One Simple Tactic That Can Give You an Unfair Advantage in Local Search
Posted on 07. May, 2012 by John Jantsch in Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, Local Search, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, video, YouTube
Showing up in local search results is a pretty big deal if you’re any sort of local business. When people search online locally, but plan to buy offline locally, being the organization they find first and find when mobile could mean the difference between growth and death.
While lots of people publish tips about Google Places pages, local web content, address citations and the sort, not enough people are talking about the power of local video when it comes to gaining an advantage in local search.
Many people are talking about video from a content standpoint and I agree, but what about locally optimized video for SEO. I’ve seen this intentional tactic produce some pretty incredible results in a very short time – particularly when it comes to a Google and YouTube combination.
See, here’s the deal – Google wants to give people interesting search results and as often as possible that includes a mix of local Places pages, videos, products, images and blog posts all mashed together on page one for specific search phrases.
Local businesses that get good at producing and optimizing video can find their YouTube videos zapped to page one for highly competitive search terms with very little effort.
I did a little test over the weekend to prove this theory. Granted there may be other factors at play here, but here’s what I and I believe you can do it too.
I am hosting a couple workshops in Kansas City in June. Since this is for me a rare local play I wanted to see what could do to get some local search results. So, here’s what I did.
- I created a very brief video recorded directly to YouTube.
- I even did a little bit of editing using the new YouTube Tools
- I named the video Kansas City Marketing Workshop and Training
- I added a description with this term
- I added keywords that related to the term
- I saved the video
- I embedded the video on a page on my site.
- I pointed to the video on YouTube from my Facebook page
Total time invested was about 15 minutes. About 30 minutes later this video showed up on page one for the search term – “Kansas City Marketing Workshop”
A day later it moved to the #2 position for the search term and #4 position for the term Kansas City Marketing Training. I conducted these searches logged out of my Google account and even received the same results using private browsing in Safari.
There’s no telling how long this video will stay at the top of the results for my search term, but it certainly reinforced the idea that this is a powerful way to gain additional local search results while creating useful content.
Below are tips to keep in mind as you explore this tactic:
Do the keyword research
Use a tool like WordTracker or Google Keyword Tool to hunt for some search phases that make the most sense. You’re not looking for hyper competitive terms like “Marketing,” you’re looking for longer, less searched phrases that you can quickly impact.
Also keep in mind those frequently asked questions. Focus on making videos that address those issues.
Create multiple videos
The idea behind this approach is to create dozens of simple videos that allow you to build a library of content that addresses many of the things your prospects are searching for.
Make the videos sell
Make sure you add URLs and annotations to your videos so you can send people to pages that give them even more information.
Optimize for specific terms
Use the search phases you uncover as your video titles, in descriptions and as keyword combination. Do a search on YouTube for the phrase you are trying to win and see what comes up. Once you find the top videos in your search term make note of the keywords and borrow liberally.
Point to the videos
Google loves it when other sites point to videos that are hosted on YouTube. You can give your videos even more juice by linking to them from your web site, Facebook and other video hosting sites.
Experiment with the intriguing little tactic and you may uncover some pretty fantastic results for frequently searched terms that might not otherwise stand a chance of competing for.
One Simple Tactic That Can Give You an Unfair Advantage in Local Search is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Is Your Optimization Meaningful or Mechanical?
Posted on 07. May, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
While I’ve been to Belgium the past week for the fine Fusion Marketing Experience, I decided to take a day trip to Paris yesterday since it was only 2 hours away by train. As you may know, I do a bit of traveling.
The quality of the experience, memories and the stories you get to tell after visiting other countries are usually the most meaningful. Sure “stuff” is fun to get, but how often do you think “I met too many cool people” vs. “I bought too many souvenirs”?
As I talk to other people about traveling (and online marketing), the spectrum of perspectives is pretty amazing. It’s just like the wide variety of perceptions towards optimization and social networking. For some people, both are simplified as checklists. Keyword list? Check. Take a picture of the Eiffel Tower? Check. But what did it mean?
The purpose of my day-trip to Paris (my first) was all mechanical. I was there mostly to get Flat Stanley photos for my 8 year old princess and to get lightly familiar with the Metro, navigating the city. I will make no claims whatsoever about having “seen” Paris. I didn’t “really” see, or more importantly, experience much of anything significant. As there is infinitely more to Paris than photos of the Louvre Museum, Notre Dame, Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower, there is much, much more to SEO than keywords, Pandas, Pengiuns and links. There’s certainly a lot more to social networking than fans, friends and followers.
So the question is, why do you settle? Why do you let your company settle? Why are so many companies still siloing their SEO and social media marketing and counting success through KPIs? Even those companies that have developed their appreciation towards what SEO can do, get caught up in Google update drama or link counts and rankings vs. focusing on what’s important.
The same goes for companies that have some experience in the social media realm. Blog? Check. Fans, friends and followers? Check. Ooh look! Shiny object Pinterest. Check!
KPIs are not business outcomes. At least not for most companies. Rankings, organic non-branded search traffic, Google+ circle counts, video views, comments and retweets are KPIs. Last time I checked, none of them carry a wallet.
Optimize for experiences. Any content or media that a company publishes digitally can create an experience for prospects, customers, investors, employees, journalists, potential employees and industry peers. It’s important to monitor key performance indicators as it relates to search and social media attracting visitors. Engagement KPIs are important too. But I think there’s opportunity to look beyond the fan, friend, follower and ranking metrics to attempt to understand what progress in those areas actually means for the business.
London? Been there, done that. A while back, a peer in the online marketing world mentioned to me having been to London for a day. The summation was, “I’ve done London” check. I see the same assessments from online marketers about their SEO and social media efforts. They have a blog, they’re getting data on links, visits, retweets, likes and comments. Check. But that’s where it stops for them.
In the way that there’s more to Paris, London and the city where you live than seeing a few tourist spots, there’s more to your online marketing than measuring KPIs. They can indicate progress, but they are not the end goal when it comes to customer acquisition and engagement (the business my agency TopRank Online Marketing) is in. It’s also a big focus for my new book, Optimize.
My 30 min of internet at the Antwerp airport is about to expire. I wish I could finish this post, but maybe you can share your thoughts? Do you think most online marketers are practicing meaningful or more mechanical SEO and social media marketing?
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Is Your Optimization Meaningful or Mechanical? | http://www.toprankblog.com
12 Timeless Link Building Tips for Business Blogs
Posted on 30. Apr, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Link Building for Business Blogs Doesn't Need to Be Risky
As a key component of a hub and spoke online marketing strategy, blogs can be very effective for social media network engagement, online PR, customer service, and as search engine optimization assets. While there are numerous cases studies of business blogs (I like to think Online Marketing Blog is one) providing tremendous value, blogs are simply software tools and what you get out of them is in proportion to how well you know how to use them. One of the common areas of lost opportunity with business blogs is link building.
Despite Panda, Penguin and maybe someday “Zebra?”, updates from Google to further filter out what constitutes useful content and links on the web, links will always be valuable for attracting traffic. Some online marketers chase exploits, tricks or shortcuts only to get spanked by a black and white named-animal update from Google. Why not spend that creativity on something of value and competitive advantage that withstands the advancing filters applied by search engines?
Here are a few timeless tips for building natural links that will attract and engage customers to your business blog:
1. Create content worth linking to. No matter how many tactics you find here and elsewhere, there simply is no substitute for creating content that others may find useful. With an Optimized approach to online marketing, understanding your market and customers is essential for developing an approach for content, SEO, Social and promotions that result in links. If you understand what content types, topics and formats resonate with influential link sources and the communities around them, your content promotion and social networking efforts can become more effective, more quickly and a “win” all around.
2. Competitive Link Research on competing web sites or blogs will help identify who is linking to competitor sites that are not linking to yours. This is back link analysis 101 and can still be useful for spotting opportunities of all kinds. For example, if another web site or blog is already linking to multiple competitors in a list of resources relevant to your product or service, there is a chance they’ll link to your blog about the same product/service category as well. Monitoring the competition using SEO link tracking and social media monitoring tools can reveal many, many different types of linking and content opportunities. They can also reveal what NOT to do.
3. Engage on other blogs and industry news websites that allow comments. Interactions should always be useful, timely and relevant. Simply promoting links to your event or blog post as the first time comment does not provide much value. It’s like interrupting a conversation and trying to sell something to a group of people that know each other and you’re the stranger. Develop connections, ask questions, answer them, share resources and recognize others that contribute. When guided by topical themes and objectives, those behaviors can be instrumental and developing connections with influential link sources and the media.
4. Make Sharing Easy where ever you’re publishing useful content, especially on blogs. While the social proof offered by Twitter, Facebook, Google+ counters is fairly superficial, they do work at attracting attention and validating to the reader that the blog post is worth checking out. Make the act of sharing easy by including sharing options but also by including titles that are social media optimized. Share titles will pre-populate a Twitter sharing window with text that is more interesting from a social share perspective.
Don’t leave it to the reader to write their own description of the blog post they’re sharing, although that ability should certainly exist. Of course, title tags should be keyword optimized for search engines. Sharing expands the visibility of your content on social networks and communities. Shared links can be a useful signal for search engines and the expanded visibility can catch the eye of another blogger or journalist that might link back to the source from their own website or blog.
5. Guest post on other blogs and include a link to your blog in the bio. In the course of getting to know blogs that already rank well on the keyword phrases you’re targeting, you may notice that they often accept guest blog posts from others. Contact the blog owner and suggest a compelling post that would be first and foremost, valuable to their readers. If it makes sense editorially to link from within the guest post to your own blog, be sure to use relevant keywords as the link text. Do not use the exact same link text every time. Make the anchor text relevant to the source and the destination.
6. Write testimonials or case studies for services and software that you use. They may publish with a link back to your blog. Testimonials must be well written, genuine and specific in order to be useful for the service/product owner. Get at the essence of what’s great about the product or service and even add something unique. If you’ve written a review of the product/service on your blog, that can also get you a link from their press page.
7. Event and Job listings should always have a link back to your blog. Blogs can be useful recruiting tools that help candidates understand the culture of your company. When purchasing job listings on other web sites, add a link to your blog. The listings may expire, but may also introduce your blog to candidates that write their own blog and decide to write about a listing with a permanent link to the hiring company blog. The same goes for event listings, which like job listings, are often syndicated to networks that turn up in RSS feeds, as Tweets and updates on other social networks.
8. Distribute optimized news via a wire service with a link to your blog included. Our client, PRWeb, is a pioneer in providing competitive SEO value with press release distribution. It is essential the the release is well-written and offers compelling news worth sharing and linking to. Many blogs and some news web sites will re-publish your press release exactly as it was distributed, including good links back to your blog. Journalists use News Search engines to look up past press releases and research on stories, which presents an opportunity to be found and included.
9. Contribute Op Eds or Articles to industry web sites, online newspapers, magazines and association websites. Your article can include a link to your blog in the credentials area. If you suggest content to another web site such as a letter to the editor, why not keyword optimize the title? You might also include a link back to your blog where you’ve written many more articles on the same topic. Those links build credibility of your article and also for you as an author and subject matter expert.
Along the lines of op eds and contributed articles, be sure your media relations efforts include a link request when an industry publication decides to include you or your company in a story. Many newspapers and magazine websites have a policy of not linking out, but if you are diligent in asking and give a good resource for the link destination, it could pay off very nicely. News websites can be very useful to search engines and link sources.
10. ABN – Always Be Networking and growing your social networks, email lists and channels of distribution. Share especially useful content from your blog where relevant. Be useful to others and they will useful to you by promoting your content and attracting links. Don’t be gratuitous when sharing links to your own content, but when you have something particularly special and valuable that’s highly relevant to a particular network, then by all means, share it with them. Some are bloggers as well and may link to it from their own blogs as well as pass the link along to others.
11. Sponsor content on web sites or newsletters archived to the web that allow you to include a link. It may be a nofollow link, but it may not. Many newsletters sent via email are archived to the web or have landing pages on the web. Ask those newsletters if you can buy an ad or even contribute a short article. The article credits should include a link to your blog where there are more resources on the same or similar topic.
12. Hire bloggers to write content for you. They’ll often cross-post it to their own blog with a link back to yours. Of course, you should be considerate and simply mention that this is ok, don’t ask them or require them to do it. If you have regular contributors to your blog, those bloggers may be prone to promoting and linking to their work on your blog as a way to build attention to themselves.
Bonus tip: When others link to you, THANK THEM! Building good will is one of the most underrated marketing skills online. Be genuine, thoughtful and courteous. Also be SMART and driven to get links where it makes sense.
What linking tactics for blogs have you found to be most effective? What challenges are you facing in attracting other sites to link to your blog?
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
12 Timeless Link Building Tips for Business Blogs | http://www.toprankblog.com
Optimize and the Confluence of Search and Social Media
Posted on 26. Apr, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Book Reviews, content marketing, lee odden, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Excerpt of my interview with Lee Odden. Video production by my friends at Candidio. Fast, inexpensive, quality video production. Transcription services from Speechpad. For full conversation, watch the video!
Jay: Hey, everybody. It’s Jay Baer from Convince & Convert joined today
by a very special guest, my friend Lee Odden, live from somewhere. . .
Lee: Somewhere.
Jay: In the United Kingdom. A secret location in the United Kingdom. Lee
is the author of the brand new book, so brand new that the official release
date was yesterday, called Optimize: How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media, and Content Marketing
Lee: Great to be here. Doing great. Having a good time at a search
conference here in Leeds and really happy to talk about Optimize
get tired of it.
Jay: You do a lot of conferences. I tell you what, you guys in the
search business, you like to confer. There are conferences, there are confabs, there are a lot of that kind of thing
in your business.
Lee: You know, it changes so much. And there’s a lot of black box, so to
speak, in terms of how things work and that’s the search engines’ fault, I
suppose, and so, you know, to keep people guessing and that sort of thing.
So folks get together and try and figure it out, you know. And even people
like myself, I’ve been in the business for 15 years, you know, there’s
still new things, you know, you learn at these events. Because there’s so
many ways to answer the question.
Jay: Very nice. Very nice. As you said, your background
is in search. And, of course, now you do a lot of social and the
confluence of social and search, which is what the book is about. Do you
think being from a search background is the best possible historical
precedent to be good at social, or is it the worst possible background to
be good at social?
Lee: If you’re asking a search person, then clearly there’s a very obvious
answer to that. I came in as an online marketer search guy to a PR agency, as a contractor that
became an employee that became a partner and then I’m doing what I do now.
But, so I had the influence of public relations and the content
there. The importance of messaging and influence hit me on one side and
then search and data and all that propeller hat kind of SEO stuff that was
going on. And that’s kind of where I come from, I think. And I found,
interestingly, that the media relations efforts, the outbound calling of
journalists, emails of journalists to get media placement for our clients,
is something that I really recognize as a powerful
tactic, you know?
I think there are some search people,
who, by their nature, are adaptable. The long time search folks
that are successful are extremely adaptable. And I said this morning those
SEOs were making money in ’97 by optimizing for Altavista, Hotbot, and
Lycos. And they’re going to be making money-and I mean for their clients or
for themselves next year or ten years from now from whatever the future
Google Facebook Pinterest conglomeration is.
Jay: Yep.
Lee: Now, that’s a small percentage. And so those folks, you know,
they’ll be great as social. They’ll be great at content. They’ll be great
at search or a conglomeration of all of the above. But there are plenty of
people who are tactically practicing SEO and they’re going to suck at
social.
Jay: Just because they take sort of the relationship side out of it and
it’s too formulaic?
Lee: Yes. It’s mechanical, not meaningful.
Google Handles 11 Billion Inquiries Per Month. Twitter Handles 350 Billion Tweets Per Day.
Jay: One of the stats
that you had in the book which blew me away, I actually had to read it two
or three times, and I know it’s not a misprint because I’m sure you’ve
checked it. But I think you said in the book at Google has 11 billion
queries a month.
Lee: Yeah, that’s from Comscore.
Jay: And Twitter has 350 billion tweets a day?
Lee: 350 billion tweets a day.
Jay: But the reality is, the reality is that we think about Google as this like all-knowing, all-seeing cyborg. But yet, in terms of actual level of inquiry, level of chatter, Twitter and Facebook and those guys are right there.
Infographic by- Shanghai Web Designers
Lee: Yeah, you know, there’s an info-graphic that documents 60 seconds on
the web, right? And, you know, it’s kind of an information
overload kind of thing. And someone coming into the content marketing
space is not only competing against other companies that are creating
content, but they’re also, you know, competing against the consumers that
are empowered to publish.
Jay: Yeah. Yeah, I talk about that all the time. Your brand is competing
against my mom and my wife and my best friend for my attention. And brands
have never had to really experience that in the past. That’s really a
first. You know, my mom doesn’t buy magazine ads, right? And my friends
don’t buy radio time, right? But all the sudden, now we’re in the same
sandbox, which is crazy. So it seems like a lot of companies are like,
great, well we’ll just make more content, right? But your belief, i.e.
this book, is don’t necessarily make more content. Optimize that content.
And how does that yield better outcomes?
Personas, Content Marketing Segmentation and the Buy Cycle
Lee: Well obviously, it’s being thoughtful about a particular audience and
a particular outcome or a category of outcome. A lot of interesting,
interestingly, I’ve seen a lot of the SEO folks that are jumping on the
content marketing bandwagon. What I was getting at with the SEOs is that they’re
responding to the content issues by saying you should make more content.
So their perception is leaving out the customer. They’re leaving out
empathy. They’re leaving out who actually buys the stuff. And they’re also
not talking so much, although I think they will be, so much about buy cycle
optimization. So it’s one thing to segment customers and kind of think
about what their paying points and their goals are and then create a
content plan around that and that’s a qualitative effort, I think, right?
And so therefore, not only by understanding actual customers and what
they’re interested in, but also taking a look at a segment and documenting
the buying cycle, buying behaviors are, right?
Awareness, call it whatever you want, awareness, interest, consideration and purchase. And then
actually develop, craft the editorial plans, you know, specific to that buy
cycle. And of course, anytime there’s content, there’s an opportunity for,
you know, search and social media optimization.
Jay: Yep, yep. One of the things that was really interesting in the book,
you talk about buy cycle optimization is, you know, you talk about using
personas. I’m a big fan of that and used to do a lot that in my web
strategy consulting practice in the last company that I was in. But you
really talk about creating personas from a place of data inputs, right?
Where it’s not just like, let’s sit down and come up with an interesting
caricature of our customers, but using a lot of data and analysis to then
take that information and create personas based on that.
Lee: Right. Yeah, doing research into, you know, not only surveying
customers and doing some primary research, I guess and getting a sense of
what their preferences are. And I like to split it up into their
preferences for discovery of information, consumption of information, and
sharing or action. But understanding through web analytics, through other
data sources like social monitoring. I mean, there’s site-specific
information that have demographic information associated with it. Going to
social platforms that offer advertising, they usually have demographic
information about who visits that site. And by comparing that demographic
data or behavioral cycle, whatever, with information you have on your own
customers, you can make some good decisions in terms of persona
development. And the thing that folks need to understand is that there’s
not a start/stop with persona development, right? It’s you’re always
refining it. The other thing is the notion of creating a negative persona
and that is, you know, people that you don’t want to be your customer
anymore or that you don’t want to attract so that you make sure that you’re
not optimizing for them.
Editorial Calendars and Content Planning
Jay: You know, we talked about editorial plans in the book-and you
mentioned it a moment ago-how does that work with your blog? The Top Rank
Blog, of course, is one of the finest blogs out there on the interwebs and
I read it. In fact, I just read an article a minute ago about some cool new
Pinterest stuff. It’s a great, great blog. Super useful. How do you
apply editorial calendaring, editorial planning to the blog? What does
that process look like for you?
Lee: Well first, over the last six month I’ve had some help from Ashley
Zeckman, who wrote the Pinterest post. And we follow long term guidelines,
and some adaptive guidelines. So I like to plan things out a couple of
months in advance. And so we use sort of a
matrix. There are, let’s say, vertical markets or topics on one axis and
on the other axis are things like applications or industries and things
like that. So, for example, I might have well, Pinterest and optimization,
Pinterest and B2B, Pinterest and consumer, Pinterest and this, and so
forth. Or I might have, you know, retail and Facebook, retail and Twitter,
retail and SEO, retail and social media.
And when we follow sort of a
matrix like that is one input for inspiration on our editorial plan for the
blog. The other thing we look at is we have sort of a weekly calendar. So
on Monday, I’ll do a certain type of post, usually try to be thought
leadership. And on Fridays, it’s a news roundup. On Tuesdays, it’s
something else.
Jay: Brilliant. We do the second one with the weekly sort of editorial
calendar. But the X Y topical axes is really fascinating. Because what I
do is say, I think that’s interesting. I’m going to write about that.
Which is not terribly focused, which is why your blog has a lot more
traffic than mine does. Because you’re actually like, OK, we know what
people want and let’s give them that.
Lee: I’m not trying to be a platform for self expression as much as content that
supports our agency’s objective. We don’t run advertising. We don’t
monetize the blog in any way. It’s been free for all, for eight years now.
The only way we monetize the blog are the inquiries that occur directly or
that use the blog as part of inspiration, so offline, online, you know how
it goes, for consulting gigs. So to inspire those kinds of inquiries, you
know, we follow that kind of guideline.
Instagram, Pinterest and the Image Economy
Jay: Yeah, love it. So you are a photographer. I always see you around
conferences with a camera and you’re on Instagram all the time. You do a
great job there. Because you have this crazy, insane travel schedule,
you’re in Europe, you’re in Hong Kong, you’re on the moon. What’s your
take on the whole Instagram Facebook scenario? Are you running for the
hills? Are you freaked out? Are you going to stop using it?
Is THIS Lee Odden's best-looking audience?
Lee: Well, Instagram is my favorite app to use, personally. I don’t do
anything marketing oriented there. I do take photos of conference
attendees. Like when I’m on stage I do this little fun thing where I say,
to break the ice, I’m looking for the best looking audience in the world so
if you could all get good looking . Then I take a picture and then I pop
it up. So, yeah, because there’s a personal connection to me and I love
the content that the images that other people are putting up on Instagram,
that’s something I enjoy. It’s quick. It’s mobile. It’s obviously not on
the web. But I actually try and use a lot of my photos for blog posts, like
I did for a blog post today.
However, compared with Pinterest, when there was buzz about Pinterest
doing, you know, selling your personal photos, I deleted all the photos,
all my personal photos that I had uploaded. But that’s a little bit of a
different topic. Because the behavior on Pinterest isn’t something I’m
personally interesting. Curating other’s photos. I tried it. It’s not
for me. I like taking photos and, you know, refining and reacting to other
people’s photos that they’ve taken.
Jay: Yeah. Well the thing is, I mean, nobody freaks out about Google
buying YouTube at this point. You know, that’s worked out OK for all
involved. So just because Facebook owns Instagram I don’t think means that
they are necessarily going to kill it or screw it up or roll it in. Now
they may do all those things. But I don’t think it necessarily means that.
Lee: Yeah. I don’t know, I don’t know. I mean, you know, you’ve got-
that’s a lot of money. And they’ve got to monetize, right? So something’s
going to happen.
Optimize Spills the Beans
Jay: This book is really fascinating to me because, you know as we said, coming from the digital side of it,
like, you kind of, I mean, you told the whole tale in here. I mean, if you
really want to get good at optimizing search and social and content, I
mean, you can read this book and keep it around and you’ve got a really
good blueprint for doing so. It was amazing to me in comparison to other
books out there in our category who are a little bit more pontificating and
here’s the way the world works. I mean, this is very down the line, you do
this and then you do this and then you do this, which is admirable. But
did you ever have anybody on your team say, “hey, boss, maybe we shouldn’t
write a book that tells people exactly what we do for a living?” Was there
ever any concern there?
Lee: Well, you know, everything’s not in there.
Jay: ”All the good stuff is not in Optimize
Lee: Yeah. I mean, you know, it’s like anything, I suppose. If people
don’t think a certain way every day, and you give a taste of that, it does
seem like, “Holy crap, they’re giving all this stuff away.” And the
reality is it’s an iceberg. The other thing is there’s a lot of value in
execution. I mean, this is a creative business more so than people
realize. And it’s not just creative on the, you know, storytelling aspect
which is obviously important, and will continue to grow in importance. But
the creative content planning, the creativity, and the political issues you
have to deal with, as you know as a consultant with organizations, with
execution. And then also the insight that comes from data. That, you know
I can give even more detailed instructions about what one should do in all
those areas. But when it comes down to a human being actually turning that
into value, that’s requires experience and knowledge, not just information.
Jay: Yeah. Just because you give somebody a list of ingredients doesn’t
make them a chef.
Lee: Exactly. And my goal in the book was to give something to people
that would be valuable, right? I mean, I’m not looking to sign every
company up in the world to be a client.
Jay: Yeah, it was really, really good. I loved it. It’s singing the song
that I like to sing. You’ve done a great job
and I think a real service to a lot of people. And I hope folks will take
the time to really read it carefully. Because you can learn an awful lot in
that book and from the man, the myth, the legend, Lee Odden. Thanks so
much for being here. Congrats.
Marketing Boring Products – It’s Not A “Boring” Problem, It’s a “Knowing Your Customers” Problem
Posted on 23. Apr, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, content marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
In the search engine marketing world, effective online marketing comes down to surfacing keyword opportunities that reflect a demand for solutions (products/services). Content about those products is created and optimized to attract search traffic for popular and relevant keywords.
Niche products often suffer from a universe of keywords that have low popularity counts and that creates a challenge. Because in the world of SEO, accountability starts with driving more organic, non-branded search traffic to a company website. If there’s very little demand for the keyword phrases identified, it can be frustrating for all.
A common reaction to that frustration is to accuse the products, company or industry as being “boring”. But here’s the thing:
Challenges with marketing low popularity products isn’t an issue with the products being boring. It’s a problem with the marketers’ understanding of customers and the problems those product solve.
If there’s a market for a product that solves a problem, then selling that product, as niche and “boring” as it may be, through SEO, content marketing or social media marketing has to do with better understanding the people and problems relevant to the product.
“One man’s junk is another man’s treasure” as the saying goes. What’s important is to understand the product and market well enough to know why a specific audience has value for it, what the end benefits are and the context for how prospects come to need and purchase it.
Here are 5 tips to help find ways to make marketing niche and low demand products more effective:
1. Who has bought the product in the past and why? Current customers can tell you a lot that’s not revealed in analytics. Survey customers, sales people and customer service reps for the company to identify the company’s perception of their unique selling proposition and the actual reasons customers buy.
2. Segment buyers by common characteristics, pain points, goals and behaviors. Get in the mind of the customer and understand why, how and where they buy.
3. Map the buyer sales cycle from Awareness to Interest to Consideration and Purchase. What kind of content, search keywords and social topics are relevant to guide the buyer through the sales cycle (or better yet, attract them from other companies selling the same thing).
4. Optimize for a quantity of niche. Go horizontal and get creative with a wide variety of variations on keywords. A keyword with a really low popularity count that is very high on relevancy only needs one sale to be profitable in many cases. Think about that and go wide for every situation there might be for buying the product.
5. Create a cycle of continuous monitoring, measurement and refinement that allows you to adapt and scale successes.
If you can think past keywords and get into the mind of the customer, their problem to be solved and the sales cycle they go through, you can develop an effective content marketing program that leverages search and social media to attract traffic, engage prospects and inspire both sales and social shares. That’s the Optimized way of online marketing.
What are some of the tactics or situations you’ve solved with “boring” products or services?
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Marketing Boring Products – It’s Not A “Boring” Problem, It’s a “Knowing Your Customers” Problem | http://www.toprankblog.com
Google’s Greatest Fear
Posted on 07. Apr, 2012 by Jeffrey_Smith in Blog, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
With millions of business owners, webmasters and affiliates spending thousands of dollars on SEO and countless hours spent optimizing their websites (only to have Gogle organic search results shaken up or completely whisked away due to vaccilating shifts from new algorithm changes) is genuinely creating feelings of anger, frustration and disdain.
Google’s greatest fear is you not using or needing to use Google…
As if running a business wasn’t hard enough, business owners are now forced to deal with the rise and fall of search engine results (knowing that at any time aside from ruthless competitors targeting their most coveted positions that a new algorithm change could come along and potentially sweep all their progress under the rug) without warning.
The only solution is to either (1) conform or (2) diversify your traffic sources to become less dependent on any one source of visitors, however, most are either unwilling or unaware of their options, so they continue to run on the treadmill in hope of stability.
For large or small businesses alike faced with overhead, cash flow and competition; conforming or overly depending on any one traffic source (Google) is not a viable solution for creating long-term stability.
Faced with violent shifts in rankings and either posting record profits or losses based on where you rank is a type of traffic-dependency. That dependency can be weaned and replaced if those same business owners took their searches or paid search budget to other viable search engines and / or traffic sources to funnel traffic.
Objectively, it’s time to see things for what they really are; the fact that Google (not surprisingly) is a business model motivated by profits. Despite the “don’t be evil” motto which once brandished a blind eye from most, with recent allegations of privacy concerns, changes in Adwords policies (which left thousands banned with no explanation) and the constant organic search algorithm shuffle, at some point users will come to terms with this and act accordingly (and ignore Google).
The Pervasive Threat of Google Penalties
Recently Google informed untold numbers of webmasters that they were in violation of their terms of service for unnatural link activity. Needless to say, the fear of loss is a great motivator. When people are told to conform, most will to avoid going against the current of the status quo.
However, the audacity that webmasters should conform to a terms of service (considering they didn’t opt in in the first place) based on Google’s limitation on determining the value of the link graph (paid link, intentional link, unintenional link, etc.) is preposterous. It’s not like anyone in their index ever received a request asking if it was ok to crawl your content and include it in their index?
Does CNN, New York Times, USA today or other massive authority sites add rel=”nofollow” tags to every outbound link or risk getting deindexed? No, they do not… Then why should you have to?
The fact is that websites with that extent of authority simply don’t need Google (because they already have an established brand) and users will go directly to their website instead of using Google as an intermediary (which is essentially all they are).
And how “relevant” would Google be if a user typed in CNN in Google and couldn’t find CNN (or any large brand for that matter), which makes brands essentially immune to being banned from their search results.
Yet, for small businesses, entrepreneurs, affiliates and others forced to compete daily in search engines to funnel traffic to thrive and survive are constantly pummeled by the vague terms of service which essentially means you cannot promote your website (unless it’s done according to Google’s promotional policy).
Google’s Stance on Links is Dated
Sorry, the last time I checked links were not exclusively designed to manipulate PageRank, links are just links, the are simply how people move from page to page and website to website. Just as freedom of speech exists, the freedom to link to who you like when you like exists in the same vein.
The only difference (mind you) is intent and links are either designed to deliver visitors from Page A to Page B or to promote – it’s that simple. And people are going to promote their business by necessity in order to create a profit so, I don’t see links going away any time soon, so, Google you will simply have to adapt (and stop penalizing webmasters) or they will simply move on to other traffic funnels.
The point I am making is, if Google were losing money due to their massive operation, do you think they would have the time, energy or resources to keep “shaking things up” in the organic search results in the name of search quality?
Would they have time to ban countless advertisers (since they collectively are not worth the time to service compared to fortune 500 and up clientele)? – I think not.
Is Google’ Greatest Fear Competition or Complacency?
With Facebook (the social giant) and Apple (the mobile giant) both considering entering the search engine space, Google could potentially have some SERIOUS competition ahead (unlike Yahoo or Bing) and which suggests that…
Google biggest fear is:
1) They will become obsolete as the preferred organic search engine and lose their monopoly (and profit).
2) Paid search will fail to deliver (since organic search is no longer “the cats meow” for disgruntled users) and the organic traffic base will diminish.
3) The curve will change (which is the most likely) meaning that new technologies, platforms, methods and/or solutions will emerge and people will simply move on from typing keywords in to search engines and use alternative methods such as apps, HTML5 or other alternatives to have media or commerce delivered on demand.
The cycle of emerging innovation (from BBS, to directories, to search engines) followed by user adaptation which now borders on user complacency has already reached the point of consolidation.
This implies that the cycle is ripe for change and a new potential curve (such as Apples Siri) or other alternatives to search could make the previous achievement obsolete (e.g. pagers, cassette tapes, VCR’s, the Yellow Pages).
However, at the time (back in the day) few were looking past the phase of user complacency and would still be using Pagers, cassette tapes, VCR’s, etc. if new innovations and curves had not usurped them, now making them obsolete.
While most people didn’t know (or care) what a search engine was 10 years ago, fast forward 10 years and they may not even be able to remember.
Keep in mind, the market is fickle and here today gone tomorrow can happen faster with the acceleration of communication and new emerging technologies.
The Take Away to Remeber
1) The very data in Google’s index that they attempt to police and enforce does not belong to them, it belongs to the others (those who wrote it) and the web at large who are generous enough to share. Google does not create the content their index, you do and how you promote it is up to you.
2) The web is bigger than Google and you decide Google’s fate every time you search on their platform or choose another search engine you cast your vote. There are thousands of traffic funnels to drive visitors to your websites aside from search engines (investigate them for viability to your business).
3) Google telling people to jump through hoops (in fear of a ranking penalty or removal from their index) is a Pandora’s Box they should leave behind (or they might be left behind on the next emerging curve from those same banned/penalized users).
In closing, Google’s greatest fear is you not using them and while their business model is brilliant, they’re the most successful company in history to profit from (1) using content created from other websites via crawling and indexing technology (2) create a synergistic advertising model as an accessory to their organic search results and (3) getting paid to send traffic away from their own site as an authoritative intermediary – this curve, put simply, has its limitations, particularly, if any of the aforementioned metrics change, (such as Google having to ask permission to crawl your data).
Fortunately for us (based on previous experience), we know that consumers are fickle and at any time they could opt-out and frequent other websites which have more emotional, funcional or curb appeal than Google. Google started as one website and can potentially be reduced to that if people choose not to use it.
This means you, the users hold the key to just how much power or control you wish to allow it to have over you or your business.
Feel free to share your thoughts below…
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Linkbuilding Like a Nerd #SESNY
Posted on 27. Mar, 2012 by BLarson in Blog, Search Engine Strategies, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Linkbuilding has to be one of my favorite aspects of SEO. All too often people use the analogy of linkbuilding being a popularity contest. As someone who views linkbuilding in a somewhat different light – and as someone who was considered by only his parents as ‘cool’ – I think it’s time to put that analogy to bed. Yes, being the sexy-fun brand will undoubtedly drive links for your site. But in my opinion, it’s the quality of the information on the page that will not only help you succeed in proactively acquiring links, but will also inspire others to link to your page. Or to return to the analogy, the cool kid might start out with the lead, but it’s the smart kid (see nerd) who ends up winning in the long run.
It is that passion for linkbuilding that drove me to put Linkbuilding Essentials as one of my can’t miss SES New York sessions…and it didn’t disappoint. Debra Mastaler, President of Alliance-Link, presented solo and here are just some of the highlights.
Create Quality Content
At the end of the day links represent another sites ‘vote’ for your page. To earn that vote you need to offer content that can’t be found on just any site. Provide resources, include imagery and ensure your headline grabs the reader’s attention. If you want to inspire sharing, give them something worthy of sharing.
4 Linkbuilding Considerations
1. Quantity - The number of links pointing to an individual page.
Take-away: Because the quality of links strongly influences the links value, link quantity can be dangerous to view in a silo. Use this number along with link quantity to evaluate your linkbuilding success and identify new opportunities.
2. Quality - Different search engines have different names for the metric used to evaluate link quality. For Google that is known as PageRank. PageRank – wisely titled – ranks a page based on the PageRank number for all pages linking to it.
Take-away: Online marketers learned many Google updates ago that Google places a strong emphasis on the quality of a link. That is, a link from Forbes is more powerful than a link from bookmarking site, although both may deserve a place in your linkbuilding strategy.
3. Relevance - The context or relationship between the page linking out and the page receiving the link is an important aspect of linkbuilding. The pages should likely have some similarities in order for the link to be of value to either web property.
Take-away: If you’re a business that sells high-end IT software and yet most of the links that point to your site are from a site that sells boiled peanuts, there’s something wrong. As you consider what sites to target in your linkbuilding efforts, ask yourself: is it reasonable for your audience to want to visit that page? If the answer is yes, it is likely a good link to acquire from both a SEO and UX standpoint.
4. Anchor Text - Links that leverage text to link to another page. When done right, the text of the link should provide insight as to what information will be found on the linked page.
Take-away: From a SEO perspective, anchor text links can be more powerful than a spelled out URL link. Why? For the same reason it is more powerful from a UX perspective. The text of the link provides the search bot with information about the page being linked.
No-No’s for Linkbuilding
Now with an understanding of some of the key aspects to consider when developing and maintaining a linkbuilding program, let’s switch gears and discuss a few practices that every marketer should avoid.
- Building Links in Bulk – Seems counter-intuitive, right? If link quantity is factored by search engines, why not acquire as many as possible at once? The reason is simple: with exception to major announcements, product roll-outs or big advertising, it’s unnatural for most pages to suddenly have a burst in the number of inlinks. In addition, the types of tactics that lead to a sudden surge in links are likely against Google’s Terms of Service.
- Not Linking Out – There is an old belief that linking from your page to a 3rd party property is a bad thing and hurts your PageRank score. In reality, linking to other sites offers far more pros than cons. The only caveat is that you need take a strategic approach to how you link out. For starters, don’t use an important keyword in your anchor text and don’t link to sites that you don’t want associated with your brand
- Talking Like a Robot – Using the exact phrase in each anchor text link you acquire is not ideal. Although it’s difficult to quantify how this approach can impact the SEO value of your links, think of it this way: no two people talk the exact same way, so it’s unreasonable that the only language relevant to your page is X. Consider mixing in long tail derivatives to strike a healthy balance.
One thing that I especially enjoyed in Mastaler’s presentation was the way she broke down the large world of linkbuilding into neat little segments that allow you to form an action plan. Get nerdy and start your linkbuilding initiative with a commitment to provide better content than your competition. Next, evaluate your current inlink situation against the 4 key considerations. Identify your opportunities and be sure not to violate the linkbuilding no-no’s.
While we’re talking linkbuilding, what’s the best linking tool? Make your case with a comment below.
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Linkbuilding Like a Nerd #SESNY | http://www.toprankblog.com
Expert Video Marketing Strategy – Spoiler Alert: Cat Videos Included #SESNY
Posted on 22. Mar, 2012 by BLarson in Blog, Search Engine Strategies, Search Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Video Marketing
Have you worked yourself to the bone on a video marketing campaign only to see the results fall flat? Do you have a wealth of video content but are unsure how to leverage it effectively to serve your marketing objectives? Can your presence on YouTube be summed as ‘well, we have a channel’?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, you’re not alone. Getting results through your video marketing efforts can be a challenge if you don’t have the right game-plan. However, you’re in luck! At day 2 of SES New York TopRank CEO Lee Odden moderated a panel discussion with leading industry video marketers.Their stellar tips and insights that can be found below.
Video Marketing Tactics – Mark Robertson
Robertson did an excellent job providing a nice comedic break during the session by showcasing a video that pokes fun at one inevitable truth about audiences: we love cat videos. If you haven’t seen the Catvertising video, take a moment to watch the video. It’s worth it.
Cats aside, Robertson shared some helpful and often overlooked SEO tips for YouTube that can help your video be found more easily through search.
- Titles-Be sure to include a relevant keyword at the start of the title to help the video be found through search.
- Summary – The summary serves as the meta description in the SERP. Start your summary with your keywords when possible to set expectations with your audience about the content in the video.
- Tags – Per YouTube’s own instructions, include as many relevant tags as possible.
- Playlists -They offer appear in search results and can keep your audience engaged with other relevant videos. Create playlists and include 3rd party content. Per YouTube, a videos ability to funnel traffic to other videos is factored into its search algorithm.
- Close Captioning – When uploading videos, be sure to upload closed captioning. The text from closed captioning is indexed and can help the hearing impaired and search engines find your video.
Applying a Strategic Approach to Video Marketing – Aaron Kahlow (@omconnect)
Video marketing shouldn’t live on an island in your marketing program. To be successful videos can’t be a simple one-off project or after thought. Kahlow encourages marketers to apply their marketing strategies to video and incorporate video marketing as part of a larger holistic effort.
Here are some key strategic steps to apply to video marketing:
- Determine Your Goal – What marketing objective should it serve. What is the desired outcome of the effort?
- Identify How to Capture the Video – Should the video have a raw feel that can be captured through a handheld or does the message need to be shared through high-quality video and production.
- Target an Audience – Who are you targeting with this video? Apply what you know about this audience to dictate how, when and where you promote the video.
- Leverage Your Brand & Promote Links – Your video should not be a secret. Promote it through other established channels such as: website, blog, email and social.
Video Marketing Case Studies – Greg Jarboe (@gregjarboe)
Making a viral video is a lot easier said than done. Although planning that a video will reach viral status is a dangerous expectation, Jarboe helps break down some of the commonalities that widely successful marketing videos share. Through his research, he found that every video that found a large audience fell into 4 categories.
- Inspiration
- Entertainment
- Enlightenment
- Education
An Example of Inspiration – Positive vs. Negative
Given the current political landscape, one might expect that the Republican candidates vying for the party’s presidential nomination would be gaining a large audience on YouTube. Compared to the number of views and shares for videos promoting President Obama, the Republican candidates’ audience is just a fraction of that of that of the incumbent. Why would that be?
One observation Jarboe noted was the focus of the videos. Whereas 71% of the videos on YouTube by Republican candidates were negative or attack focused, a majority of the videos surrounding Obama have a positive message promoting things like ‘hope’. Interestingly enough, only 10% of Obama’s videos from the 2008 election actually featured Obama himself. The remaining 90% focused on Obama supporters.
The takeaway for a business is that videos that promote a positive message more often inspire sharing. As Jarboe put it, get your audiences thinking about ‘we’ and not ‘you’.
An Example of Entertainment – Consistency is Key
Ray William Johnson is an actor/comedian who reportedly makes over $1 million dollars a year. What makes that so unique is that you’re not likely going to find Johnson on a major network when you’re flipping the channels. Instead, Johnson found his audience through building his presence on YouTube.
Now it should go without saying that Johnson invests time and energy into putting together creative content – and without those funny videos the next point is moot – but one way Johnson has been able to stand out amongst the flood of videos on YouTube is through consistent publishing. Posting new videos twice a week and always at the same day and time, Johnson has taught his audience to expect new content on a regular schedule – and he delivers.
Next Steps
This session packaged information well and when looking at the guidance from a cumulative perspective, there’s a comprehensive plan to glean from these experts. Between incorporating Kahlow’s strategic steps, following Jarboe’s guidelines for the type of video that inspires sharing and leveraging Robertson’s SEO tactics, you should have a good action plan to take your video marketing to the next level.
Do you have some expert guidance to share? What video marketing tips would you add?
Stay tuned for more posts from #SESNY, with additional updates on Twitter at: @toprank, @leeodden,@azeckman, @bslarsonmn.
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© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Expert Video Marketing Strategy – Spoiler Alert: Cat Videos Included #SESNY | http://www.toprankblog.com
Content & Customer Optimization Presentation from Search Congress Barcelona
Posted on 01. Mar, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, content optimization, search congress, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
View from our "boat" in Barcelona during Search Congress
I’m about to go on stage at the Search Congress conference in Barcelona and I thought I’d share the presentation that I’ll be giving. Don’t worry, only the title page is in Spanish but all the photos are from my last trip to Barcelona.
As a complement to the growing amount of Content and Social Media focused advice being given by traditional SEOs, this presentation is in line with our approach at TopRank to customer-centric content optimization.
Instead of focusing solely on keywords as inspiration for optimization, this presentation provides a framework and example of how a customer centric approach would segment customer data into personas and then map keywords, topics and content types according to each persona’s journey through the buying cycle.
The notion of SEO and optimization is so much more than keywords and links (as pointed out in yesterday’s well-received SEO post) I hope you find it useful.
Thanks to Ouali and the Search Congress team as well as to the attendees of Search Congress for attending.
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Content & Customer Optimization Presentation from Search Congress Barcelona | http://www.toprankblog.com
Content & Customer Optimization Presentation from Search Congress Barcelona
Posted on 01. Mar, 2012 by Lee Odden in Blog, content optimization, search congress, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
View from our "boat" in Barcelona during Search Congress
I’m about to go on stage at the Search Congress conference in Barcelona and I thought I’d share the presentation that I’ll be giving. Don’t worry, only the title page is in Spanish but all the photos are from my last trip to Barcelona.
As a complement to the growing amount of Content and Social Media focused advice being given by traditional SEOs, this presentation is in line with our approach at TopRank to customer-centric content optimization.
Instead of focusing solely on keywords as inspiration for optimization, this presentation provides a framework and example of how a customer centric approach would segment customer data into personas and then map keywords, topics and content types according to each persona’s journey through the buying cycle.
The notion of SEO and optimization is so much more than keywords and links (as pointed out in yesterday’s well-received SEO post) I hope you find it useful.
Thanks to Ouali and the Search Congress team as well as to the attendees of Search Congress for attending.
Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.
© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Content & Customer Optimization Presentation from Search Congress Barcelona | http://www.toprankblog.com
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