me: trust, repurpose, engage, relevancy, rankings. Therefore, get social to get noticed!

If you would like a copy of the slides from this week’s webinar, e-mail Mark Powers at mark@webmarketing123.com. Ask him to hook it up with that good social/search knowledge—he should know what you’re talking about .

Tags: Author authority, Barbara Dizon, Ben Cheng, Bing, facebook, Google, Highlights, link building, Mark Powers, Search, SEO, social, Social authority, Social Media, twitter, Webinar, Webmarketing123
Posted in Google Updates, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Webinar Highlights | No Comments »

Social Media Metrics You Should Measure

November 24th, 2010 by Seth Gutierrez

In case you missed last week’s webinar on Metrics That Matter in Social Media, here’s a recap—we’ll discuss the top 4 metrics:

Loyalty:

Consider this when you’re evaluating your target audience’s loyalty to your brand:

Are social community members interacting with your brand a) regularly, and b) repeatedly–sharing content and links, mentioning your brand, and, most importantly evangelizing?

The key is to get as many people as you can, telling their peers about “how great” your product is—this is essentially FREE advertising, and a variety of promotion that is invaluable because people tend to trust their peers over marketers!

These are people telling one another about your brand--what are they saying?

Brand Mentions:

The term we use to describe the number of brand mentions online, is Share of Voice. Your Share of Voice is equal to the percentage of mentions you have versus those of your competitors—whoever you determine those to be. The Share of Voice figure will give you a good idea of how often your brand is being talked about on the internet–figure out where you’re being discussed, and how users are describing your brand—this will indicate users’ Sentiment.

Where are people talking about your brand?

Activity Ratio:

How active is your brand’s social network? In Facebook for example, compare (using Facebook Insights) the ratio of active members to the total number members–chart this number over time to determine the ebb and flow of your social followership. There will always be some members of your social network that are inactive, but if you initiate a campaign to increase interaction, by say, incorporating more multimedia (people love to interact with and share multimedia!), measure the resulting data and see if that doesn’t jump start users interaction!

There are a variety of social analytic tools that measure activity—one that we use at Webmarketing123 is called Lithium (previously known as Scout Labs)—check it out!

Conversions:

Everyone wants to measure the volume of leads generated by their social media efforts, but that number is only important relative to your conversion rate on those leads. While the volume of leads may not be there yet, the opportunity to convert on the leads you do have may be staring you in the face. Figure out where your leads are coming from (the flow of traffic through links) by creating campaigns in Salesforce or Marketo, then figure out how many of those clicks are turning into deals.

Tags: Blogs, brand loyalty, brand mentions, Conversions, Highlights, lead generation, metrics, Seth Gutierrez, share of voice, Social Media, Webinar, Webmarketing123
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

The Top 5 SEO Mistakes in B2B Marketing

November 15th, 2010 by Webmarketing123

Many businesses believe that: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of today’s most effective marketing tactics. If done correctly, businesses can increase their ranking on search engine result pages as well as experience a boost in traffic to their site—resulting in increased lead generation and conversions. If your business is implementing SEO but you are still not seeing your site on the first page of Google, Yahoo or Bing, your execution may be off. In our November 10^thwebinar, Mike Turner, Search Marketing Executive discussed the Top 5 SEO Mistakes in B2B Marketing. Here is a recap in case you missed it:

1) Keywords are the most important aspect of SEO and if they’re not researched properly, they can be one of your biggest problems.

A keyword is typed in by a potential client so be sure you’re using consumer vocabulary and not company jargon. Another point is that the best keywords to invest in are usually phrases, as illustrated by this graph:

Shown above, the one-word phrases are likely to have high competition from other sites and a high search frequency. The more descriptive phrases that are upwards of five words long are going to have low competition and a lower search frequency.

At Webmarketing123, we have found that the Keywords with the best ROI will be three to four words in length. These more descriptive terms will have a higher conversion rate than the single keyword searches. People who search using three to four word key phrases will generally be further along in their sales process, more informed and therefore more likely to make a purchase.

2) Missing Keywords in content and text links.

Once you have the correct keywords, you want to make sure that they’re visible to Google spiders. Including Keywords in more places than just the written content of your site will improve your raking for those keywords. Here are a few places to include your keywords:

Title tags
Headings
Paragraph titles
Keywords in body copy
Anchor text in links
Image alt text

Pages can have as little as one to two keywords but should not have more than seven to ten. Too many keywords on one page will overload the user. Pages should flow nicely and make sense. You need to decide what the preferred landing page for a given search term will be. These could be called the blueprints of your site.

3) Using content that search engines can’t read.

This is a common mistake because Google bots cannot read certain content and thus cannot give your site credit. Flash and images are not variables that go into a search engine’s algorithm.

4) Not creating fresh content.

If Google bots don’t see any new content they’re not going to visit your site regularly. An easy way to avoid this, especially for B2B companies, is to have a blog and regularly post keyword-rich content with links back to the primary website.

…and make it easy for others to link towards your site by utilizing some of these tools:

RSS
Twitter
Facebook & LinkedIn status/groups
Networks & Media
Digg
Delicious
StumbleUpon
Flickr
YouTube

5) Being Activity-focused, not outcome-focused.
Set goals for keywords with high conversions. Google analytics and Webtrends are just two of the programs that you can use to determine conversion rates on your different keywords.

Be outcome-focused, not activity-focused. Focus on what matters—outcome!

Finally, here is a graph to help you keep your site SEO Friendly.

This Wednesday from 11:00 a.m. (Pacific) to 12:00 p.m. we’ll be hosting our next webinar, How to Succeed with SEO During the Holidays–click here to register!

Tags: B2B Long Tail SEO, B2B marketing, Bing, Blogs, content silo, Conversion Rates, E-Commerce, facebook, Flash, Google, Google analytics, Google spiders, Highlights, inbound links, Keyword Phrases, keyword selection, keywords, long-tail keywords, Meta Content, qualified leads, ROI, Search Engine Optimization, SEM, SEO, Webinar, Webmarketing123, Yahoo
Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Webinar Recap: Dominate Google with Social Media Campaigns

November 8th, 2010 by Sarah Shakour

Last week, Barbara Dizon (@BarbaraDizon, Social Media Account Manager) and Travis Low (@TravisLowSEO, Director of Search) discussed the importance of Social Media to B2B marketing, in our webinar titled Dominate Google with Social Media Campaigns. So if you missed it, here’s a recap–and if you want to download the slides, FOLLOW this link!

Some Key Takeaways:

70% of Social Media websites affect purchasing decision in the buying cycle.
50% of social network users, factor information shared on their networks into their purchasing decision.
Social Media users are 3 times more likely to trust their peers’ opinions over advertisements.

The Importance of Social Media Today:

Social Media marketing is not about talking to different generations–it’s about creating a community based on common interest that thrives on user support.

Social Media for B2B Companies is about:

Building loyalty and trust for your brand.
Increasing community following and brand awareness as well as increasing traffic to your site.

Social Media is becoming increasingly integrated with customer service and influence on purchasing decisions. However, direct sales are difficult to track with Social Media. Social Media can offer direct sale opportunities, but without a defined metric for success, it will be difficult to determine its rate of return.

Integrating Blogs, Web Pages & Social Media for Optimal Search Results:

As with any form of communication, it’s important to have a plan for integrating your blogs and websites with your social media initiatives:

A little planning goes a long way when starting a Social Media campaign.
Map out what your marketing goals are – What does your company want to accomplish?
Identify and understand your audience – Who are they, what Social Media platforms do you they use?
Do not limit yourself to one Social Media platform. Determine which ones your target market use the most then establish your brand accordingly.
Utilize/optimize Social Media profiles fully to reach your marketing goals.

Here are the Top 3 Starting Points for Optimizing Social Media & Search–where your company should start and how:

Blogs – Generate fresh, unique Content
Inbound Links – Establish your site as an industry authority

Social Media – Build your brand image with Social Media:

Facebook Fan Pages
Google Buzz
Twitter
Yelp
LinkedIn
Website Resources & Content

How to Measure Your Overall SEO & Social Media Efforts:

When starting Social Media campaigns, there are many ways you can measure your overall success. Here are some tips:

Blogs = Content:

Search engines love content–this is the single most important aspect of Social Media for SEO.
Write casually, as though you were speaking to someone.

Inbound Links:

Show that your site has good content and is the “real deal”.
Also shows that your content is relevant, which is key to being well-optimized for search.

Interconnectedness:

Social Media is about connecting and communicating.
Social Media will help your brand/company remain transparent—increasing its credibility.
Your website should be constantly updated, giving search engines new content to crawl. The more current search spiders determine your site to be, the higher they will rank it in search results.

Key Takeaways Continued:

1. 64% of marketers already integrate social media into their Search Engine Marketing plans today.

2. Social Media and SEO go hand in hand.

3. B2B is in fact equally, if not more active on Social Media sites than B2C.

4. Social Media is more about increasing engagement and building relationships than broadcasting your message.

5. The role of SEO for Social Media is to directly influence discovery of social communities and content through search, boosting sales and increasing conversions (conversations translate to Share of Voice).

6. Content is king. Start with great content on your blog to increase inbound links.

-@SarahShakour

Tags: b2b, b2c, Blogs, Conversion Rates, facebook, Google, Google spiders, Highlights, importance of social media, integrating, ROI, Search Engine Optimization, SEM, SEO, Social Media, Webinar, Webmarketing123
Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Webinar Highlights | No Comments »

Webinar Recap: How the Facebook-Bing Partnership Will Affect Your SEO

October 29th, 2010 by Cynthia Everson

On October 13^th, Facebook and Bing held a joint press event to announce the start of their new relationship, working together to form what they are calling “instant personalization”. Twitter feeds and Youtube videos showing up on the Google SERP have become a standard sight, but now Bing has teamed up with Facebook to take the integration of social media into the search engines to another level: pulling data out of your personal account and putting it among all of the organic results.

Unfortunately, getting the actual results pulled from Facebook to show up on the Bing SERP is quite the challenge. The steps to syncing up the accounts are not obvious and have changed a couple of times since the press event.

Currently, you have to go into Preferences to log in to Facebook, and until today I couldn’t find an option to sign in to Facebook without first logging into Windows Live first.
Also, there are only two types of information that Bing is pulling from Facebook:
1. People: Namely, your friends and your friend’s friends. Search their names, and get a lovely picture right at the top.

2. Things your friends “like”. Meaning, they click a button on Facebook that says they “like” something and become a “fan”. To be honest, I have yet to see this actually come up on the Bing SERP. Either it’s being rolled out reeeally slowly, or the algorithm needs some serious tweaking. I suspect results to come up more easily in the near future.

That’s me!?! Thanks, Bing!

So what does this all mean?

At this point, I think it should be treated as more of a heads up that social media is on the rise. No, this won’t affect your organic rankings, but your organic results will be sharing the SERP more and more with social media results.

My SEO advice: Keep optimizing. And don’t neglect Bing just because Google is still taking the lead. Between this Facebook alliance and the Bing-Yahoo alliance several months back, it looks like Bing is taking some pretty smart steps to keep Google on their toes.

My social media advice: Get started on it now if you haven’t already. It’s still on its way up, so best to get on now.

My overall advice: Utilize both SEO and social media. The two go hand-in-hand (see last week’s Webinar with MarketingSherpa, The Real Truth About Social Media and SEO). Hey, get PPC going, too, and you could be dominating the SERP on three different platforms!

The main takeaway here: Nothing major has happened yet, but baby steps are being taken and new ways of doing search are being put out there. Get your Facebook account going and don’t forget about Bing!

-@cynniebug

Tags: Bing, Bing-Facebook partnership, facebook, Google, Highlights, SEO, SERP, Social Media, Webinar, Windows Live
Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Webinar Highlights | No Comments »

Marketing Sherpa’s Real Truth about Social Media & SEO

October 26th, 2010 by Sarah Shakour

The key to getting your website to rank at the top of a search engine’s results is to implement SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Integrate SEO with SM (Social Media) and you’re sure to see your rankings and website’s popularity increase. In last week’s webinar, MarketingSherpa’s Real Truth About Social Media & SEO, Webmarketing123’s Paul Taylor (@Webmarketing123) and MarketingSherpa’s Todd Lebo (@ToddLebo) discussed how SM and SEO combine to help your business increase sales, lead generations and website rankings on Search Engine Result pages.

At Webmarketing123, we have the 5 Pillars of SEO. By following these tactics, your website will significantly improve its ranking on Search Engine Result pages. These 5 pillars include optimizing your Keywords, site content, Meta content, URLS and inbound links. Among SM users, 64% use keyword research to find what they are looking for vs. 59% of non SM users. Keyword research is one of the most important components of SEO–determining the language people use to describe products/services and what keywords they are using is crucial! In addition, 48% of SM users rely on link building to market their brand vs. only 37% of non SM users. See below:

This chart indicates how all aspects of SEO are enhanced by the integration of SM. This correlation will only become more apparent as SM evolves.

There are many unique marketing benefits that SM provides. Having a SM presence:

Increases brand awareness
Builds community following
Helps establish loyalty and trust behind your brand (one of the most important benefits!)
Offers direct sales opportunities
Displays your SM results on the first page of Google

SEO has a lot of benefits as well that yield:

A higher ROI
3^RD Party Validation (Google determining your site’s relevance to search terms)
Improved flow of Traffic

Integrating SM with your SEO efforts will have far-reaching benefits for your website’s market presence. Your site will likely experience an increased number of inbound links, improving your current rankings and increasing click through rates on Search Engine Result pages.

MarketingSherpa research includes a mix of Social and Search data to improve inbound traffic, leads and conversion rates. Here are a few key takeaways to help your site reach its goals:

Optimize content for keywords using SM channels
SEO and SM work together to create a comprehensive online campaign.
The combination yields a stronger customer community, an increase in conversions and a higher ROI
SM will become more integrated in organic search results in the near future

-@SarahShakour

Tags: 5 pillars of SEO, @SarahShakour, @ToddLebo, Conversion Rates, Google, Highlights, keyword selection, keywords, MarketingSherpa, Real Truth About Social Media & SEO, ROI, SEM, SEO, Social Media, Webinar, Webmarketing123
Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Webinar Highlights | No Comments »

Cookies or Chocolate Chip Cookies? Which Keyword is Optimal for SEO?

May 28th, 2010 by Webmarketing123

Yesterday’s webinar was all about the ABC’s of keywords optimization. Or as Travis puts it: “How much is that keyword worth to you?”

KEYWORDS are the FOCAL POINT of your SEO efforts. So naturally, identifying your highest impact keywords, and then strategically incorporating them into your site are crucial to your SEO success.

Keywords fall into two buckets: Head match and long-tail match. Head Match keywords are general searches, like “shoes” or “cookies”, whereas long-tail match keywords are more descriptive searches, like “women’s dress shoes” or “chocolate chip cookies”. Because long-tail keywords are more specific, they are better matched to the searchers needs, have less competition than generic head match keywords, and therefore can produce a high volume of impressions.

The first step in maximizing sales from: SEO is setting the right keywords. This means focusing on a short and ideal list of key phrases your sales prospects and customers use to find you.

On May 5th or 6th 2010, depending on where you live, Google changed its search results page. One of the changes included the Google Wonder Wheel, a keyword expansion tool which shows related searches to your current search inquiry. The Wonder Wheel is an incredible tool and particularly helpful with finding other options for keywords.

Using the example that Travis used during the webinar, let’s say your company is in conveyor services.

In Google, search “conveyor systems” and on the left side of your screen click on “Wonder Wheel”.

Here, you can see other keyword options, to help narrow your search. Since you are in the industrial sector, click on “Industrial Conveyor Systems”.

Boom! Now you have six other keyword options to help optimize your search. We’ll go with “belt conveyors”.

Other Key Tools and Highlights:

Google Insights – diagnose keyword search trends & its popularity in geographical regions
Google Analytics – helps you understand what your customers are typing in to find your website, and which keywords you need to push to optimize, or if you need to start a PPC campaign
Make sure that your company‘s terminology is in line with your customer’s terminology—the keywords they search for should be the ones you’re optimizing for!
Keyword selection is your foundation for optimization. Keyword selection takes 2-3 weeks, in order for the account management team, analysts, and engineering teams to understand your keyword selection base.

Choosing the right keywords are the KEY to success—wow, that was cheesy…but you get the point. See you at the next webinar!

Tags: Google, Google analytics, Google insights, head match, Highlights, keyword selection, keywords, long-tail keywords, SEO, Webinar, wonder wheel
Posted in Google Updates, Search Engine Optimization, Webinar Highlights | No Comments »

Anchors Don’t Weigh You Down

May 13th, 2010 by Janet Salsman

Anchor

We talk a lot about links around here, both internal links and inbound links. In today’s Introduction to SEO webinar, SEO Linking Essentials: How to Generate Inbound Links, Travis got into the nitty-gritty of the process.

Anchor text is a little like the outlet that links plug into. If your outlet is poor, you’re not going to get good performance from your link because it won’t have reliable power. Using your carefully-chosen keywords as anchor text for relevant inbound links gets the amps flowing. As tempting as it is to write copy for your site that tells people to click here and here, it is much better to give them an idea of where they are going, say, Grand Canyon or Great Barrier Reef. That way you don’t lose your visitors and you don’t confuse the crawlers.

Just for fun: anchors.

Tags: Blogs, Google spiders, Highlights, keywords, SEO, Webinar, Webmarketing123
Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Webinar Highlights, Webmarketing123.com | No Comments »

The Top 5 SEO Mistakes in B2B Marketing

Cookies or Chocolate Chip Cookies? Which Keyword is Optimal for SEO?

Anchors Don’t Weigh You Down

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