online marketing

A friend of mine, Ernest Barbaric, (Congratulations, Ernest!) has just re-launched a website and asked me about tools he should use and steps he should take to tweak up the new site. We had a conversation with a few messages back and forth. This series of posts is a result of that conversation. Here are a few things to keep in mind when approaching SEO for a new / re-designed website. These are general steps that I've tried, tested, improved. Please note that this is a general process, and I will go into specifics of each step in future posts.

Think about your product

The key in search engine optimization is simple: think about it. Think about your product and how people could refer to it. Brainstorm a few combinations. Ask friends, colleagues, clients, partners, vendors. As a result you'll come up with a list of 5-10 key phrases. SEO Tools: paper & pencil, or white board and a marker. Some of you may want to start a spreadsheet. It may be useful down the road.

Do some keyword research

Once you have a list of those approximate terms it's time to look at what people are actually searching for. Use tools that are usually provided by major search engines themselves for free. First, test the terms that you've brainstormed to see if people are searching for those. Look at other keyword phrases recommended by the tools. The goals here are to 1) select the most relevant terms, 2) select the term with existing search volume, 3) stay away from super competitive keywords. Then shorten you list of terms to 3-5 most relevant to your site. These terms and their variations (for long tail terms) will be used further. Here's a great review of 20 free keyword research tools.

Implement on your website

There's a few things to keep in mind: have one terms for the entire site, and 3-4 other terms for other pages on your site. Focus on optimizing one terms per page. For example, if you sell natural cosmetics in Calgary, then this should be your title for either the homepage or one of your other pages. Some of the tools your can use to analyze on-page components of your website: Website SEO Analyzer, W3Optimizer, Website Grader.

Let search engines know

Yes, search engine spiders crawl the web and will eventually get to your site. I like to inform search engines about major changes on my sites as changes happen. I use webmaster tools that each of major search engines have (Google, Yahoo, Bing). Have an XML sitemap ready just in case (not super crucial but desirable). Here are webmaster pages for major search engines: Google Webmaster Central, Yahoo! Site Explorer, Bing Webmaster Center.

Take a snapshot of your current performance

This is one of the most important step of all. This snapshot is a starting point from which you will track your progress. There are a few free tools that will allow you to take performance snapshots and measure it over time including: WebCEO, Raven Tools, etc.

Engage in link building

Can't stress this enough. Links are super important. But don't fall into a trap of doing a one-time blast and forgetting about it. The process should be continuous. The links should be one way from resources that are relevant to your industry. The idea is that other people consider your site important and link to you. You can check the sites that link back to you using the follow two tools: Open Site Explorer by SEOmoz and Yahoo! Site Explorer.

SEO is an ongoing process, so keep at it

SEO is not a one-time engagement. Search engines change their algorithms, people change their search habits, the world changes. So, make a habit of checking on results regularly (once or twice a month). Either leave as is and continue link building. Or tweak your titles to add / remove / change target keywords. I hope this outlines the process in general. Stay tuned for a a detailed article on each of the steps.

This one will be short and as concise as possible. I just came from a great event put together by the team at FoundPages. It was about 5 easy-to-use tools to improve your online marketing efforts. Great turnaround! 5 presentations followed by a few discussions were quick, to the point and very well moderated by Jimmy Wong. Presenters line-up was a follows:

• Twitter Basics by Terence Fong of Business Instincts
• Google Places for Businesses by Kathryn Blair of FoundPages
• Google Alerts by Shannon Bowen-Kelsick of sbk MARKETING
• Posterous.com by Bryanne Miller of Be Real Communications
• ActiveProspects by Ritu Singh of ActiveConversion

Feel free to contact each of the presenters using the links above to request a copy of the presentation. Lear more about the event and sign up for the next one at Meetup.com. I'll definitely be looking for more events by this group!

As promised, below are some notes from the second day of the event. Please note that it only includes notes for presentations by the following people: Shawn Ohler, Ernest Barbaric and Ken Chapman. I had to leave at the lunch break.

Social meida insights from Shawn Ohler, ATB Financial

• Social media campaigns are rarely a success, but when they work, the results are amazing.
• Asking audience "what do you know about our company?" is often a good first step to solve a brand recognition problem.
• Many companies say they care about communities, but in fact they rarely do. So, identifying a strong value and sticking to it is very important. The idea is to create a value that resonates with the entire company. ATB Financial found it as "we are Alberta".
• WeAreAlberta.ca, or any other social campaign site is not a place to sell your product. The company treats it as a place where conversations start.
• According to 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer, the top 3 corporate reputation factors are: transparency, quality of product / service being offered and trust.
• Based on ATB Financial's experience, traditional media started the conversation and social media picked it up and continued.
• Asking your Facebook friends to contribute to your social campaign does not work. Instead, look at relevant conversations in relevant online communities, offer help, contribute, share value, then ask for help.
• According to Shawn, any social media project should accomplish 3 things: publishing (content development and distribution), engaging (starting conversations with the target audience), and influence (ability to influence audience's decisions based on the relationship formed during the campaign).

Social media trainer and consultant, Ernest Barbaric, Ernest Media

Ernest's presentation was of two parts: trends and social media campaign steps. Below is the summary of key points.

• Trend 1: Mobile. Smart phones are taking over the market. According to admob data, 50% of all phones are smart phones. 30% of mobile users access social networks from their phone. In short, our experience is becoming increasingly mobile. As marketers, we need to make sure we strongly consider this mobile revolution.
• Trend 2: Location-based services. It's about here and now. Yelp and FourSquare are two example of location based services that have been growing substantially in their user base. Google Places is a good example of bigger company concerned with location-based services.
• Trend 3: Augmented Reality. Conversations are happening outside of places they originated. For example, I wrote an article on my blog, distributed to my social networks profiles. As a result, my article is discussed on those networks, not on my blog. Another lesson is that conversations are happening where it's most comfortable for your audience, not you. Learn more about Microsoft Augmented Reality Research.

To be continued with more from Ernest Barbaric and Ken Chapman.

Any professional to be of any value to his / her clients has to be up to speed with what's happening in the industry. I just had an urge to share a few SEO resources I follow on regular basis to stay up to speed. Feel free to add these resources to your Google Reader (I recommend creating a separate folder for all things search marketing).

• Google Webmaster Central
• Google Analytics Blog
• Blog by Matt Cutts
• ClickZ, internet marketing portal
• Ask Enquiro, focusing on B2B Search Marketing
• Search Engine Land, SEO Portal
• Search Engine Roundtable, SEO Portal
• Search Engine Guide, SEO Portal
• Daily Blog by SEOmoz
• Marketing Jive, formerly SEO Space

There's definitely way more websites about search engine optimization, tips and trick, etc., but I assure you that if you follow the ones above, you'll be up to speed with what's going on in search marketing world.

I just came from another great Third Tuesday Calgary event. This time we had Jeff Nelson of Anduro Marketing talking about social media and SEO. Specifically, does engaging in social media help your SEO efforts? Below are some notes from the talk.

• One of the main arguments was that social media is NOT good for SEO because most of the social networking sites have a nofollow attribute in links.
• Jeff used seo-browser.com tool to parse a few social media sites including Twitter, Wikipedia, Youtube, etc.
• Results showed that neither Twitter nor Wikipedia pass the Google juice to external pages, therefore these sites were almost useless in contributing to SEO efforts.
• I sincerely believed that Twitter passes the link to your site in the right-hand sidebar (where it talks about the user). The reason for this was that I've seen a link count through SEOmoz's OpenSiteExplorer.org.
• On the other hand, YouTube had one link that actually lead to a site and passed authority (the link to your site in YouTube channel profile). Unfortunately you're not able to customize the anchor text.
• Jeff briefly talked about three characteristics of a link: anchor text, whether it passes the value (not nofollow), and the context (text content surrounding the link).
• Then Jeff went into a bit of history of when social media started to matter for SEO. He showed a list of links to resources talking about it starting in 2006. One of the articles by Rand Fishkin was the most valuable.
• Finally, Jeff got into discussing the three reasons to use social media to help your SEO: brand promotion, link bait, and viral distribution. Meaning that social media is not the best friend of SEO but can be a good buddy to hang out with sometimes.
  • brand promotion: although you're not getting tons of link value from social networks, it's definitely worth participating in social media for the reason of promoting your brand with the relevant audiences.
  • link bait: or developing valuable content on your site (in form of a blog post most often) that others will link back to. The emphasis is on the value of that content. Just writing frequent articles will not help. Make then infrequent, but super valuable. Here's an article Jeff shared that'll help you with creating such content.
  • viral distribution: somewhat related to link bait, yet a separate reason. The goal here is to create valuable content and ensure that it's as simple as possible to pass along. Jeff gave a couple of examples of principles behind successful viral distribution. Then, we all watched "will it blend" as a great example of a viral campaign.
• Here's a couple of great links on the topic Jeff shared:
  • 10 of the smartest big brands in social media, an article by mashable
  • social media marketing guide, an article by SEOmoz

I hope this summary of key points helps those who missed the event and those of you who are not in Calgary. Feel free to comment on other ways you know of where social media can be helpful in reaching your SEO objectives. Here's the link to a copy of Jeff's presentation at SlideShare.net

I just came from the first day of a two-day event by Acuity Forums in Calgary. I had an honor to present alongside with:

• Walter Schwabe, Founder / President / CEO, fusedlogic inc.
• Stephen D. Burns, Partner, Bennett Jones LLP
• Roger Kondrat, Director of Strategy, West17Media
• Jacob George, Manager Corporate Marketing & Communications, City of Calgary
• Rob Begg, Director Business Development, Radian6
• Doug Walker, Experienced Internet Strategist, pioneer in Canadian online marketing

Unfortunately I missed the first 3 speakers. I'm coming to the first half of the day tomorrow and will write an event in review post with more details.

My presentation on Social Business and internal social media tools was the last of the day. I also prepared a list of resources I used to prepare for this presentation - Social Business Resources. I hope you find it useful.

Here's another urge to share something that gets me goose bumps. Although I don't play alternative myself I deeply enjoy listening to this genre. Dream Theater is one of my favourite bands of all genres and times! Each band member is a genius. This video is called "Instrumedy" or "The dance of instruments". You'll see what I mean. This particular video is done in a way to show all of them playing. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.