Webinar « 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 »

Webinar Recap: JCPenney’s SEO No-Go–What Went Wrong and What You Need to Do

February 24th, 2011 by Cynthia Everson

In case you missed yesterday’s webinar about JCPenney partaking in blackhat SEO, or you’ve been hibernating for the past couple weeks, here is a recap of what happened to JCPenney’s SEO rankings and what exactly went wrong.

JCPenney recently received a penalty from Google for purchasing links on sites all around the web in order to boost their ranks on highly competitive keywords, including “dresses”, “area rugs” and “bedding”. The number of links being built increased drastically during the holiday season and eventually raised some red flags with Google. Matt Cutts’s Google Spam Team went in to investigate, saw blackhat SEO strategies in place, and penalized JCPenney’s rankings—dropping their keywords from the first page down to the sixth and seventh.

What Went Wrong? There were three main problems with JCPenney’s SEO strategy:

1. Drastically increased rate of link-building during the holiday season. Building so many links at once is what signaled the red flags. Each site has its own natural rate of link-building (i.e. how many links are built to your site without you doing anything), and you don’t want to push too far beyond that. To be safe, we never recommend building more than 50 links a month. Even that is on the high-end if you are building legitimate links to your site.

2. Built links on irrelevant sites. Tiny links for bridal sets and fashion jewelry tucked into the bottom right corner of a site about cars may not bother a user, but this is a big problem for Google. The irrelevance of the links is a blackhat red flag to Google. Links should only be placed on relevant sites where they make sense and have value to both the search engine as well as the user.

3. The main website could not be optimized. Surprisingly, the actual URLs that were ranking were not from the main JCPenney website. They were actually from a proxy server. The original site could not be optimized (probably due to backend issues), so a mirror site with cleaner URLs and optimized meta descriptions and keywords was built. Using a proxy server in itself is not a problem. However, it definitely would have been better if the site they wanted to promote was something that could be optimized and rank well on its own.

What should they have done? More than anything, patience is key with SEO. The holiday season may have rushed everything, but in the end it wasn’t worth the SEO campaign backfiring. Real SEO should take months, if not years (depending on how competitive the keyword) to get you onto the first page. If appropriate measures are taken and you abide by Google’s Webmaster policies, you can still ensure great rankings and measurable results.

Cynthia | @cynniebug

Tags: blackhat SEO, Google, Google Webmaster, JCP, JCPenney, keyword selection, keywords, link building, link building strategy, Links, proxy server, SEO, Webinar
Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Webinar Highlights | No Comments »

Webinar Recap: Powerful Link Building Strategies That Work

February 4th, 2011 by Webmarketing123

In case you missed this week’s webinar with on Powerful Link Building Strategies That Work, here is a brief overview of why link building is essential for any business and the strategies a business can use to strengthen their link building.

Why is link building important? 3 simple words: Third Party Validation. Your site becomes more credible when you have other sites that refer to you. One way to think about this is in terms of votes. Each time a site refers to you, it’s a vote for your website as a source of authority on the subject.

Who needs a link building strategy? Every site needs a linking campaign. Link building is one of the most important components of SEO and if you want your site to be in the top results that searchers see, it is completely necessary.

How can I improve my link building strategy? There are 5 different link building strategies we discussed:

1. Diversify your links: You want to get your links from several different types of websites, including article syndications, press release sites, blogs, forums, paid listings and directories.

2. Set up a directory link: There are several different types of directories that are available. The first thing you want to do is make sure to Google the directory to make sure it has been crawled, ensuring traffic. Then you need to submit your website to be indexed. Directories, such as DMOZ, can reject your submission.

3. Creating good links: You preferably want the keyword you are optimizing for to be the anchor text, the clickable link, and it is extremely important to choose good keywords.

4. Link proportioning: Be sure to diversify the links in not only in number, but also the keywords you are targeting and the landing pages of the links. It is always important to have the landing pages tailored to the specific keyword you are targeting

5. Not all links are created equal: It is important to understand that all links are not equal. One important change is that reciprocal links (two-way linking) is no longer effective. You should always get one-way links to your website and target quality links rather than quantity of links. Linking from sites that have more credibility increases the link value for search engines. It is also important not to build all your links at once, but try and set up 30-50 quality links a month.

Don’t just focus on one of these strategies, but try and employ all of them in order to see the fastest results. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither should your link building campaign. Although link building requires full-time resources, it is essential to the SEO process. Link building will increase your site credibility and ranking, which is the best way for your business to increase leads and sales.

-Ami

Tags: link building, link building strategy, Links, one-way links, reciprocal links, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, third party validation, Webinar
Posted in Links, Search Engine Optimization, Webinar Highlights | No Comments »

Search Marketing Strategies for 2011

January 7th, 2011 by Sarah Shakour

It’s a New Year and businesses are revamping their marketing efforts. In case you missed this week’s webinar on Search Marketing Strategies for 2011, here’s a recap to help your business reach your online marketing goals!

There were three Online Marketing Objectives discussed:

Goal 1: Increase Visibility on Search Engines

Goal 2: Build Traffic to Site

Goal 3: Maximize the Revenue Opportunity

Increase Visibility on Search Engines:

Studies show that 68% of search engine users only look at the first page of results. In addition, if you’re ranked number one on the first SERPs (Search Engine Results Page), you’re ten times more likely to get a click than someone who is ranked number ten (42 vs. 3% click through rate, respectively).

The first step to getting the most possible sales from SEO is optimizing for the right keywords. That means narrowing down a short list of ideal key phrases that your sales prospects and customers use to find your product.

• Keyword Expansion Tools: Wordtracker, Wordze, Keywordiscovery, Google’s SK tool

• Competitive Analysis : Scour competitors sites for missed keyword opportunities

• Customer Terminology : Talk to your sales team. What terminology do customers actually use?

• Analyze paid search data: Analytics data, internal site search, web logs

Which keywords bring the best (most qualified) visitors?

• Stages of Sales Cycle: Evaluate keywords by stage of sales cycle

• Keyword leverage analysis to determine which keywords are at a critical inflection point

in your rankings

The number of, and competitiveness of your keywords will then help you determine the optimal SEO strategy for your site.

Build Traffic to Site:

Once keywords are selected, they need to be targeted in the site content. Site content is very important because not only do search crawlers read it to index your site, but it is what customers see when they get to your site. For visitors, site content must be informative, engaging and compelling. For search engines, different aspects of site content must signal relevance.

You need to have keyword-rich content on each of your site’s pages, especially your homepage. Keep in mind; if you don’t write about it, you’re not going to rank for it–include essential keywords, keep your message simple and relevant. Most importantly, make sure it makes grammatical sense. Search engines can identify gratuitous keyword placement.

There is a simple way you can see what Google can read on your webpage. The easiest way is to go to the text only version of your cached page. This will bring up all the content that Google can read. You will notice that although your site may be visually appealing, Google can’t read pictures or fancy flash animations. That is why it is so important to have text, targeting your specific keywords in a fashion that makes sense.

Maximize the Revenue Opportunity:

If you have the bandwidth, then this is the ongoing analysis you need to do SEO correctly.

• Benchmarking in Place

• Track Spider Crawls

• Move up in Ranks

• You should see consistent upward movement on SERPS

• Tweak the site

• If you are not seeing that upward movement, then you need to adjust the key areas that we’ve discussed in the “5 pillars”

When measuring the impact of Search Marketing, look at:

• Organic (Non-Paid) Traffic

Non-paid best represents SEO efforts as all visitors arrive at your site through organic search

• Non-Branded Traffic
Brings you new customers who do not yet know about your company, but are looking for the products and services you offer

When measuring ROI of your Search Marketing efforts, first define what you consider a conversion. Is it filling out a form, downloading a whitepaper or completing a transaction on your shopping page? Analyze which keywords are leading to the most conversions–utilize those keywords and stop using the ones that are not driving qualified traffic. Also, determine where visitors abandon your site and improve the functionality of that area. By maintain, analyzing and reporting on your customers and qualified leads- you can make an immensely positive impact on your company’s bottom line.

-@SarahShakour

Tags: Conversions, Google, Google spiders, keywords, Search Engine Optimization, SEM, SEO, Webinar, Webmarketing123, Yahoo
Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | 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 »

Webinar Recap: JCPenney’s SEO No-Go–What Went Wrong and What You Need to Do

Webinar Recap: Powerful Link Building Strategies That Work

Search Marketing Strategies for 2011

The Top 5 SEO Mistakes in B2B Marketing

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