South Florida Web Marketing Blog

“Why can’t you just give me a straight answer?”

Johanna’s voice showed a trace of irritation.  “All I’m asking is how much you charge for SEO services!”

I smiled. This was familiar terrain. As an SEO consultant, almost every client asks me a similar question. My answer is always the same.

“It depends. On many things. Because SEO is not a turn-key solution you plug in to play.”

“Wait.  You’re an expert – and you can’t tell me what you’ll charge?!”

That’s when I explain why and when SEO matters, and the dynamic process of fixing my price for SEO consulting.

Broadly speaking, here’s what I share – and 3 analogies I use to make it easier to understand – buying a car, an iceberg or a dam!

Why SEO Matters

Every client likes to save money while getting great results from search engine optimization. But by always looking to save money on SEO, you’ll take your eye off the more important issue of intelligently allocating your marketing budget across various tactics, of which, SEO is often the most cost effective.

SEO isn’t simple or easy. Google itself rates websites based on over 200 ranking criteria – and keeps tweaking the algorithm constantly, up to 600 times in a year.

So if an ‘expert’ takes one look at your site and quotes you a “complete price” for SEO, run for the hills (or at least exercise extreme caution). Sure, they may fix some glaring weaknesses, or help you pick the low hanging fruit – but deep and lasting SEO is about a lot more than that.

Simple ‘Gold’, ‘Silver’ and ‘Bronze’ packages don’t work for SEO. SEO isn’t something you install or plug in to your website. It’s not a ‘one-time’ operation. Good SEO is a process. Research and planning are critical components of it.

That’s why no SEO consultant can make an off-hand estimate, or set a ‘price per site’ for their services. Everything depends upon your goals and targets, the nature of your business, your audience, and more.

There’s good reason why, as a client, you shouldn’t focus on the cost alone. It’s better to concentrate on the key performance indicators (KPIs) of your business such as the cost per acquisition, profit per sale, conversion rate and others.

A cheap SEO service may save you a little cash, but you won’t earn a lot from it either. In fact, it’s more likely that you’ll “save yourself into the poor-house!”

So ask yourself these critical questions first:

• Why are you even thinking about hiring an SEO consultant?
• Is SEO merely going to be your alibi instead of your ‘secret weapon’?
• Are you looking for SEO help just because everyone’s doing it, or your marketing department insists upon trying it?
• Or are you developing an SEO strategy to skyrocket your rankings, and along with it your profit?

Then, depending on the type of client, I introduce one (or all) of the 3 analogies.

Analogy #1: SEO Is Like Buying a Car, Your Price Will Match Your Needs

Johanna kept nodding her head, listening attentively to all that I said… but she still wasn’t convinced.

“Well, that’s fine,” she continued. “But I still want to know what it will cost to get my site optimized for search engines. How much does SEO cost?”

I asked her, “How much does it cost to buy a car?”

Johanna was a little confused. “Why, that depends.”

“Exactly” I said.  “The price you’ll pay for a car will depend on the make and model, its size and purpose, where you’ll drive it, and with whom. A sturdy station wagon for your family will be priced differently from a sports car you want to show-off!”

SEO services also range in price depending on what you want from it. The best SEO strategy begins by evaluating needs and problems of your prospective clients. It then deploys SEO as a magnet to attract only the most relevant leads out of the vast ocean of online Web surfers.

Setting up your website to do this effectively and well isn’t easy. Building laser focused landing pages targeted at sub-segments of your audience can draw a flood of relevant traffic that converts nicely into customers. But getting this right takes time and resources.

Cheap SEO is like bargain hunting. You might save some money. But you won’t earn much either. The way I practice SEO is not qualified guesswork that endangers a client’s business. Research and analysis come first, often followed by a face to face meeting with clients to gather all relevant information.

There’s nothing “turnkey” or “standard” about this kind of SEO. You can’t buy it, install it, and sit back. It is dynamic and constantly evolving. The ranking signals are in constant flux, and are impacted by various external factors, not just on-site ones.

SEO is also not about “fixing” things. Viewing SEO as a quick fix for reduced sales or traffic is a big mistake. You’ll only end up leaving money on the table (a lot of it!)

Good SEO must deliver a huge ROI. It is not just about getting high rankings and more traffic, clicks and page views. It’s about converting those visitors into paying customers. What happens before the landing page has a major impact on conversion rates.

SEO consulting of high caliber will help you:

• find your customers’ intent, needs and pressing problems
• identify their expectations from your business or website
• decide how you will deliver value (on the landing page)
• uncover areas of profitability
• pick triggers that convert visitors into customers
• personalize the experience for each visitor

Getting all these elements of SEO right takes a lot of time. Knowing where to begin for the best, fastest results will takes tremendous research. But the investment is worthwhile, because it will earn you a high return.

That’s why SEO should never be viewed as a cost. It’s an investment. One that pays off for a long time.

Analogy #2: SEO Is Like An Iceberg, Mainly Hidden But With Massive Impact

It is said 90% of the mass of an iceberg is under the water, hidden from view. SEO is just the same.

While you might see only the attractive top ranking on Google as the impact of your SEO, there are a hundred unseen elements at play, all working in concert to deliver the collective impact of intelligent optimization.

Like icebergs, SEO has some serious risks to balance the great opportunities it creates. Boats, ships, cruisers and even ocean liners have run aground on hidden rocks under the sea. And countless businesses have paid a steep price for wrongly executed SEO campaigns.

Mainly, such campaigns were put together by amateurs. Business owners wrongly assume that any Internet consultant is capable of “good enough” SEO, and hand it over to a Web designer or developer.

Just because they’re already in there coding or designing your website is not a reason to thrust SEO upon a Web designer or programmer. That’s like saying you’ll just get your plumber to do the wiring because he’s already working on the walls! Web developers are great at developing. SEO experts are best at SEO.

Sometimes, through sheer good luck (or even accident), you may own a great business with top search rankings and a steady flow of traffic coming in. That’s “good enough” – but with SEO, it can become so much more. And only a specialist can deliver great results.

SEO is well known to be one of the most cost-effective forms of marketing. For this reason, SEO should have a larger budget. Yet even after Web analytics data prove beyond doubt that SEO is the absolute winner at driving more traffic, many companies pay little attention to it.

In today’s competitive online arena, SEO cannot be relegated to the status of a secondhand job any longer.

It is not a trivial task to be handed over to a friend or distant cousin who knows how to “fix it”. It shouldn’t be put off until the site is ready to launch. SEO should be the first thing to focus on. And there’s a reason for this.

Not everyone will arrive at your website through the homepage. Search engines will not ask you which of your landing pages you wish to have listed in their directory.  Generic searches on business critical keywords will throw up different entry points into your website. Many visitors will enter through these back doors.

Knowing why they landed at your site, what they expect to find, and what motivates or drives them to seek your solution is critical information if you are to capture their attention, retain their interest and gain their trust.

How will you optimize every page on your large website later on?

It’s far easier to plan for it in advance. This is something I insist upon with SEO clients. After all, if your website (or any section of it) is not important enough for you to do this, why does it even exist in the first place?

Analogy #3:  SEO Is Like a Dam – Open Flood Gates Traffic Just Keeps Flowing

Dams across massive rivers store water. Think about search engines like Google as huge dams that store your targeted visitors, and your listing on SERPs (search engine results pages) as holes in the dam. Punch enough of them, and you’ll be drowned in a flood of traffic!

That’s a great reason to start optimizing your website right now – and not take it in small steps, but go for a massive overhaul.

No matter what niche you are involved in, there are ‘evergreen’ search phrases with the potential to drive a large amount of traffic to your website for years. And this traffic is free! It will continue without any dent in your ongoing or proposed marketing budget.

But optimizing just one page on your website will only deliver one extra traffic stream. What if you opened the flood gates?

Keyword research will reveal that many searches are carried out on business related and highly relevant ‘non-brand’ generic keywords. These are used by people who have never even heard about you, but are focused on their needs and problems, actively seeking out solutions. That’s the ‘water’ behind the ‘dam’ that you can tap into through SEO.

Or if you don’t like the idea of punching holes in a dam, think of your keyword research as finding a pinata, the decorated papier mache container full of candy, that you can break open to get a treat. SEO is the candy king!

Speaking of candy, a website without strategically planned design is little more than eye candy. If all it does is look nice without providing any value, then it’s like playing trick-or-treat with kids – but keeping all the sweets for yourself!

Elements other than SEO are important. You should use SEO as a way to convert and engage your visitors. Knowing the intent behind keywords that lead visitors to an individual page on your site will be valuable for your Web designer.

But don’t let your designer start outlining your site or your programmer begin coding your pages before you’ve finalized an SEO strategy and done your keyword analysis. That’s the platform upon which you can build your future success.

You may get everything else right. Your inbound marketing strategy may cover all the bases – heavy SEO, social search, local SEO, mobile optimization – and may integrate nicely with other parts of your offline and digital marketing. But without diligent keyword research underlying it all, you’re only building a superstructure upon quicksand. That’s just not smart or effective.

In 2012 or 2013, I’m guessing that search and social media will meld. Researching generic long tail keywords and merging them with local terms like cities, place names and more will become important. The growth of mobile search and the rising awareness and experience of search engine users in general will power this trend.

When you know what savvy searchers are looking for, identify the exact keywords and combinations they use, and map them to individual pages on your website, it will make the difference between a 1% and a 20% conversion rate.

Do you think it might be a good idea to raise earnings from an individual page by 20% or more? Definitely, yes!

Do you think it’s quick and easy work to do this for each page?  Absolutely not!

An extensive e-commerce website with thousands of products for sale will have prospective buyers with totally (or at least slightly) different tastes and needs. Optimizing your site for each of them is important.  The text on your site, the visual appearance, the products and services you present to them – all need to fit into the concept of an “ideal solution” that your visitor has in his or her mind.

If you add value to their lives based on uniquely individual needs, you will boost sales.

Who Should Be In Charge of Your SEO?

Definitely not the information technologists.  The project should be owned by your marketing department.

At a local conference on SEM a few years ago, I heard the term “Business Prevention Unit” applied to the IT department! There was a brief stunned silence. A few seconds later, everyone burst out laughing.

During breaks and in other presentations, people talked about this remark. It’s especially appealing to me because so many of my clients start out thinking about SEO as a purely technical challenge. That’s so wrong!

SEO is about becoming a detective, a hunter, an explorer. You’re out looking for opportunities hidden inside the psychology of your prospects and customers.

This is a mindset that’s totally foreign to an IT manager, server administrator, programmer, Web designer or other technician. If you want to put food on the table, hire a hunter!

At the same time, it is wise to keep in mind that SEO is a team game. One of my clients runs a large website with over 10 million pages indexed in Google. Optimizing each one of them individually is simply not feasible. It would be too costly in time and money. Manually tweaking every page isn’t practical, even if it’s the ideal solution.

Therefore, an SEO strategy is critical.

Where is the highest profit lying hidden? Where should we focus to reach business goals set strategically for the long term?

The answers to those questions are important. And automation is important. So is optimizing the website structure and coding. A comprehensive plan to work on such a big site is mandatory. Having an expert programmer and great server administrator as part of the team is helpful. With literally millions of page views each day, it won’t help to hire just a great SEO strategist.

It also pays to keep in mind that your website is probably the best salesman in your company. But you’re locking him up in a closet! Release him right away.

Knowing that SEO is one of the most cost effective forms of marketing out there, it’s surprising that more companies don’t invest heavily into this. Is it because it “looks too good to be true”? Probably, because so many of my clients seem to think so.

Explaining to them that it’s real, and possible, is quite a challenge.

A part of the problem is technical language, jargon and lingo used by SEO specialists to outline the benefits of their craft to regular business owners.

So, What Does SEO Cost?

If you’ve been watching closely, you’ll notice that I still haven’t answered Johanna’s initial question…  What does SEO cost?

I’ll stick to the same response. It depends.

How high are you willing to jump? How fast are you going to run? I need to know this if I am to estimate how much energy and resources you’ll need.

Pricing SEO is equally difficult. It is complex. There are many rich opportunities. Several external factors and ranking signals skew the scenario further. And then, there’s the natural skepticism of a client to overcome.

Is SEO too good to be true?  Are SEO consultants snake oil salespeople who are out to trick and cheat you?

Yes, there are charlatans and cheats out there, and you ought to keep your eyes open and your feet firmly on the ground.

But any Internet marketing manager or business owner who is still not taking SEO seriously should consider stepping down. Because, let’s face it… the most dangerous person is yourself! Especially if you’re a frugal penny pincher looking for cheap results. Remember, in SEO as with life, you reap what you sow!

In the construction industry, there used to be people who dug with shovels. A company that invented and used the “digging machine” made results happen faster, easier and at lower cost.

Effective SEO is just like that. It can bring you better results faster and at a lower cost. That’s why you shouldn’t even consider letting anyone else handle your SEO tasks.

What does a rope cost?

Asking how much SEO will cost is like asking how much rope costs. It will depend upon how many meters you need, the quality of the rope, what you plan to use it for, or how long you want it to last. You can buy the cheapest rope you find, but will it be good enough?

Hiring an SEO consultant is similar. Just like rope has its per meter price, SEO has a price too – maybe a per hour rate. How many hours you will pay for depends upon all these factors we’ve discussed earlier.

And what you pay for is not what it costs you. That is defined by the return you get on your investment. If an SEO consultant delivers a boost in sales and profit that’s 5, 10 or 25 times what you paid, it didn’t cost you anything!

So that’s how I answer Johanna’s question – which is the same question many clients ask their SEO consultants.

I’m sure you’ve faced some frustrating challenges while trying to explain the value of what you do, to a client who can’t see it as any different from the dozen other marketing and designing tasks underway. Or when you’re called in as an SEO specialist to fix things after the entire website is built and running. Got any interesting stories that come to mind?  Go ahead and share it in a comment.

What do you do when you’re asked about pricing your SEO services? Do you have any personal experiences or favorite analogies you use?  What happens when you’re asked to give a ‘fixed price quote’ upfront? Tell us how you overcome price objections.

As a customer, what do you look for with SEO consulting? What parts do you wish your SEO consultant explained better or insisted upon more firmly? Please let us know, too.

Image credit: Crestock.com

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: All Things SEO | Google: SEO

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Article source: http://searchengineland.com/how-much-does-seo-cost-3-analogies-to-help-you-determine-its-value-108870

Local small businesses rarely use Google’s AdWords program to its full potential. Want to learn three cool ways to use AdWords, even if the local business doesn’t have the world’s most robust online presence? If you help local businesses with their online marketing, these strategies will be very useful arrows in your quiver.

1. Straight-up AdWords for Traffic and Leads

First, there’s the obvious reason for setting up an AdWords account for a local client: nearly instant traffic. AdWords is now more important than SEO for local searches, since between ads, maps, and local listings (the “7-pack”), the top organic listing is often below the fold, as this screenshot below demonstrates:

A compelling ad can start generating traffic right away. Notice the uninspiring headlines in the above screenshot? “Dentist.” “General Dentistry.” Dental Care Provider.” “Find a Local Dentist.” Wow, talk about “Mad Men”. If you’re advertising a dental practice, use the headline to differentiate your ad:

• Big Benefit: Gentle Dentist for Cowards
• Social Proof/Story: “I Woke With a Toothache”
• Great Offer: Get $300 Whitening Coupon

In conjunction with a prominent Google Places listing and lots of favorable reviews, AdWords can produce a prominent presence on the search results page.

Unlike national campaigns where keyword selection is a complex job, local markets don’t require hundreds or thousands of medium- to long-tail keywords. Instead, if you geographically limit the campaign to a city or metro area, you can successfully bid on broad match short-tail words like “dentist” or “oral surgeon.”

As a bonus, Google rewards this sloppy bidding strategy by letting you know the exact search phrases that triggered your ads. You can add those keywords to you AdWords account, optimize just those phrases for organic SEO, and make sure the pages that receive this most targeted traffic contain specific, relevant, and compelling content.

2. Test Messaging For Other Media

Even if the local search volume is so low that the number of new leads is negligible, AdWords has another trick up its sleeve. By split testing different ad copy, businesses can find the best copy for their print ads, radio and TV scripts, and yellow pages listings.

It’s not unusual for one ad to perform 2-5 times better than another. Imagine leveraging that improvement across all advertising platforms – especially the ones where testing is unwieldy, expensive, or just plain impossible.

Since most offline media is of the “interruption” variety (print ads, radio and TV commercials, billboards, etc.), you can take advantage of the interruption arm of AdWords, the Display Network. Not only does the Display Network generate about 10 times the traffic of search, the clicks are also cheaper (typically half the price of clicks from search). So the Display Network is the perfect place to find the messages, offers, and calls to action in offline media.

3. Remarketing for Lead Gen and Branding

Remarketing is one of the most powerful AdWords features – and one of Google’s best kept secrets. You’ve experienced remarketing if you’ve ever seen an ad “follow” you around the web. Here’s what happened: you visited a website and Google planted a remarketing cookie on your computer. Now whenever you visit a page in the AdSense network, Google checks for cookies and often shows you ads based on sites where you’ve already demonstrated interest.

Remarketing done well can make you seem ubiquitous, like a giant billion-dollar brand, even if your ad budget is a couple of hundred bucks a month. Because you’re only ubiquitous for the very targeted and highly qualified people who have already visited your site, and didn’t convert on their initial visit.

Imagine sending your local business client a screenshot of their ad on the New York Times or Washington Post – while keeping their advertising budget under $300 per month.

Here’s a powerful local twist to remarketing: when you get an inbound call, try to take the prospect to a page on your website where you have a demo, a price list, a feature list; whatever can help educate your prospect and further the sale.

Stick the Google remarketing code on that page, so that your ads now follow the prospect around the web. Instead of being one more forgettable contender for the prospect’s business, you soon become the dominant player; the obvious choice.

Register now for SES London 2012, the Leading Search Social Marketing Event, taking place 20-24 February, 2012. SES Conference Expo features presentations and panel discussions that cover all aspects of search engine-related promotion. Hurry, early bird rate expires February 3!

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2141107/3-Ways-Local-Small-Businesses-Can-Use-PPC

It’s easy to build a blog, but hard to build a successful blog with significant traffic. Over the years, we’ve grown the Moz blog to nearly a million visits each month and helped lots of other blogs, too. I launched a personal blog late last year and was amazed to see how quickly it gained thousands of visits to each post. There’s an art to increasing a blog’s traffic, and given that we seem to have stumbled on some of that knowledge, I felt it compulsory to give back by sharing what we’ve observed.

NOTE: This post replaces a popular one I wrote on the same topic in 2007. This post is intended to be useful to all forms of bloggers – independent folks, those seeking to monetize, and marketing professionals working an in-house blog from tiny startups to huge companies. Not all of the tactics will work for everyone, but at least some of these should be applicable and useful.

#1 – Target Your Content to an Audience Likely to Share

When strategizing about who you’re writing for, consider that audience’s ability to help spread the word. Some readers will naturally be more or less active in evangelizing the work you do, but particular communities, topics, writing styles and content types regularly play better than others on the web. For example, great infographics that strike a chord (like this one), beautiful videos that tell a story (like this one) and remarkable collections of facts that challenge common assumptions (like this one) are all targeted at audiences likely to share (geeks with facial hair, those interested in weight loss and those with political thoughts about macroeconomics respectively).

If you can identify groups that have high concentrations of the blue and orange circles in the diagram above, you dramatically improve the chances of reaching larger audiences and growing your traffic numbers. Targeting blog content at less-share-likely groups may not be a terrible decision (particularly if that’s where you passion or your target audience lies), but it will decrease the propensity for your blog’s work to spread like wildfire across the web.

#2 – Participate in the Communities Where Your Audience Already Gathers

Advertisers on Madison Avenue have spent billions researching and determining where consumers with various characteristics gather and what they spend their time doing so they can better target their messages. They do it because reaching a group of 65+ year old women with commercials for extreme sports equipment is known to be a waste of money, while reaching an 18-30 year old male demographic that attends rock-climbing gyms is likely to have a much higher ROI.

Thankfully, you don’t need to spend a dime to figure out where a large portion of your audience can be found on the web. In fact, you probably already know a few blogs, forums, websites and social media communities where discussions and content are being posted on your topic (and if you don’t a Google search will take you much of the way). From that list, you can do some easy expansion using a web-based tool like DoubleClick’s Ad Planner:

Once you’ve determined the communities where your soon-to-be-readers gather, you can start participating. Create an account, read what others have written and don’t jump in the conversation until you’ve got a good feel for what’s appropriate and what’s not. I’ve written a post here about rules for comment marketing, and all of them apply. Be a good web citizen and you’ll be rewarded with traffic, trust and fans. Link-drop, spam or troll and you’ll get a quick boot, or worse, a reputation as a blogger no one wants to associate with.

#3 – Make Your Blog’s Content SEO-Friendly

Search engines are a massive opportunity for traffic, yet many bloggers ignore this channel for a variety of reasons that usually have more to do with fear and misunderstanding than true problems. As I’ve written before, “SEO, when done right, should never interfere with great writing.” In 2011, Google received over 3 billion daily searches from around the world, and that number is only growing:

sources: Comscore + Google

Taking advantage of this massive traffic opportunity is of tremendous value to bloggers, who often find that much of the business side of blogging, from inquiries for advertising to guest posting opportunities to press and discovery by major media entities comes via search.

SEO for blogs is both simple and easy to set up, particularly if you’re using an SEO-friendly platform like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla. For more information on how to execute on great SEO for blogs, check out the following resources:

• Blogger’s Guide to SEO (from SEOBook)
• The Beginner’s Guide to SEO (from Moz)
• WordPress Blog SEO Tutorial (from Yoast)
• SEO for Travel Bloggers (but applicable to nearly any type of blog – from Moz)

Don’t let bad press or poor experiences with spammers (spam is not SEO) taint the amazing power and valuable contributions SEO can make to your blog’s traffic and overall success. 20% of the effort and tactics to make your content optimized for search engines will yield 80% of the value possible; embrace it and thousands of visitors seeking exactly what you’ve posted will be the reward.

#4 – Use Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to Share Your Posts Find New Connections

Twitter just topped 465 million registered accounts. Facebook has over 850 million active users. Google+ has nearly 100 million. LinkedIn is over 130 million. Together, these networks are attracting vast amounts of time and interest from Internet users around the world, and those that participate on these services fit into the “content distributors” description above, meaning they’re likely to help spread the word about your blog.

Leveraging these networks to attract traffic requires patience, study, attention to changes by the social sites and consideration in what content to share and how to do it. My advice is to use the following process:

• If you haven’t already, register a personal account and a brand account at each of the following – Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn (those links will take you directly to the registration pages for brand pages). For example, my friend Dharmesh has a personal account for Twitter and a brand account for OnStartups (one of his blog projects). He also maintains brand pages on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.
• Fill out each of those profiles to the fullest possible extent – use photos, write compelling descriptions and make each one as useful and credible as possible. Research shows that profiles with more information have a significant correlation with more successful accounts (and there’s a lot of common sense here, too, given that spammy profiles frequently feature little to no profile work).
• Connect with users on those sites with whom you already share a personal or professional relationships, and start following industry luminaries, influencers and connectors. Services like FollowerWonk and FindPeopleonPlus can be incredible for this:

• Start sharing content – your own blog posts, those of peers in your industry who’ve impressed you and anything that you feel has a chance to go “viral” and earn sharing from others.
• Interact with the community – use hash tags, searches and those you follow to find interesting conversations and content and jump in! Social networks are amazing environment for building a brand, familiarizing yourself with a topic and the people around it, and earning the trust of others through high quality, authentic participation and sharing

If you consistently employ a strategy of participation, share great stuff and make a positive, memorable impression on those who see your interactions on these sites, your followers and fans will grow and your ability to drive traffic back to your blog by sharing content will be tremendous. For many bloggers, social media is the single largest source of traffic, particularly in the early months after launch, when SEO is a less consistent driver.

#5 – Install Analytics and Pay Attention to the Results

At the very least, I’d recommend most bloggers install Google Analytics (which is free), and watch to see where visits originate, which sources drive quality traffic and what others might be saying about you and your content when they link over. If you want to get more advanced, check out this post on 18 Steps to Successful Metrics and Marketing.

Here’s a screenshot from the analytics of my wife’s travel blog, the Everywhereist:

As you can see, there’s all sorts of great insights to be gleaned by looking at where visits originate, analyzing how they were earned and trying to repeat the successes, focus on the high quality and high traffic sources and put less effort into marketing paths that may not be effective. In this example, it’s pretty clear that Facebook and Twitter are both excellent channels. StumbleUpon sends a lot of traffic, but they don’t stay very long (averaging only 36 seconds vs. the general average of 4 minutes!).

Employing analytics is critical to knowing where you’re succeeding, and where you have more opportunity. Don’t ignore it, or you’ll be doomed to never learn from mistakes or execute on potential.

#6 – Add Graphics, Photos and Illustrations (with link-back licensing)

If you’re someone who can produce graphics, take photos, illustrate or even just create funny doodles in MS Paint, you should leverage that talent on your blog. By uploading and hosting images (or using a third-party service like Flickr to embed your images with licensing requirements on that site), you create another traffic source for yourself via Image Search, and often massively improve the engagement and enjoyment of your visitors.

When using images, I highly recommend creating a way for others to use them on their own sites legally and with permission, but in such a way that benefits you as the content creator. For example, you could have a consistent notice under your images indicating that re-using is fine, but that those who do should link back to this post. You can also post that as a sidebar link, include it in your terms of use, or note it however you think will get the most adoption.

Some people will use your images without linking back, which sucks. However, you can find them by employing the Image Search function of “similar images,” shown below:

Clicking the “similar” link on any given image will show you other images that Google thinks look alike, which can often uncover new sources of traffic. Just reach out and ask if you can get a link, nicely. Much of the time, you’ll not only get your link, but make a valuable contact or new friend, too!

#7 – Conduct Keyword Research While Writing Your Posts

Not surprisingly, a big part of showing up in search engines is targeting the terms and phrases your audience are actually typing into a search engine. It’s hard to know what these words will be unless you do some research, and luckily, there’s a free tool from Google to help called the AdWords Keyword Tool.

Type some words at the top, hit search and AdWords will show you phrases that match the intent and/or terms you’ve employed. There’s lots to play around with here, but watch out in particular for the “match types” options I’ve highlighted below:

When you choose “exact match” AdWords will show you only the quantity of searches estimated for that precise phrase. If you use broad match, they’ll include any search phrases that use related/similar words in a pattern they think could have overlap with your keyword intent (which can get pretty darn broad). “Phrase match” will give you only those phrases that include the word or words in your search – still fairly wide-ranging, but between “exact” and “broad.”

When you’re writing a blog post, keyword research is best utilized for the title and headline of the post. For example, if I wanted to write a post here on Moz about how to generate good ideas for bloggers, I might craft something that uses the phrase “blog post ideas” or “blogging ideas” near the front of my title and headline, as in “Blog Post Ideas for When You’re Truly Stuck,” or “Blogging Ideas that Will Help You Clear Writer’s Block.”

Optimizing a post to target a specific keyword isn’t nearly as hard as it sounds. 80% of the value comes from merely using the phrase effectively in the title of the blog post, and writing high quality content about the subject. If you’re interested in more, read Perfecting Keyword Targeting and On-Page Optimization (a slightly older resource, but just as relevant today as when it was written).

#8 – Frequently Reference Your Own Posts and Those of Others

The web was not made for static, text-only content! Readers appreciate links, as do other bloggers, site owners and even search engines. When you reference your own material in-context and in a way that’s not manipulative (watch out for over-optimizing by linking to a category, post or page every time a phrase is used – this is almost certainly discounted by search engines and looks terrible to those who want to read your posts), you potentially draw visitors to your other content AND give search engines a nice signal about those previous posts.

Perhaps even more valuable is referencing the content of others. The biblical expression “give and ye shall receive,” perfectly applies on the web. Other site owners will often receive Google Alerts or look through their incoming referrers (as I showed above in tip #5) to see who’s talking about them and what they’re saying. Linking out is a direct line to earning links, social mentions, friendly emails and new relationships with those you reference. In its early days, this tactic was one of the best ways we earned recognition and traffic with the SEOmoz blog and the power continues to this day.

#9 – Participate in Social Sharing Communities Like Reddit + StumbleUpon

The major social networking sites aren’t alone in their power to send traffic to a blog. Social community sites like Reddit (which now receives more than 2 billion! with a “B”! views each month), StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Tumblr, Care2 (for nonprofits and causes), GoodReads (books), Ravelry (knitting), Newsvine (news/politics) and many, many more (Wikipedia maintains a decent, though not comprehensive list here).

Each of these sites have different rules, formats and ways of participating and sharing content. As with participation in blog or forum communities described above in tactic #2, you need to add value to these communities to see value back. Simply drive-by spamming or leaving your link won’t get you very far, and could even cause a backlash. Instead, learn the ropes, engage authentically and you’ll find that fans, links and traffic can develop.

These communities are also excellent sources of inspiration for posts on your blog. By observing what performs well and earns recognition, you can tailor your content to meet those guidelines and reap the rewards in visits and awareness. My top recommendation for most bloggers is to at least check whether there’s an appropriate subreddit in which you should be participating. Subreddits and their search function can help with that.

#10 – Guest Blog (and Accept the Guest Posts of Others)

When you’re first starting out, it can be tough to convince other bloggers to allow you to post on their sites OR have an audience large enough to inspire others to want to contribute to your site. This is when friends and professional connections are critical. When you don’t have a compelling marketing message, leverage your relationships – find the folks who know you, like you and trust you and ask those who have blog to let you take a shot at authoring something, then ask them to return the favor.

Guest blogging is a fantastic way to spread your brand to new folks who’ve never seen your work before, and it can be useful in earning early links and references back to your site, which will drive direct traffic and help your search rankings (diverse, external links are a key part of how search engines rank sites and pages). Several recommendations for those who engage in guest blogging:

• Find sites that have a relevant audience – it sucks to pour your time into writing a post, only to see it fizzle because the readers weren’t interested. Spend a bit more time researching the posts that succeed on your target site, the makeup of the audience, what types of comments they leave and you’ll earn a much higher return with each post.
• Don’t be discouraged if you ask and get a “no” or a “no response.” As your profile grows in your niche, you’ll have more opportunities, requests and an easier time getting a “yes,” so don’t take early rejections too hard and watch out – in many marketing practices, persistence pays, but pestering a blogger to write for them is not one of these (and may get your email address permanently banned from their inbox).
• When pitching your guest post make it as easy as possible for the other party. When requesting to post, have a phenomenal piece of writing all set to publish that’s never been shared before and give them the ability to read it. These requests get far more “yes” replies than asking for the chance to write with no evidence of what you’ll contribute. At the very least, make an outline and write a title + snippet.
• Likewise, when requesting a contribution, especially from someone with a significant industry profile, asking for a very specific piece of writing is much easier than getting them to write an entire piece from scratch of their own design. You should also present statistics that highlight the value of posting on your site – traffic data, social followers, RSS subscribers, etc. can all be very persuasive to a skeptical writer.

A great tool for frequent guest bloggers is Ann Smarty’s MyBlogGuest, which offers the ability to connect writers with those seeking guest contributions (and the reverse).

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ are also great places to find guest blogging opportunities. In particular, check out the profiles of those you’re connected with to see if they run blogs of their own that might be a good fit. Google’s Blog Search function and Google Reader’s Search are also solid tools for discovery.

#11 – Incorporate Great Design Into Your Site

The power of beautiful, usable, professional design can’t be overstated. When readers look at a blog, the first thing they judge is how it “feels” from a design and UX perspective. Sites that use default templates or have horrifying, 1990′s design will receive less trust, a lower time-on-page, fewer pages per visit and a lower likelihood of being shared. Those that feature stunning design that clearly indicates quality work will experience the reverse – and reap amazing benefits.

These threads – 1, 2, 3 and 4 – feature some remarkable blog designs for inspiration

If you’re looking for a designer to help upgrade the quality of your blog, there’s a few resources I recommend:

• Dribbble – great for finding high quality professional designers
• Forrst – another excellent design profile community
• Behance – featuring galleries from a wide range of visual professionals
• Sortfolio – an awesome tool to ID designers by region, skill and budget
• 99 Designs – a controversial site that provides designs on spec via contests (I have mixed feelings on this one, but many people find it useful, particularly for budget-conscious projects)

This is one area where budgeting a couple thousand dollars (if you can afford it) or even a few hundred (if you’re low on cash) can make a big difference in the traffic, sharing and viral-impact of every post you write.

#12 – Interact on Other Blogs’ Comments

As bloggers, we see a lot of comments. Many are spam, only a few add real value, and even fewer are truly fascinating and remarkable. If you can be in this final category consistently, in ways that make a blogger sit up and think “man, I wish that person commented here more often!” you can achieve great things for your own site’s visibility through participation in the comments of other blogs.

Combine the tools presented in #10 (particularly Google Reader/Blog Search) and #4 (especially FollowerWonk) for discovery. The feed subscriber counts in Google Reader can be particularly helpful for identifying good blogs for participation. Then apply the principles covered in this post on comment marketing.

Do be conscious of the name you use when commenting and the URL(s) you point back to. Consistency matters, particularly on naming, and linking to internal pages or using a name that’s clearly made for keyword-spamming rather than true conversation will kill your efforts before they begin.

#13 – Participate in Q+A Sites

Every day, thousands of people ask questions on the web. Popular services like Yahoo! Answers, Answers.com, Quora, StackExchange, Formspring and more serve those hungry for information whose web searches couldn’t track down the responses they needed.

The best strategy I’ve seen for engaging on Q+A sites isn’t to answer every question that comes along, but rather, to strategically provide high value to a Q+A community by engaging in those places where:

• The question quality is high, and responses thus far have been thin
• The question receives high visibility (either by ranking well for search queries, being featured on the site or getting social traffic/referrals). Most of the Q+A sites will show some stats around the traffic of a question
• The question is something you can answer in a way that provides remarkable value to anyone who’s curious and drops by

I also find great value in answering a few questions in-depth by producing an actual blog post to tackle them, then linking back. This is also a way I personally find blog post topics – if people are interested in the answer on a Q+A site, chances are good that lots of folks would want to read it on my blog, too!

Just be authentic in your answer, particularly if you’re linking. If you’d like to see some examples, I answer a lot of questions at Quora, frequently include relevant links, but am rarely accused of spamming or link dropping because it’s clearly about providing relevant value, not just getting a link for SEO (links on most user-contributed sites are “nofollow” anyway, meaning they shouldn’t pass search-engine value). There’s a dangerous line to walk here, but if you do so with tact and candor, you can earn a great audience from your participation.

#14 – Enable Subscriptions via Feed + Email (and track them!)

If someone drops by your site, has a good experience and thinks “I should come back here and check this out again when they have more posts,” chances are pretty high (I’d estimate 90%+) that you’ll never see them again. That sucks! It shouldn’t be the case, but we have busy lives and the Internet’s filled with animated gifs of cats.

In order to pull back some of these would-be fans, I highly recommend creating an RSS feed using Feedburner and putting visible buttons on the sidebar, top or bottom of your blog posts encouraging those who enjoy your content to sign up (either via feed, or via email, both of which are popular options).

If you’re using WordPress, there’s some easy plugins for this, too.

Once you’ve set things up, visit every few weeks and check on your subscribers – are they clicking on posts? If so, which ones? Learning what plays well for those who subscribe to your content can help make you a better blogger, and earn more visits from RSS, too.

#15 – Attend and Host Events

Despite the immense power of the web to connect us all regardless of geography, in-person meetings are still remarkably useful for bloggers seeking to grow their traffic and influence. The people you meet and connect with in real-world settings are far more likely to naturally lead to discussions about your blog and ways you can help each other. This yields guest posts, links, tweets, shares, blogroll inclusion and general business development like nothing else.

I’m a big advocate of Lanyrd, an event directory service that connects with your social networks to see who among your contacts will be at which events in which geographies. This can be phenomenally useful for identifying which meetups, conferences or gatherings are worth attending (and who you can carpool with).

The founder of Lanyrd also contributed this great answer on Quora about other search engines/directories for events (which makes me like them even more).

#16 – Use Your Email Connections (and Signature) to Promote Your Blog

As a blogger, you’re likely to be sending a lot of email out to others who use the web and have the power to help spread your work. Make sure you’re not ignoring email as a channel, one-to-one though it may be. When given an opportunity in a conversation that’s relevant, feel free to bring up your blog, a specific post or a topic you’ve written about. I find myself using blogging as a way to scalably answer questions – if I receive the same question many times, I’ll try to make a blog post that answers it so I can simply link to that in the future.

I also like to use my email signature to promote the content I share online. If I was really sharp, I’d do link tracking using a service like Bit.ly so I could see how many clicks email footers really earn. I suspect it’s not high, but it’s also not 0.

#17 – Survey Your Readers

Web surveys are easy to run and often produce high engagement and great topics for conversation. If there’s a subject or discussion that’s particularly contested, or where you suspect showing the distribution of beliefs, usage or opinions can be revealing, check out a tool like SurveyMonkey (they have a small free version) or PollDaddy. Google Docs also offers a survey tool that’s totally free, but not yet great in my view.

#18 – Add Value to a Popular Conversation

Numerous niches in the blogosphere have a few “big sites” where key issues arise, get discussed and spawn conversations on other blogs and sites. Getting into the fray can be a great way to present your point-of-view, earn attention from those interested in the discussion and potentially get links and traffic from the industry leaders as part of the process.

You can see me trying this out with Fred Wilson’s AVC blog last year (an incredibly popular and well-respected blog in the VC world). Fred wrote a post about Marketing that I disagreed with strongly and publicly and a day later, he wrote a follow-up where he included a graphic I made AND a link to my post.

If you’re seeking sources to find these “popular conversations,” Alltop, Topsy, Techmeme (in the tech world) and their sister sites MediaGazer, Memeorandum and WeSmirch, as well as PopURLs can all be useful.

#19 – Aggregate the Best of Your Niche

Bloggers, publishers and site owners of every variety in the web world love and hate to be compared and ranked against one another. It incites endless intrigue, discussion, methodology arguments and competitive behavior – but, it’s amazing for earning attention. When a blogger publishes a list of “the best X” or “the top X” in their field, most everyone who’s ranked highly praises the list, shares it and links to it. Here’s an example from the world of marketing itself:

That’s a screenshot of the AdAge Power 150, a list that’s been maintained for years in the marketing world and receives an endless amount of discussion by those listed (and not listed). For example, why is SEOmoz’s Twitter score only a “13″ when we have so many more followers, interactions and retweets than many of those with higher scores? Who knows. But I know it’s good for AdAge.

Now, obviously, I would encourage anyone building something like this to be as transparent, accurate and authentic as possible. A high quality resource that lists a “best and brightest” in your niche – be they blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, individual posts, people, conferences or whatever else you can think to rank – is an excellent piece of content for earning traffic and becoming a known quantity in your field.

Oh, and once you do produce it – make sure to let those featured know they’ve been listed. Tweeting at them with a link is a good way to do this, but if you have email addresses, by all means, reach out. It can often be the start of a great relationship!

#20 – Connect Your Web Profiles and Content to Your Blog

Many of you likely have profiles on services like YouTube, Slideshare, Yahoo!, DeviantArt and dozens of other social and Web 1.0 sites. You might be uploading content to Flickr, to Facebook, to Picasa or even something more esoteric like Prezi. Whatever you’re producing on the web and wherever you’re doing it, tie it back to your blog.

Including your blog’s link on your actual profile pages is among the most obvious, but it’s also incredibly valuable. On any service where interaction takes place, those interested in who you are and what you have to share will follow those links, and if they lead back to your blog, they become opportunities for capturing a loyal visitor or earning a share (or both!). But don’t just do this with profiles – do it with content, too! If you’ve created a video for YouTube, make your blog’s URL appear at the start or end of the video. Include it in the description of the video and on the uploading profile’s page. If you’re sharing photos on any of the dozens of photo services, use a watermark or even just some text with your domain name so interested users can find you.

If you’re having trouble finding and updating all those old profiles (or figuring out where you might want to create/share some new ones), KnowEm is a great tool for discovering your own profiles (by searching for your name or pseudonyms you’ve used) and claiming profiles on sites you may not yet have participated in.

I’d also strongly recommend leveraging Google’s relatively new protocol for rel=author. AJ Kohn wrote a great post on how to set it up here, and Yoast has another good one on building it into WordPress sites. The benefit for bloggers who do build large enough audiences to gain Google’s trust is earning your profile photo next to all the content you author – a powerful markup advantage that likely drives extra clicks from the search results and creates great, memorable branding, too.

#21 – Uncover the Links of Your Fellow Bloggers (and Nab ‘em!)

If other blogs in your niche have earned references from sites around the web, there’s a decent chance that they’ll link to you as well. Conducting competitive link research can also show you what content from your competition has performed well and the strategies they may be using to market their work. To uncover these links, you’ll need to use some tools.

OpenSiteExplorer is my favorite, but I’m biased (it’s made by Moz). However, it is free to use – if you create a registered account here, you can get unlimited use of the tool showing up to 1,000 links per page or site in perpetuity.

There are other good tools for link research as well, including Blekko, Majestic, Ahrefs and, I’ve heard that in the near-future, SearchMetrics.

Finding a link is great, but it’s through the exhaustive research of looking through dozens or hundreds that you can identify patterns and strategies. You’re also likely to find a lot of guest blogging opportunities and other chances for outreach. If you maintain a great persona and brand in your niche, your ability to earn these will rise dramatically.

Bonus #22 – Be Consistent and Don’t Give Up

If there’s one piece of advice I wish I could share with every blogger, it’s this:

The above image comes from Everywhereist’s analytics. Geraldine could have given up 18 months into her daily blogging. After all, she was putting in 3-5 hours each day writing content, taking photos, visiting sites, coming up with topics, trying to guest blog and grow her Twitter followers and never doing any SEO (don’t ask, it’s a running joke between us). And then, almost two years after her blog began, and more than 500 posts in, things finally got going. She got some nice guest blogging gigs, had some posts of hers go “hot” in the social sphere, earned mentions on some bigger sites, then got really big press from Time’s Best Blogs of 2011.

I’d guess there’s hundreds of new bloggers on the web each day who have all the opportunity Geraldine had, but after months (maybe only weeks) of slogging away, they give up.

When I started the SEOmoz blog in 2004, I had some advantages (mostly a good deal of marketing and SEO knowledge), but it was nearly 2 years before the blog could be called anything like a success. Earning traffic isn’t rocket science, but it does take time, perseverance and consistency. Don’t give up. Stick to your schedule. Remember that everyone has a few posts that suck, and it’s only by writing and publishing those sucky posts that you get into the habit necessary to eventually transform your blog into something remarkable.

Good luck and good blogging from all of us at Moz!

Feel free to copy and re-post this content or the graphics, but please do link back (or reference SEOmoz if using the images offline). Thanks!

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Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/MQsOxQcweL4/21-tactics-to-increase-blog-traffic-2012

Facebook’s 60 new Open Graph app partners span a range of domains, from food to fitness to travel, as announced in their live press event January 18. In addition, they will begin the process of approving apps for the new platform, which will allow for greater expression of activities; “If you’re into reading a book, or running, or knitting … the sky’s the limit,” the social network announced.

Opening up the app building and approval process also presents a huge opportunity for brands and marketers to engage users. The announcement isn’t surprising, but builds upon the groundwork they laid last year at the f8 Developer’s Conference.

According to the announcement, app content will show up on the Timeline in three different places. At the end of each Timeline section, Facebook will summarize all of your app activity for the month.

Users can start adding apps right now and, as long as they are using the Timeline, can authorize all 60 by tomorrow. Some of the apps were already available, but this newest release allows them to post to Timelines by default. You authorize once, it posts continuously. You can set privacy for individual apps.

App partners include TripAdvisor, UrbanSpoon, LivingSocial, Airbnb, Pinterest, Instagram, BranchOut, FundRazr, and more.

In a just-released blog post on the Developers blog, Facebook’s Eddie O’Neill writes, “Starting today, developers can build apps that let people add anything they love to their Timelines – whether it is eating, traveling, shopping, running or taking pictures.” He continues, “The apps launching today are just starting to demonstrate the types of self-expression that are possible with the Open Graph. There are many more stories to tell and great apps to tell them. Get started today!” The Facebook Developers blog has a tutorial to help users get started with the new apps.

The main Facebook blog posted an announcement for users that says new apps will be released over time and explains, in part, “You choose when to add an app, and you decide who can see it. After you’ve added an app, you can always remove posts directly from timeline, and you can also edit your settings from your personal Activity Log.”

Register now for SES London 2012, the Leading Search Social Marketing Event, taking place 20-24 February, 2012. SES Conference Expo features presentations and panel discussions that cover all aspects of search engine-related promotion. Hurry, early bird rate expires February 3!

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2139898/Facebook-Launches-60-New-Timeline-Apps

“While Google has ended its Realtime Search deal with Twitter, search engines are still using social media sites for ranking purposes,” says Jillian Stira at the Scholes Marketing blog.

And Twitter remains a critical part of your search strategy, she notes: “Twitter has pulled ahead of many other social media platforms, becoming a critical source for search engine optimization (SEO).”

Stira offers specific advice for making your Twitter account an SEO machine. Here are some key takeaways:

Choose your names with search engines in mind. When setting up an account, Twitter will ask for two names. The first is a real name—of you or your company—and you’re allowed up to 20 characters; it’s important to choose the name people will most likely search. The second is a username preceded by the @ symbol. You’re limited to 15 characters here, so you might have to do some trimming. “If your company name is long,” suggests Sitra, “consider using abbreviations, keeping the most relevant word whole.”

Create relevant and searchable content. When tweeting in a professional capacity, the occasional personal observation is fine. But your general rule should be to stick to professional content. That is the content your followers will want to share in social networks. “[I]t is vital that you use relevant keywords and #hashtags to warrant more visibility on search results for the terms important to your business,” she advises.

Include links to your URLs. Twitter links don’t provide SEO authority, Stira notes, but they do send followers to your website and prompt Google searches for follow-up research. That is where the keywords in your tweet also come into play—since you’ve given followers the terms with which they should search.

The Po!nt: You really can tweet for dollars. When executed properly, your Twitter presence can pack a mighty SEO punch.

Source: Scholes Marketing.

Looking for great search marketing data? MarketingProfs reviewed hundreds of research sources to create our most recent Search Engine Marketing Factbook (May 2010). With 121 pages and 81 charts, it is full of relevant search marketing stats and trends. The Search Marketing Factbook is Part 2 of the complete Digital Marketing Factbook (our 296-page full report).

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Article source: http://www.marketingprofs.com/short-articles/2463/three-ways-to-enhance-seo-with-twitter

I recently spoke at SES New York on best practices for mobile marketing with QR codes. Here’s a follow-up crash course on tools, tactics, and best practices to confidently help you jumpstart a 2D barcode marketing campaign.

1. A QR Code is a 2D Barcode

QR codes are an encoded barcode image resembling a square-like maze. Unlike a 1-dimensional UPC code, a 2-dimensional barcode stores data in both directions and can be scanned vertically or horizontally to be decoded.

2. 2D Barcodes Can Store a Variety of Data

A traditional 1D barcode (UPC/EAN) stores up to 30 numbers, while a 2D barcode (QR) can store up to 7,089 numbers. The additional storage capacity accommodates a variety of data beyond numbers:

• Text
• Hyperlink
• Telephone number (Phone call)
• SMS/MMS message
• Email (Send message)
• Contact entry (vCard or meCard)
• Calendar entry (vCalendar)

Storing a hyperlink presents a myriad of possibilities beyond just loading a web page — play a video, download a mobile app, check-in on Foursquare, update a Twitter status, “Like” a Facebook page, display map directions, and more.

3. Read/Decode a 2D Barcode by Scanning it With a Smartphone

(A 2D barcode reader app is required to decode the encoded data.)

4. 2D Barcodes Can be Placed in and on Nearly Any Location

Once the barcode image is created, it can be printed on nearly any surface and location — newspapers, TV ads, billboards, temporary tattoos, product packaging, clothing labels, cake frosting, and more. This enables you to drive traffic, interaction, and conversion from anywhere. 2D barcodes excel at bringing non-digital media to life.

Note: Use caution placing barcodes online. They should always enhance the user experience. If a user could click a hyperlink, don’t make them scan a code to complete the same task.

Bear in mind the location must be easily scannable. Plastic frames and packaging can reflect light. Lighting can cast shadows, and hillsides and subways can kill Wi-Fi access. Consider all contextual factors that could impact the scanning experience.

5. Mobile Barcode Scanning is on the Rise

• 2D barcode scanning outnumbered 1D (UPC) scans in Q1 2011.
  - ScanLife’s Q1 2011 Trend Report
• Mobile barcode scanning grew 1,600 percent in the year 2010.
  - ScanLife’s 2010 Trend Report (PDF)
• QR barcode scanning was up 1,200 percent in the second half of 2010.
  - Mobio’s Naked Facts Report
• 22 percent of the Fortune 50 have already used mobile barcodes.
  - Burson-Marsteller Report

QR codes can be used for nearly any function (logistics, advertising, customer service, etc.) for B2B and B2C across a variety of industries:

• Best Buy uses QR codes on in-store price tags for quick access to online reviews.
• Golf Digest uses Microsoft Tag in their magazine to accompany tips with interactive video.
• Real estate agents use 2D barcodes on “for sale” signs providing prospective buyers access to virtual tours.
• Libraries are using QR codes to facilitate learning via interactive scavenger hunts.

6. QR Isn’t the Only Type of 2D Barcode

The most popular 2D barcode formats are QR code, DataMatrix, ScanLife EZcode, and Microsoft Tag (Tag).

There are several key differences in these code formats. ScanLife EZcode and Microsoft Tag are proprietary formats only decodable by their tools, while QR and DataMatrix formats are open standard. (Additional format differences can be addressed in another blog post.)

A Google Trends analysis of these 2D barcodes shows “QR code” dominates by far from a search popularity perspective. QR has become a common term used to reference a 2D barcode (2D code, mobile tag, mobile barcode, etc.) even when codes are technically a different format. Even @MicrosoftTag uses the #QRcode hashtag on Twitter.

7. Tools to Generate and Read 2D Barcodes are Free

Tools are available for all major mobile phone handsets. To run a 2D barcode campaign you’ll need to following:

1. 2D barcode generator (Website service)
2. 2D barcode reader (Mobile app)
3. [Optional” 2D barcode management/tracking tool (Website service)

Generators:

Different generators have varying features. Choose a generator based on the options for:

• Code Format (i.e. QR, EZcode, Tag, etc.)
• Stored Data (i.e. hyperlink, meCard, SMS, etc.)
• Output (i.e. color, size, download file type, etc.)

QRstuff.com is a comprehensive QR generator providing a variety of stored content, color, size, and output options. ScanLife’s generator creates their proprietary EZcode as well as QR and DataMatrix formats. Microsoft Tag only generates Tag.

Note: To generate a code on the ScanLife or Microsoft Tag sites, you’ll first need to create an account. (Tag requires providing personal info like birth date, gender, etc.)

Readers:

Microsoft Tag and ScanLife EZcode can only be decoded by their respective reader apps. Because of the open standard for QR codes, dozens of reader apps are available. (DataMatrix is usually supported on most QR readers.) Some mobile handsets come with a reader app pre-installed.

The following 2D barcode reader apps work on the majority of phones/handsets.

RedLaser and ATT Code Scanner also have geolocation features for local price comparison shopping.

8. Management Tools are Available to Track Scanning Analytics

URL-shortener and web analytics for 2D barcodes storing URL hyperlinks are a great start. For comprehensive scan tracking, you’ll need to use a barcode generator tool that includes tracking analytics. (These tools are not independent.) Some management tools will merely track the number of scans while others provide detailed metrics like demographics, repeat scans, geolocation, and more. Collected analytics depends on the reader app used for scanning, so data results may vary.

Management tools are relatively inexpensive and sometimes free. Paid plans typically have a free trial with fees based on the number of scans.

2D Barcode Management Tracking Tools:

• Microsoft Tag (Tag)
• ScanLife (EZcode, QR, DataMatrix, UPC)
• Tappinn (QR, UPC)
• Paperlinks (QR)
• QReateBUZZ (QR)
• BeQRious (QR)
• SPARQCode (QR)
• QReate and Track (QR)

9. 2D Barcode Content Should Provide Special Value for the Customer

It’s work to scan a barcode, so users have higher expectations as to what content they will find. Reward the user with discounts, exclusive content, or useful tips relevant to the code’s context. Consider scenarios that leverage smartphone features (email, SMS, phone call, video, map, apps, etc.) to save the user time.

For example, including a QR code on a business card that links to a meCard would be a lot easier than the user manually entering the contact record. In contrast, a QR code that links to a website homepage adds limited value.

Note: If you link to a web page, make sure that it’s mobile-friendly.

10. Small or Complex QR Codes Can’t be Scanned by Smartphones With Lesser Quality Cameras

Complex 2D barcodes (a lot going on, not very dense) are more challenging and time consuming to scan. In the case of QR codes, more stored content forces a larger code size. In general, it’s best to minimize data stored in 2D barcodes. Always use a URL-shortener to shrink hyperlinks. (Add analytics tracking parameters before shortening the link.)

Warning: Small, complex QR codes are the biggest mistake currently being made by marketers. (Microsoft Tag and EZcode formats generally don’t have this issue.) Smartphone cameras with resolution less than 4-megapixels can’t scan a QR code smaller than about 1″x1″. Moreover, without the auto-focus (AF) camera feature, a complex QR code will have the same scanning issue, even if the code is larger. The iPhone 3GS and Blackberry are popular handset examples that lack both of these camera features. Unscannable codes kill and delay the adoption rate for 2D barcode campaigns.

Tip: Always provide a back-up (i.e. hyperlink, SMS text message, etc.) option for users to retrieve info within the code. A back-up enables non-smartphone users to also participate.

11. Consumers Need Guidance to Scan 2D Barcodes

The variety of code types, readers, and different terminology is confusing to consumers. Nielsen Company estimates that only 40 percent of U.S. mobile devices are smartphones as of Q1 2011, growing to almost 50 percent by Q3 2011. That means there are a lot of smartphone rookies that barely know how to use their phone, much less distinguish differences in mobile barcode formats and reader apps. As long as 2D barcodes are a novelty concept, always include a brief step-by-step guide with the context of your code.

Logical steps:

1. Get the reader app
2. Scan the code with your mobile device
3. (Action that happens upon scanning)

Tip: For the reader app download, include a URL link or SMS shortcut to expedite the process. This step is imperative when using proprietary Microsoft Tag or ScanLife EZcode formats since only one reader is capable of scanning their codes.

Steps two and three can be combined as a call-to-action. Example: “Scan to ____.” (… watch a video, download our app, call customer support, etc.)

12. 2D Barcodes can be Customized Artistically

QR codes include an Error Correction Level (ECL) that enables “damaged” codes to still be scanned. The error level tolerance (set by the code generator) can be as high as 30%. As a result, creative license can be used to create designer QR codes from a variety of colors or materials (i.e. jelly beans, sand castles, product packaging, etc.) as long as there is adequate contrast to read the code.

When it comes to advanced QR code graphic design, it’s harder than it looks. If you want to get fancy, I recommend connecting with QR art experts at QRarts.com or Delivr.com.

Microsoft Tag also allows for artistic codes. Their custom tag tool allows users to generate art from codes or even overlay codes on top of photographs.

Tip: Some artistic design is fun and good to see; however, don’t go overboard. As long as 2D barcodes are novelty, it’s important that users easily recognize a scannable code from a distance.

13. Testing Scannability is Imperative.

Before you mass print or distribute barcodes be sure to test for scannability. Testing factors:

• Smartphone cameras (resolution/auto-focus)
• Reader apps
• Scan context (i.e. lighting, shadows, surfaces)
• Scan distance
• Scan timing

14. Seek Expertise to Ensure Successful Campaigns

To ensure campaign success, consider consulting with a mobile barcode marketing expert, especially if it’s your first time running a mobile barcode campaign. Technology, trends, and tools in this arena are rapidly changing. A few hours of expert consulting can bring your team up to speed, help optimize campaigns for success, and avoid unnecessary embarrassment for poor implementation.

Expertise goes beyond consultants: Talk to your web analytics guru and learn all you can about the mobile users currently accessing your website. Seek out mobile marketing industry statistics regarding popular devices and demographics to appropriately target your audience. (Compete, ScanLife, and eMarketer provide regular useful reports.) Follow the #QRcode Twitter hashtag or subscribe to “QR Code News Mobile Trends” (Paper.li) for the latest news and case studies.

Finally, download my QR Code Best Practices Checklist Campaign Worksheet to help plan and manage your campaigns:

Next Steps…

Are you ready to jump start a QR code campaign? What questions do you have about the technology, tools or tactics? Please let me know in the comments below. I’ll be sure to address the most popular topics in upcoming articles.

Editor’s note: This column originally was published on April 26, 2011, and was the most popular column of the year on Search Engine Watch in 2011. Over the final two weeks of 2011, we’ve celebrated the Best of 2011 by revisiting our most popular columns, as determined by our readers. We hope you have enjoyed this look back!

Register now for SES London 2012, the Leading Search Social Marketing Event, taking place 20-24 February, 2012. SES Conference Expo features presentations and panel discussions that cover all aspects of search engine-related promotion. Hurry, early bird rate expires February 3!

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2066777/Top-14-Things-Marketers-Need-to-Know-About-QR-Codes

Optimizing a website for local search is important for a few reasons. First, the number of smart phone and tablet users is on the rise meaning that a larger percentage of searches are being performed “on the go”. Mobile web searchers are often looking for local information and local establishments. Second, search is becoming more personalized and search results vary depending on individual search behavior, social media connections, and location. Therefore, it’s important to consider the following local SEO best practices while conducting an SEO campaign:

Incorporate Local Keywords
The first step of an SEO campaign is to conduct keyword research to find out how target audience members are searching for the products or services that you provide. Skipping this step can result in less traffic or less qualified traffic that won’t convert. Keyword research should first be conducted nationally, and then localized later by adding the city or town, state, and neighborhood in front of the chosen keyword. For example, for a local pizza shop it makes more sense to optimize for “Anytown NY pizza place” than it does to target the much more broad “pizza place”.

Develop Local Search Profiles
You don’t need to be a business that only operates locally to create a local search profile. In fact, all businesses should submit their information to Google, Yahoo!, and Bing local directories. It improves search engine results page visibility, increases your online real estate, and builds another legitimate inbound link to your website.

Include Contact Information
Contact information including a physical address, a mailing address, and a phone number should be included on every page of the site and should be crawlable text that the search engine spiders can “read”. For many websites it makes sense to include this information in the footer.

Optimize Social Profiles
Just as you would optimize your website for local keywords, it’s important to do the same to your social media pages. Optimize the title of the page using a local keyword and include local terms in the bio sections as well as in post content whenever it makes sense to do so.

Make Sure Your Website is Mobile Friendly
What’s the point of optimizing your site for local search from mobile devices if your site can’t be viewed on a mobile device? You can’t assume that a visitor will return to your site at a later time on a desktop. In fact, it’s doubtful that that will happen. They will simply go to your competitor’s site and do business with them instead.

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Article source: http://isedb.com/20111230-16168.php

Welcome to 2012, everybody! We hope your holiday festivities were smashing successes, and that you brought in the New Year with joy, appreciation, and excitement for an even better 2012. Most of us have made New Year’s resolutions to exercise, eat better, overcome irrational fears (okay, maybe that’s just me) and more- so, here’s to sticking to all of these resolutions and more. With new goals to achieve and a clean slate with which to approach them, we should all enter this New Year with excitement for many promising days ahead, especially when it comes to working extra hard to triumph in a bad economy.

If you are a small business owner, likely your number one resolution is to bring in more business this year – in fact, if you are a business owner of any size, this is likely your goal. With that in mind, as many of you know, one way to approach this is to invest time, money and energy into Search Engine Optimization. Though there will undoubtedly be more challenges to face in 2012 as SEO grows and evolves (and as Panda updates continue to be run), ultimately, we all adapt and work together to achieve a better, more user friendly internet experience.  The most important thing to remember going into 2012 is that the game has changed. It’s not about just link-building anymore; it’s about branding, content, social media, and more.

SEO in 2012

So, keeping all of that in mind, I’ve drummed up six things SEOs should adhere to as they get back to work after the holidays (at least, these are the factors the folks here at ESI are focusing on!):

1. On-Page Factors: Make Sure Title Tags and Meta Descriptions Read Well

In much earlier posts, we have discussed the importance of optimizing your title tags and meta-descriptions. Just as a refresher, your title tags should include at least one (if not two) of your high-priority keywords, and should not exceed a 70 character limit. Your meta-description, which should be under 157 characters, should also include these keywords, as well as a call to action. But what’s important about creating these important elements for your website in 2012? Gone are the days of the mechanical title tags and meta-descriptions: conversational, catchy and well-written title tags and meta-description are incredibly important for SEO success now. For those who were reluctant to spend a little extra time on these on-page factors, carving out creative time to do so might be a good (albeit, slightly late) resolution.

1. Improve the Relevancy Off-Page Factors: Link-Building

Link-building is as important as ever, but with the Panda update, higher quality links are paramount. Further, these links should be relevant to your site, and spammy links should be avoided at all costs. Further, rather than simply building links for your highest priority keywords, be sure to focus on branding as well.  Further, make sure to go after quality over quantity when it comes to link-building!

1. Create High-Quality Content… and Keep Creating!

In my (somewhat crazy) mind, I tend to think that all SEOs have chants continuously repeating in their heads – or, at least they should – to me, “Content is king” is and should always be on your mind if you are an interactive marketer. As Panda continues to be run, content will continue to rein over the land of SEO, and if you aren’t consistently creating fresh and unique content, you will be expelled from the kingdom (too far? Probably – but it’s my first day back, so give me a break!). Create content that users will want to read and engage with, comment on and share with their friends and colleagues (while this is easier said than done, it’s something to strive for. Spend some time getting to know your audience before beginning to write, and you might notice improvement!).

1. Implement the Rel=Author Markup

The authority of content has also been important, and will very likely continue to be this year. How do you prove the authority of your content? Well, you (or whoever writes content for your blog) use the rel=author markup (if Google approves you, that is). This necessitates having a Google + profile, and linking it to an author page on your blog. With a clear headshot, someone who has the rel=author tag correctly set up will likely see his or her information show up in the SERPs when his or her blog posts come up in the results.

1. Get Social, Especially On Google +

It’s always a good idea to expand your social reach – for marketing and SEO purposes. Think about it – Google wants to create a good experience for the user. Isn’t it evidence that users want to hear from a company, if that company is engaging and interactive with its customers and therefore popular on social media? If, last year, you knew this but didn’t act on it, maybe it’s time to take the proverbial leap of faith and get to work on social media monitoring and marketing.  In this case, it’s important to be a social climber!

This is especially true when it comes to Google +, which we know impacts the rankings on the SERPs signed in Google users see. Plus, posts made on Google (like, say, from a business page) tend to show up pretty high in the search results anyways. This is reason enough for both you personally AND your business to have a presence on Google’s social network. Sharing photos, videos and other types of viral content will only contribute to a positive outcome when it comes to climbing the rankings.

1. Focus on Local and Mobile

With an ever-increasing number of people using cell phones and tablets to access the internet, SEO has had to adapt to a correspondingly growing local audience. Focusing on local keywords and mobile optimization will be one key to success in the coming year.

But Don’t Forget the Basics

While you’re doing your best to keep up with the changes to Google’s algorithm and to interactive marketing as a whole, don’t forget to stop, breathe, and remember the fundamentals too. SEO is about climbing the organic rankings and putting yourself in front of your potential customers.  Always keep the customer in mind, remember to create a website that is both engaging for the user AND satisfying when it comes to the search engines (and not just one or the other), get the important directory listings, and continue to guest-blog.  Go for a holistic approach; you won’t find one single smoking gun that will bring you to that coveted number one spot, but rather you will find your success in a balanced combination of a multitude of factors.

More Information

If you’re looking for more free SEO tips, updates and information about interactive marketing, come back and revisit our blog for regular updates about what’s going on in the industry. If you have questions that are more specifically related to your company’s SEO efforts, give us a call at 770-481-1766.

Related Information:

12 Things We Lived, Learned and Learned to Live With In SEO This Year

Google Plus Thanksgiving Day Commercial: What Does it Signal?

Digital Atlanta: Discussing the Usefulness of Google +

5 Common Content Mistakes to Avoid

Now, You Can Put a Face to the Blog

Google Has 60% of Search Market Share as Plus Grows

Google Ushers in New Year with Plus Changes

Google +1 Button Changes, Twitter Redesign Up the Ante on the Web

Local SEO Tips

Read more posts on Everspark Interactive »

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Article source: http://www.businessinsider.com/6-seo-tips-for-the-new-year-2012-1

by Claudia Bruemmer

While Search Engine Optimization tactics evolve over the years, the good old basic tactics remain valid. That means keyword research, search-friendly URLs, Title tags, Meta descriptions, headers, great content, images with Alt tags, optimized videos and linking. As Google and other search engines continue to tweak their algorithms to benefit users, wholesalers must think about satisfying the needs of their users as well as search engine robots. This article will review traditional SEO tactics that can be used to create great pages for top rankings.

Keyword Research: Keyword research is the foundation of SEO. Even though search algorithms are highly sophisticated and complex, you basically get found by your keywords. For an explanation of the value of keyword research see the SEO Moz Beginner’s Guide to Keyword Research.

Search Friendly URLs: While URLs are not a huge ranking factor, search-friendly URLs are important because they provide a good user experience as well as information for search robots. Put relevant keywords in your URLs as this provides anchor text when people use your URLs to link to your pages.

Title Tags: The title tag is the main text that describes an online document. It is the single most important on-page SEO element and appears in three key places: the top of a browser, search engine results pages, and on external websites as link anchor text. Best practice is to use no more than 70 characters in the Title and to use strategic keywords.

Meta Description Tags: The Meta description tag draws readers to a website from the SERPs; thus, it is very important for gaining user click-through from search results. As a short paragraph describing the content on the page, the description tag should be compelling, contain strategic keywords and contain between 150 and 160 characters.

Headers: Headers are handy for scanning content and they provide clues search engines. Use keywords in your headers wherever possible.

Content: All copywriting gurus say to write great content, but what does that mean? Write accurate, descriptive and compelling text about your products. Use the thesaurus in your word processing program for synonyms to keep from being repetitive. Have your keyword list handy for use whenever it’s relevant. Use tools like ubersuggest to get ideas for improving your content. Use keywords in the beginning, middle and end several times throughout the page. The old adage is to write for the user first and search engines second, but keep both in mind when creating content.

Images: A picture is worth a thousand words and can be used to good advantage by wholesalers. There’s even a possibility that the image and its associated Alt text can help boost your rankings. However, use relevant images and accurate, descriptive Alt text.

Videos: Videos have been displaying in search results since Universal Search; yet, many wholesalers don’t use them. Featuring videos on your web pages can help you upsell, drive traffic and make your site sticky. Make sure your videos are relevant and optimized.

Inbound Links: Authoritative inbound links are links that can help your site become a subject matter expert in your niche. Google rewards authoritative links in its algorithm. An example of an authoritative link for a wholesale jeweler might be a link to its site from The Fashion Jewelry Accessories Trade Association. Outbound links to pages of interest to your readers are also helpful. For instance, a wholesaler might want to link to pages with basic information about drop shipping or other topics of interest to its target market. Lastly, it’s good practice to link your inner pages to each other for relevant content throughout the site. It takes time and skills to gain authoritative links. For a primer on linking basics, we refer you to the SEO Moz Beginner’s Guide on Linking.

Sitemap: Create a sitemap of all the pages in your site to reveal the link structure so search robots can find all relevant pages of your site for crawling.

Site Validation: Last, but not least, you’ll want to ensure your pages are indexable and links can be followed with the free W3C Markup Validation Service.

In conclusion, SEO basics never go out of style. These tactics will help you create rich web pages that get good rankings. You can combine the above tips on SEO with usability, marketing and psychology principles to create pages that will do exceptionally well in 2012. Just remember to satisfy users and search engines at the same time while implementing the elements above.

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Article source: http://www.toptenwholesale.com/news/basic-seo-tactics-wholesalers-2012-5860.html

If you’re an SEO Jedi, black hat tactics undoubtedly tempt you on a regular basis. Before giving in to the dark side, check out these SEO tips to renew your faith in the [white hat] light side of the Force!

In an earlier post, SEO Wars: Forget Black Hat, White Hat – What Color Is Your Lightsaber, I introduced six unique SEO styles (and respective lightsaber colors) for wielding the Force of magnetic content.

“The Force is what gives an SEO their power. It’s an energy field created by magnetic content that binds search engines, web visitors, and marketers together.”

White hat SEOs are called to a higher purpose of serving up quality content that web visitors would value, while [dark side] black hat SEOs are instead focused solely on the power of search rank, leveraging any tactics necessary to achieve it. Both sides of the Force leverage inbound marketing tactics to organically draw users to content.

The lightsaber color symbolism is fun, yet practical, as noted by this tweet:

Tired of swinging the blue light saber for one client. Its not working. Changing to orange j.mp/seolightsabers @sewatch

— Scott Hendison (@shendison) September 13, 2011

Perhaps you can relate? The rise of the black hat SEO dark side cannot be denied. However, the temptation and seduction can be …if you’re strong with the Force and leverage the right tools.

The SEO Jedi Order: A New Hope…

Listen up, fellow SEOs… it’s time to unite! Provide accountability to your fellow white hat SEOs and creatively contemplate ways to wield the Force of magnetic content.

• Believe in what you’re fighting for…Never forget that the purpose of SEO is to help users seeking your content easily find it. Moreover, search rank means nothing if it doesn’t produce results. White hat tactics fight for the greater good of a quality user experience. Wielding the Force of magnetic content not only boosts authority and relevance with search engines, but it also aids conversion, brand advocacy, and user experience.

  [Luke:] I don’t believe it. [Yoda:] That is why you fail.

• Recognize that black hat SEO is not stronger.Although dark side SEO tactics may yield faster results, the tactics are weak – inevitably failing and therefore only yielding short-term gains. For basically every black hat SEO tactic that “works”, there are white hat SEO tactics that work just as well, or better, because they have long-term value. (Check out these 12 examples of black hat SEO tactics transformed into long-term, white hat SEO wins.)

  [Luke:] “Is the dark side stronger?” [Yoda:] “No, no, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive.”

• Learn from SEO Jedi Masters, not just any SEO.With the abundance of SEO spam on the market, novice SEOs (a.k.a. SEO Younglings or SEO Padawans) easily interpret gray or dark side tactics as acceptable means for achieving search rank. Leverage these SEO training resources and learn directly from the [white hat] experts. (Note: A Jedi Master is one who has successfully trained a padawan into a Jedi Knight.)

  [Yoda:] You must unlearn what you have learned.

SEO Jedi Masters actively teach their trade and defend the white hat SEO Jedi Order.
(Action-Oriented, Content/Linking)

(Strategy Measurement)

(Specialized Skills)

6 Compelling SEO Jedi Tactics for Wielding the Force

If you’ve been wielding lightsabers of the light side of the Force and fear it isn’t working, check out these tips for inspiration. Each tactic has generally low competition and therefore presents great opportunity.

1. Universal Search Optimization

Leverage the diversity of Google universal search results mixed with videos, images, shopping, books, maps (local), and news. A SearchMetrics study recently showed that video and image formats dominate Google mixed results, yet few sites actually apply SEO to these assets. Include these assets on your pages and step ahead of the competition. Submit specialized XML sitemaps (image, video, news, local, etc.) to ensure these resources are adequately indexed and apply video optimization and image optimization to assets before publishing. Surround on-page images or videos with relevant textual content to help search engines better understand the asset and in-turn boost the relevance of the page as well.

Note: The Google video sitemap content “includes web pages which embed video, URLs to players for video, OR the URLs of raw video content hosted on your site.” The embedded video indexing option allows you to potentially drive traffic and clicks to your site instead of YouTube. Huge!

Tip: For videos, write a blog post with the embedded video and include additional, relevant engaging info like statistics, commentary, quoted responses, or related remarks. Tools like SpeechPad.com and SpeakerText.com can help with transcription. The added value of the content/video combo will encourage users to link to the web page versus directly to the YouTube video.

2. Clever Link Bait

Link bait is a tantalizing “content treat” that web visitors love so much they’ll link to it via bookmarks, social shares, or blog posts. Fresh, unique content with an exceptional educational, entertaining or X-factor twist qualifies as link bait.

• Infographics or Industry Reports  (trends, historical timelines, statistics, comparisons)
• Comic Writing  (humor on brand-relevant topics that ring true for your audience)
• Comprehensive Guides  (detailed instructions, checklists, “top lists”, training resources)
• Badges  (awards, certifications, achievements, recognition, identity labels)

Examples of quality link bait include: marketing infographics by Unbounce [Oli Gardner], webcomics by the Oatmeal [Matthew Inman], and SEO lightsaber badges by yours truly.

Tip: Include easy-to-copy HTML source code for your link bait. This makes syndication of your content easier and also empowers you to search-optimize the reproduced content with SEOd URLs, link text and image alt attributes.

Webcomics and humor videos are a great way to show that your business/industry (no matter how boring) can be fun. Every industry has something to laugh about. How does Murphy’s Law apply to your business? What’s a bizarre implementation or use of your product? Use it! For example, how could B2B toilet seat sales possibly be entertaining? Get inspired from this video!

3. User-Generated Content (UGC)

Has the Google “freshness” algorithm update got you flustered? Stop fretting about creating great content yourself, and start brainstorming how you can identify and engage brand advocates to generate content for you. Guest blog posts, crowdsourced content, comments, ratings/reviews, QA, testimonials, and user-submitted stories/projects are all great opportunities for building fresh, diverse content that search engines love.

• Guest Blog Posts. Leverage the expertise, diverse writing style, and social network of influencers in your industry. The authors will help promote their articles for you. Example: Unbounce’s Conversion-Fest Blogging Contest.
• Crowdsourced Content. Identify top influencers in your network, ask them to answer a few brief questions, and aggregate their responses into one post. The participants will share the content for you! Example: Recent posts on Crazy Egg’s blog.
• Comments Reviews. Provide tools that empower web visitors to add fresh, relevant content to existing pages for you. Default the sort to display recent posts first to prioritize those for indexing. Make sure the tool provides a means for the content to be indexed by search engines. Example tools: Disqus, Livefyre, PowerReviews and Bazaarvoice. Note: The March 2011-released Facebook Comments Box plug-in is not SEO-friendly by default, but some hacks have been proposed. (In October 2011, Google began indexing Facebook comments generated by AJAX or JavaScript, but don’t forget about Bing and Yahoo.)
• Testimonials. Acquire recommendations by following the “give to get” principle. By giving an endorsement, you can also acquire a backlink. In accordance with testimonial best practices, include your full name, company, title, link and photo along with a “product X solved my problem by…” or a similar value-added description. The specifics for identity and experience provide credibility and a mini story to which readers can relate. When requesting testimonials, ask endorsees to use the same format.

4. Microdata Annotations Rich Snippets

Rich snippets are tiny excerpts of actual content identified via semantic markup and selected to display inline with search results. Star-ratings and reviews are commonly seen rich snippets.

Semantic markup and rich snippets work hand-in-hand. Just apply simple HTML attributes in accordance with semantic markup specifications, and you’ll enable search engines to uniquely index that data and potentially display the rich snippets. The common semantic markup formats have been microformats, RDFa and microdata. (These different types of structured formats are also sometimes referred to as annotations or markup.) In June 2011, Google, Yahoo, and Bing came together in support of microdata as the HTML5 standardized format for semantic markup. The recent hype on updates to Google authorship markup reference rel=author and rel=me attributes which are HTML5 microformats.

Apply these annotations to your content accordingly. Seriously, mark everything up! Well, everything relevant where you’d desire rich snippets. There are 100+ new HTML5 markup types documented with microdata at Schema.org, each of them presenting SEO opportunities. Although this tactic is technically purely aesthetic, tests have shown that rich snippets yield higher click-through rates. On the same note, I can’t help but suspect that search engines may boost search rank for “guinea pig” sites to test new rich snippet formats. Be mindful of this, and track your search rank trends and rich snippet displays accordingly.

Tip: Complete the Rich Snippets Interest Form to get your site on Google’s radar, and leverage the Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool to validate your structured page markup/annotations and preview how it will look in search results.

Note: Although some of these annotations have been around for years, a consistent markup format has been lacking along with an adequate quantity of web pages that would justify rich snippet production. The consistent format issue seems to have been resolved. However, this early in the game there’s no guarantee that search engines will display rich snippets, even if annotations have been applied correctly. Be patient, and be ready. Your annotations will eventually bear fruit!

5. Social Media Optimization (SMO)

SMO is the process of optimizing content for social interaction, discussion and sharing. Since social influences are an integral part of SEO strategy from both a causation and correlation perspective, empower social interaction by providing on-page tools to make sharing easy. (Check out my comprehensive blog SMO guide for a plethora of tips and tools to get you started.)

To maximize sharing potential, publish new blog content at the start of the day and socially promote it immediately. Date posted plays a critical role in social shares. Share-savvy folks hunger for hot, fresh content… NOT day-old blog bread. Leverage super early publishing times to maximize your sharing window. This will also allow more shares to accrue on social sites across time zones improving the chances of being featured as “top [shared] news”.

Promptly submit content to social sharing sites like StumbleUpon, Reddit, and Delicious to jumpstart the up-vote process. Apply categories and tags accordingly to aid visibility. Delicious recommends tags used by other bookmarkers on new bookmarks, so tag your content wisely to feed suggestions with keywords you want others to use.

6. SEO “Social Networking”

If you have great content, look for new ways of promoting it beyond the standard of social posts and submissions. Start by “networking” with and investigating the social-savvy elite that regularly engage with your content.

Who submitted your content to StumbleUpon? Do you know or follow these people? (Folks you follow on StumbleUpon are denoted by the red person icon.) Be watchful of people with high numbers of “Favs”. Visit their profile and determine if they routinely share “your type” of content.

Who bookmarked your content on Delicious? Be mindful of folks using numerous tags. These people likely use Delicious often and need multiple tags to find content. These tags are handy for keyword research too.

Folks using social bookmark/submission sites are likely engaged on other social networks as well – just check their profiles or try their username on other networks. These people are your viral seed planters. Find them, follow them, connect with them, and retweet their content. When you have new content ready to post, notify them. Do this sparingly though. Don’t take advantage of the relationship, and be prepared to reciprocate in sharing their quality content.

Do You Feel Stronger in the Force?

Which of these tips might you pursue? How are you managing to resist the temptation of black hat SEO? If you’re compelled to defend the SEO Jedi Order, share this post! Add your feedback, success story, favorite link bait example, or newly selected SEO lightsaber color badge (just paste the HTML) in the comments below!

Register now for SES London 2012, the Leading Search Social Marketing Event, taking place 20-24 February, 2012. SES Conference Expo features presentations and panel discussions that cover all aspects of search engine-related promotion. Hurry, early bird rate expires February 3!

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Article source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2135348/6-SEO-Jedi-Tactics-to-Try-Before-Turning-to-the-Dark-Side