Show archive of November 2011
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The Internet Evolves Along with U.S. Law
November 17, 2011
Back from PubCon, Jessica Lee and Bruce Clay point out some of the highlights of the conference. Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team, was the featured keynote, and he shared his opinion that, despite some attention-seeking claims, SEO is not dead. Liveblog coverage of the keynote recalls Matt’s logic: SEO is not dead because SEO is a type of marketing. And marketing appeals to human nature and that’s never going to go away.” Marketing, it seems, only evolves. Jessica points to a move toward holistic digital marketing strategies, and the introduction of Marketing Land, a new sister site of industry gold standard news site Search Engine Land that will cover the growing realm of Internet marketing, including social media, affiliate marketing, email marketing and more.
Then Aaron Landerkin, software development manager, walks through how to use the Keyword Suggest Tool in the SEOToolSet suite of diagnostic SEO tools. The tool gathers keyword data primarily through Microsoft. It looks into adCenter numbers, including demographics for people searching for keywords, and categories in which a keyword is classified. This comes in handy, for instance, if you’re trying to target keywords that are broad and part of many categories as it helps to know what categories the search engine associates it with. To use the tool, enter a seed word or set of seed words and get suggestions based on one of three factors: 1) related searches; 2) larger keyword phrases that include the seed words; and 3) other words advertisers bid on when bidding on the seed word or phrase. Info on average cost per click, click through rate and categories are also presented.
Wrapping up the show, Aaron, Virginia Nussey and Michael Terry discuss currently proposed legislation in the U.S. Congress that would greatly hamper protected speech rights online. It creates a slippery slope that could lead to popular sites going out of commission as they would have to police content to the point where it’s not profitable to run the site. Content would be required to be taken down with as little as a copyright holders say so. The act appears to be stalling in response to public pressure. -
Local Business SEO and Google+ Biz Pages
November 10, 2011
Bruce Clay and Jessica Lee are in Las Vegas this week attending, blogging, speaking at and having a good time at PubCon. Maryann Robbins, Aaron Landerkin and Virginia Nussey take over the podcast in their absence, analyzing the conference news and information as covered by blogs and reports on Twitter. Overall “site quality” is a buzz phrase from the conference, and by aiming for a high-quality site as a whole, SEOs can avoid scrutiny by Google. Site quality includes relevance and timeliness of content, site architecture and more.
Calling into the show from Las Vegas is Michael Dorausch, chiropractor at ADIO Chiropractic in Los Angeles, and a well-known SEO and webmaster and frequent speaker on local search. He shares points from his presentation on local search rankings, including tips for gleaning data from your in-store customers that can be leveraged in online marketing. He also talks about dealing with negative reviews and how Internet users interpret reviews.
Finally, the hosts devote time to Google’s social network Google+ and news surrounding it. Newly offered business pages and available with categories of local businesses and places, products or brands, companies or organizations, and arts, entertainment or sports. And it looks like +1s are officially expected to play a role in ranking results in search and in AdWords. An article by Bruce Clay Australia introduces businesses to the opportunities of Google+ business pages and their affect on search marketing. -
Mobile and Social Marketing Updates
November 3, 2011
The mobile Internet market is one of the most rapidly advancing, with new devices and marketing opportunities introduced regularly. Google has released Android 4.0, the latest version of its operating system for mobile devices. Analysis of the release explains Google’s goal to “inspire the same kind of devotion to Android that Apple owners have for their hardware. It also wants to match Apple service for service, including music and media, so there’s no perceived gap or deficiency in Android’s feature set.” Google is also advancing the options available to mobile advertisers with new features and ad types for AdWords, namely ad circulars and deep-linking.
Kristy Bolsinger (@kristy), social business consultant at Ant’s Eye View and blogger at kristybolsinger.com, shares social media best practices. She discusses how to determine how a business should regulate employees’ social media use, the challenge of determining ROI from social media, and the process of socializing a product or service beyond the brand. She also explains her advice not to use social media as a business’s only online presence, and examines the marketing implications of a new feature that groups news feed stories by topic.
Then Aaron, Jessica and Virginia look at ways to help your Facebook content be visible in the Top News Feed. The most engaging content is rewarded by EdgeRank, Facebook’s ranking algorithm. Similar to the goals of all online content, a brand can improve its chances of being viewed in Top Stories by including photos, videos, questions, surveys and content that provokes discussion.