Andy Sutter: November 2012

Friday, 30 November 2012

Social Media Monitoring: What You Need to Know

Source: Statistics and Bar Graph | BigStock

Knowing your social media marketing goals and finding the right tools to attain it is not enough. You also need to know whether your campaign is working or not. Thus, social media monitoring is also integral for your SMM efforts.

Know Your Objective

Every action must have a goal—and not just any ordinary or broad objective, but something that is clear, specific, reasonable and actionable. It is simply to know what you want to discover on your social media marketing efforts.

Do you want to get alerts on what other people are saying about you or your brand? Perhaps you want to know what your potential market needs or want to know. Or it can be as simple as finding anyone that will mention your chosen keyword so you can join in with the conversation.

Know Your Priorities

Social media marketing can be overwhelming, especially when picking out the platform to choose. That’s why you also have to decide what battle to join. Triaging all social media messages that come your way could help when focusing on what’s important. If you have a big business with a handful of known products, you can categorize your SMM campaign based on it or by type of messages that you want to track.

Know Where to Monitor

Since there a lot of social media networks available, monitoring each of them can be daunting. That’s why you need to know which platform to monitor. Find the ones that brings the most exposure for your brand, as well as where majority of your existing and potential market at hanging out in the digital world. This could also be helpful when wanting to know what channel to use when trying to listen on what other people say about your or your brand.

Know What to Monitor

Other than knowing where to monitor, you also need to know what to monitor. It all boils down to your campaign’s objectives. The marketing itself can be overwhelming, but monitoring your campaign’s success could be worse. Knowing what you’re looking for can help you manage your tracking efforts easily.

Know What Tools to Use

Of course, the best way to monitor your campaign is with the help of social media marketing tools. List down the things that you need to track and your chosen platform, and then find the right tool that would work well with your platform and deliver what you need.

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Aki Libo-on

Aki is a twenty-something year old Manila girl who works as a Web Content Writer for About Social Media. She loves to eat, read books of various genres, and write more than anything because those are the things that keeps her sanity intact.

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Latest posts by Aki Libo-on (see all)

Social Media Monitoring: What You Need to Know - October 19, 2012
Spotted: Facebook Profile Completion Meters - October 19, 2012
Ad Unit for Apps, Now Available to All Developers on Facebook Mobile - October 18, 2012

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Google's Top Contributors Get The Recognition They Deserve

Google Top Contributors Google's Top Contributors are individuals across the globe that work for Google for free. They spend tons of their free time and often company time, in Google help forums, answering questions from frustrated Google consumers.

Google has given these top contributors some major credit and recognition on the official Google Blog. In fact, they also launched a web portal just for them at google.com/get/topcontributor.

On this portal, it shares details about that a top contributor is, who some of the top contributors are, and how to become one. In fact, some of my favorite top contributors are in these videos talking about what they do. Google also shares the great benefits of becoming a top contributor, including:

You Get Product Knowledge
and Acknowledged Expertise
and Special Access To Googlers and Events

I don't think top contributors get rich off of doing what they do - they mostly do it because they love helping people. And the abuse some of these contributors have to take - trust me - these guys deserve a lot more.

Here is a video on the program:

Here is our past coverage of the Google Top Contributors:

Forum discussion at Google+, Google+ Help and Google News Help.

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Pioneers of Digital: How Vanessa Fox Helped Google and SEOs Realize They Were a Perfect Match

Pioneers of Digital Today’s post is like a virtual reunion with two people I have known in the search marketing industry for a long time that are also authors: Vanessa Fox formerly of Google wrote Marketing in the Age of Google, and Mel Carson formerly of Microsoft has co-authored a new book, Pioneers of Digital.

When writing this book about success stories from leaders in advertising, marketing, search and social media, Mel asked me for a quote about Vanessa’s contributions to the search marketing world. I easily obliged. I’ve had a chance to read through a preview copy of Pioneers of Digital and there are an impressive mix of lessons to be learned within. Rather than doing a regular book review, Mel agreed to share an excerpt from the book so I can share it with you.

This book is about a lot more than search of course, with profiles that range from Alex Bogusky to Stephen Fry. Take a peek at this preview about search marketing pioneer, Vanessa Fox:

We interviewed 20 amazing digital entrepreneurs for our book and all of them, somewhere in their career, have shown the importance of marrying the needs of a business with that of its audience and customers.

In Vanessa Fox’s case, it was Google and the hopes and fears of an entire industry. Her story is one of an uphill battle to break down the barriers of cynicism and secrecy to provide webmasters with the information, tools and sense of community they needed to create great experiences for their site’s visitors, and also about Google who were desperate for the data it needed to keep ploughing ahead as the world’s most significant database of intent.

In this excerpt from the chapter on Vanessa Fox in our book, we talk about the sitemaps project that would become Google Webmaster Tools and what Fox had to do to start marrying Google to the webmaster community in a beautiful and useful way….

The Sitemaps project begins

@vanessafox

Working out of Google’s new and small Kirkland office was a strange gig, as everything and pretty much everyone were in Mountain View at the time.

Fox was asked to work on a number of developer projects that weren’t really ready to launch, although she did work on a few items such as the API (Application Programming Interface) protocol for Google Talk.

The Kirkland office was run by Shiva Shivakumar, whom Fox describes as a visionary engineering director: ‘He wanted the Kirkland office to come up with new innovative things that were totally different and really change the way people thought about things.’

One of his ideas was the initial ‘Sitemaps’ project and he asked Fox to start working on it. Sitemaps involved reimagining how Google could work with website creators to submit their sites to their index. Little did Fox realize at the time that this project would be just the beginning of a fundamental shift in the way internet search engines worked with site owners.

Until this point Google had been so successful because its raft of smart engineers had built technologies that ‘crawled’ the web quickly, indexing billions of website pages and presenting relevant search results every time a searcher typed in keywords to their search box.

But the driving factors behind Google’s popularity were relevancy and speed of search results, and it cost money for all those servers and crawlers to be up and running, generating so many connections between consumers and website owners. This is where the Sitemaps project came in. Instead of Google just coming to the website and hoping to find everything, the website owners could submit their sitemap – literally a list of all the pages on their site and how they interconnected – which would connect the dots and ensure that the Google crawlers had a comprehensive list of what the site owner wanted indexed.

Shiva blogged in June 2005: ‘It’s a beta “ecosystem” that may help webmasters with two current challenges: keeping Google informed about all of your new web pages or updates, and increasing the coverage of your web pages in the Google index.’

Fox is very philosophical about how the idea developed: ‘…but this is very common, right? This is what happens. You iterate and you change. His idea was to do the opposite of what people expected. People could just submit a list of URLs. Done! Let’s shake things up and see what happens.’

Help me help you

So Fox started to shake things up: ‘I could already see that there were tons of other things we really should be doing.’ She talked to site owners at search conferences and realized that Google had all kinds of useful information that could help them create better websites for their (and Google’s) audiences. She travelled to Mountain View a lot, talked to engineers from all parts of Google and started asking them what information they needed from site owners to make their jobs easier. Her approach was to ask Google’s engineers how she could help them.

So many people in Fox’s position would have embarked on a project like this with a ‘help me’ attitude but she knew she had to kick it off by saying ‘help me help you’. She was a nobody from the Kirkland office, she had no computer science degree and she was touting a project nobody knew or cared about. She had to find a positive reason for other teams to collaborate with her.

One person she ended up collaborating with most was Matt Cutts, then, and now, head of Google’s web spam team. Cutts had made a name for himself at conferences and in online marketing internet forums as a spokesman for Google on what webmasters shouldn’t be doing – how they might be contravening Google’s guidelines and run the risk of getting banned from their search results. Given Google’s reach and ubiquity, this was enough to give any website owner sleepless nights and so people would hang off Cutts’ every word.

Even with Cutts’ support, Fox still needed to get some full-time help, so she started making friends with new Google employees to generate interest in the project….

Now back to Mel:

The book ends with a chapter outlining the ten entrepreneurial trends we gleaned from talking with each Pioneer. We wanted the book to be inspirational but also actionable, and what we uncovered was fascinating.

For instance, there was a heavy emphasis from most on NOT having to be original in your thinking. Pivoting swiftly around an established product or strategy could pay many more dividends than starting from scratch, and many of our interviewees had got lost in the notion that their way forward needed to be brand new.

In the Vanessa Fox chapter, the spotlight shines on her understanding that utility is often the best way to people’s hearts.

When you create something useful and there is some kind of value exchange that addresses a need, then your community will trust you have their best interests at heart.

Being authentic and transparent in your communication is also crucial to success. At the end of the chapter, Google’s Matt Cutts pays tribute to Fox’s innate ability to communicate:

“Vanessa always had an outstanding ability to bridge the world inside Google with the world outside Google. She could dive into deep technical details with engineers, and then translate those technical details into plain language for regular people. Likewise, Vanessa took comments and feedback from the webmaster community and made sure that the right people at Google heard that feedback. Vanessa was always a pioneer in terms of pushing Google to be more transparent and to surface useful data to site owners.”

We were thrilled that Vanessa agreed to be profiled in the book. Hers is an enduring story from which we can all learn about how to create experiences that are useful and that turn information into action.

@leeodden & @melcarson

You can get a copy of Pioneers of Digital: Success Stories from Leaders in Advertising, Marketing Search and Social Media on Amazon in print and for Kindle.

Mel Carson is founder of Seattle based digital consultancy Delightful Communications and his co-author Professor Paul Springer is Head of Research at Buckinghamshire New University in the UK.

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SEO Blog Feeds - What is RSS? What are Feeds?

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Subscribe via Feed Reader:

Feed Formatting Issues?

Does your feed reader have issues with either of the above feeds? If so you can subscribe to our FeedBurner feed

What are Feeds? What is RSS?

This video does a good job describing how feeds work.

Below is similar information, in a boring textual format.

Offline Subscriptions

In the offline world we subscribe to our interests by

paying for magazine subscriptions
watching TV channels and shows that interest us at the same time each week
reading all books created by a favorite author

Online vs Offline

Online individuals and companies create a vast sea of content. Too much content perhaps. To keep up with all the new content every day I could visit SeoBook.com, sethgodin.typepad.com, SearchEngineLand.com, SEOMoz.org, Wolf-Howl.com, and a bunch of other great blogs and news websites.

Or, to keep myself organized, I could subscribe to feeds from all these great sites and access them all from one place. Feeds allow you to subscribe to information you find relevant and useful, and be notified when your favorite websites are updated.

Instead of needing to visit all the above websites every day you could just go to Google (Google Reader or iGoogle), My Yahoo!, or Bloglines and read all the news at any one of these sites. You do not need to visit all 3 sites to read the news. Just pick your favorite one and subscribe to a bunch of your favorite sites. If you are an avid online reader using RSS subscriptions to keep track of the news can save you hours a day.

Bonus RSS Tip

In addition to subscribing to top blogs you can also subscribe to RSS feeds for news topics. For example, here is a link for the Google News feed on SEO. You can subscribe to other keywords that interest you using the RSS link in the left side of a Google News search result.
Other information aggregators, like Google Blogsearch, also provide RSS feeds. You can use RSS feeds to track blogs that link to your site.

Want Access to the Best SEO Feed on the WWW?

Bingo. You got it here...the featured threads feed from our private forums.

Gain a Competitive Advantage Today

Want more great SEO insights? Read our SEO blog to keep up with the latest search engine news, and subscribe to our SEO training program to get cutting edge tips we do not share with the general public. Our training program also offers exclusive SEO videos.

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Free Visual eBook: 20 Ways to Rock The Social Web

20 Ways to Rock the Social Web The music business is tough. Everyone wants to be a star but only some put in the time, effort and bring the talent to really make a difference and become successful.

“Making it” in the social media world isn’t so different. Everyone seems to be a “social media guru” but few seem to deliver on the promise of making a difference and achieving a positive impact on business outcomes. But like the music business, there are those few who bring varying degrees of talent, dedication and smarts to really leverage the social web to become rockstars in their respective industries and roles.

With social media success comes the opportunity to share lessons learned, insights and advice for others that seek to earn their way into the social media rockstar hall of fame. In October we recognized a group of social media smart women who are each rocking the social web in their own way. Their social songs are heard around the world, inspiring people and businesses to be better, to do more.

We’ve taken the next step and created this Visual eBook of tips from 10 of those social media rockstars and included 10 of our own to give you equal doses of inspiration and tactical – practical social media marketing advice.
So that begs us to ask the question…Are you ready to rock the social web?

You can download the eBook in PDF format, by clicking the cover image below:

We take rocking the social web very seriously and you’ll find that this Visual eBook follows the rockstar theme to a “T”. It is our hope that you will not only devour the information, but have a fun time doing so. There are tips, tactics, and advice from some of today’s top women rocking social media.

The Playlist

TopRank Tip: Multiple Content Types
Amy Porterfield: Social Media Trainer & Consultant
TopRank Tip: Interact Regularly
Andrea Vahl: Social Media Coach & Strategist
TopRank Tip: Brand Fan Guidelines
Connie Bensen: Sr. Manager Global Social Media
TopRank Tip: Set Social Goals
Deanna Zandt: Author & Consultant
TopRank Tip: Know Your Audience
Ekaterina Walter: Social Media Strategist & Author
TopRank Tip: Keep Calm & Carry On
Kandace Hudspeth: Executive Strategy Partner
TopRank Tip: Repurpose Content
Lauren Salazar: Social Media Manager
TopRank Tip: Optimized Messaging
Leslie Bradshaw: Co-Founder of JESS3
TopRank Tip: Innovation is Key
Lisa Barone: Vice President of Strategy
TopRank Tip: Always Measure
Tinu Abayomi-Paul: Owner of Leveraged Promotions

Below you can view the Visual eBook embedded from Slideshare and get the embed code to easily add it to your own site.

Tweeting Made Easy

Guess what? We’ve made it even easier for you to share your favorite tip! Below are a series of pre-written tweets for you to share with your online network. Simply click “Tweet This” next to your favorite(s) and you’re all set!

TopRank Rocking Quick Tips

Rocking Quick Tip:Strike a chord w/ your audience by engaging regularly. [tweet this].
Rocking Quick Tip: Set your brand fan employees up for success. [tweet this].
Rocking Quick Tip: Set social goals to stay in tune. [tweet this].
Rocking Quick Tip: Let your audience sing the chorus, then open your ears and listen. [tweet this].
Rocking Quick Tip: Face the music by responding appropriately to negative feedback. [tweet this].
Rocking Quick Tip: Repurposed content should be music to your ears. [tweet this].
Rocking Quick Tip: Create pitch perfect content by optimizing for your customers. [tweet this].
Rocking Quick Tip: Organize a jam session with your team to come up with innovative social strategies. [tweet this].
Rocking Quick Tip: Fine tune your strategy to get maximum ROI out of your social media marketing. [tweet this].

Advice From The 25 Women Who Rock Social Media

@AmyPorterfield Rocks the Social Web by using social media webinars and promotions. [tweet this].
@AndreaVahl is rocking the social web by providing actionable advice on Facebook for business. [tweet this].
@CBensen runs the @Dell Social Business Connection as a resource for social businesses. [tweet this].
@Deanna was key in helping continue funding for Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer initiatives. [tweet this].
@Ekaterina shares her passion for social media to lead innovation and share knowledge. [tweet this].
@KandaceHudspeth built a team and partnered with others sharing her vision to rock the social web. [tweet this].
@Sassandglitter gives the online community Reasons to Believe on Facebook. [tweet this].
@lesliebradshaw rocked this election season by telling data-driven stories online. [tweet this].
@LisaBarone rocks social media by highlighting others making an impact! [tweet this].
@Tinu rocks social media by turning online acquaintances into offline relationships. [tweet this].

Looking For More Advice On Rocking the Social Web?

We’re curious to know what your favorite rocking tip is, so please share in the comments below. Also, what is the best or worst piece of social media advice you’ve ever received?

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SPONSOR MESSAGE: A Marketing Analytics Framework for CMOs

This Gartner report provides:

Nine measurement areas your CMO needs to understand
Metrics your web analyst can use to inform the CMO
Ways to align measurement technology with business needs

Download now »

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Thursday, 29 November 2012

Competitor Analysis: Realize your Visibility

Digital Marketing Depot will host a webcast Thursday Dec 13, 2012 at 1:00 EST (10:00PST). The webcast Competitor Analysis: Realize your Visibility will feature speaker Shaun Siler of North America Searchmetrics

This webcast will cover the key components of search marketing - competitor analysis, keyword research, and data monitoring. Competitive analysis is key to discovering what content and link building techniques to use in your efforts to lure audience attention right where you want them.

Join us for this webcast and learn:

Why competitive analysis is important
What is SEO visibility? And why should you pay attention to it?
Competitive link profiling analysis

This free webcast will include a live Q&A session. Registration is now open at Digital Marketing Depot.

Thanks to Searchmetrics for sponsoring this webcast.

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

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Learn With Google

Some AdSense publishers are saying they have received an invitation from Google named "Learn with Google." There is a thread of a bunch of these publishers talking about it at WebmasterWorld.

Google has AdSense events all the time, but this one is different. One publisher said:

It looks similar to the Adsense in Your City events, but this is an all day thing with breakfast and a happy hour.

I did find a "Learn with Google" landing page over here but it seems more AdWords focused than AdSense focused.

If anyone has a picture of the email invite, feel free to attach it to the comments.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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SPONSOR MESSAGE: A Marketing Analytics Framework for CMOs

This Gartner report provides:

Nine measurement areas your CMO needs to understand
Metrics your web analyst can use to inform the CMO
Ways to align measurement technology with business needs

Download now »

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Online Marketing News: Create A Content Matrix, Pinterest Images Tips, Video Ad Strategy, Yahoo Ads Plummet

Infographic Content Marketing Media Matrix For Small Business

Content Marketing Media Matrix For Small Businesses

This new infographic from PRWeb ( a TopRank Online Marketing Client) provides a guide to finding what type of content is best for promoting your business depending on your audience as well as you’re services or products. Use this infographic to find out what will work best for your content marketing strategy.

DMA Finds Marketers Bullish on Growth of Digital and Direct Marketing
According to this recent article, 75% of marketers say that they’re bullish about growth prospects for digital and direct marketing. This is slightly up from a previous survey taken 2nd quarter, in which 72% said that they were bullish about growth prospects. Via BtoB.

5 Tips for Creating Pinterest Images That People Love to Share
Good images on social sites like Pinterest can increase your traffic, get you a higher number of pins and repins, and ultimately improve your presence on Pinterest. This article shares 5 tips for creating Pinterest-friendly images. Via Social Media Examiner.

Yahoo’s Ad Sell-Through Rate on Its Log-in Page Has Plummeted
A recent report shows that Yahoo’s log-in page – where users sign into their Yahoo services and email – only had an ad present for 47% of the days in the first half of fourth quarter. Via Adage.

Longer Online Videos Beg for New Ad Strategy
Online audiences are not only consuming more and more videos, they’re staying glued to the screen for much longer. This presents a new opportunity for advertisers and marketers to rethink their ad strategies. Via ClickZ.

TopRank Team News

Jolina Pettice – Reality Check: Is Small Business Saturday Actually Working?
As we head into the shopping season, we have been discussing with many of our small business clients how to take advantage of Small Business Saturday. From campaigns to email marketing to content; are you counting on Small Business Saturday to drive sales and acquire new customers? Check out this post from Inc. about the inception of this movement and whether it’s proving effective for the small business owner. Via Inc.

Rob Bayne - Majestic SEO New Feature: Bucket Lists! Don’t Just See Links, Manage Them
If you are doing Penguin analysis, link building, or competitor research, a new feature of MajesticSEO you will probably want to become familiar with is the bucket list. Similar to making something a favorite or bookmarking, adding a link to your bucket allows you to not only keep track of that link, but also to run bulk reports and comparisons on everything in your bucket. Via Majestic SEO.

Brian Larson – Are You Paying Too Much for Your PPC Keywords?
Bid management tools can be critical to keeping SEM costs in check by effectively managing keyword bids. But alas, not all tools are created equal. Search Engine Land analyzes Forrester’s research on the best PPC bid management providers in this post from Chris Sherman. Is your provider on the list? Via Search Engine Land.

Sam Giehll – Marketing and Thanksgiving: A Tempest of Myths and Facts
When it comes to your metrics and marketing efforts, there is a fine line between fact and myth. This post addresses facts – like the existence of social media ROI – and wraps them up in a metaphorical Thanksgiving themed bow. An excellent read for the holiday, or any day. Via Adobe.

Evan Prokop – Mobile Proves to Be Incredibly Profitable for Auto Dealers
Summary: A recent study showed that an astonishing 40% of people searching for cars on mobile end up buying a car the same day and 36 percent within the hour. Interestingly, only 1% of mobile users reported using an auto industry app. Via Search Engine Watch.

Time to Weigh In: What types of images have you found appeal most to your Pinterest audience, Facebook Fans, and Twitter Followers? How do you think Yahoo’s low ad sales will affect the number of people using their service? Have a safe and happy holiday weekend!

search engine optimisation leeds search engine optimisation link building

Spotted: Facebook Profile Completion Meters

Source: Facebook User Profile | Official Website

You’ve probably not felt the pressure of completing your Facebook Profile before—until today. Recently, some users started seeing a percentage meter on their Facebook Profile.

The purported feature, which can be found at the top right corner of the About Page, is said to encourage users to complete the account details on their Timeline. It also appears that filling out the current city, hometown, and place where a user work yield higher percentage. Similar to LinkedIn and Google+, the profile is considered complete once the percentage meter reached 100 percent.

Complete Profile and Ad-Targeting Purposes

It is believed that percentage meter seen on Facebook Profile could come in handy for brands and businesses that also advertise on the social network. The feature is one way for businesses to improve their ad-targeting options. The additional data will give advertisers more information to target particular demographics, location and ages.

As of the moment, the completion meter appears as a blue loading bar and a “% Complete” message below. However, it is possible that it would provide more information soon, like what part of the profile needs filling out. But there’s also a chance that this feature won’t materialize, considering Facebook’s track record of testing a handful of features a year with many of which didn’t didn’t come to fruition.

Prior to this, it was reported that Facebook released a feature that is similar with Pinterest’s “want” option. This simply allows users to Want a product posted on the online pinboard.

The social network catered on this growing trend of engaging other users through images by offerings some brands to post images with actions such as “want”, “collect” and “like”. Other than that, images within a collection will also have a Buy link, which will send users to another site to conduct online purchase.

This featured called “Collections” was tested with Victoria’s Secret, Pottery Barn, Michael Kors, Wayfair, Neiman Marcus, Fab.com and Smith Optics. On the other hand, users won’t see the images from the said brands unless they are and their friends are a fan of the brand’s page.

Although its look similar with Pinterest’s e-commerce efforts, the images are designed to be discovered in a News Feed. In addition, the virtual pinboard lacks the Buy feature.

Whether Facebook is creating features similar to other social media sites these additional options are a way for the social networking giant to bring advertisements to more specific audiences.

Bio
Google+
Latest Posts

Aki Libo-on

+Aki Libo-on

Latest posts by Aki Libo-on (see all)

Social Media Monitoring: What You Need to Know - October 19, 2012
Spotted: Facebook Profile Completion Meters - October 19, 2012
Ad Unit for Apps, Now Available to All Developers on Facebook Mobile - October 18, 2012

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Can Search Marketers Own ‘Programmatic Marketing’ & ‘Big Data’?

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Wednesday, 28 November 2012

Social Media Monitoring: What You Need to Know

Source: Statistics and Bar Graph | BigStock

Know Your Objective

Know Your Priorities

Know Where to Monitor

Know What to Monitor

Know What Tools to Use

Bio
Google+
Latest Posts

Aki Libo-on

+Aki Libo-on

Latest posts by Aki Libo-on (see all)

Social Media Monitoring: What You Need to Know - October 19, 2012
Spotted: Facebook Profile Completion Meters - October 19, 2012
Ad Unit for Apps, Now Available to All Developers on Facebook Mobile - October 18, 2012

improved search engine ranking improving search engine ranking

SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 28, 2012

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

Bing Attacks Google Shopping With “Scroogled” Campaign, Forgets It’s Guilty Of Same Problems
Bing is attacking Google over its shift to a pay-for-play shopping search engine through a new “Scroogled” site, pledging that Bing has “honest search.” Great campaign, if it were true. It’s not. Bing itself does the same things it accuses Google of. It’s also another indictment of how little the FTC is doing to protect [...]
Google Seeks New AdWords Express Customers With Promised “Free Month” In December
To get more small marketers to test out AdWords Express, Google is offering a “free month” of advertising to new customers. If new advertisers sign up before December 16, Google will provide a credit in January “worth what you spend between now and the end of this year.” However some limitations apply. Advertisers must be [...]
Can Search Marketers Own ‘Programmatic Marketing’ & ‘Big Data’?
Let’s keep this BS free. For years now, we (as an industry) have been talking about some mythical overlap between search and display, demonstrating how both channels should be managed by the same team. The theory goes that when they are put together, we start defying the laws of math, and that 1 + 1 [...]
Get More Bang for Your Buck: Optimize Landing Pages for Better PPC Conversions
Digital Marketing Depot will host a webcast Monday, December 12th at 1 PM EST. The webcast, Get More Bang for Your Buck: Optimize Landing Pages for Better PPC Conversions, will feature speakers Aaron Bart, Creative Services Director, Creative Services, Covario and Fiona Burgess, Art Director, Covario. The webcast will focus on actual client experiences and [...]
Why Your Content Marketing Needs To Be More Active
The Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs recently released their 2013 benchmarks on B2B content marketing. Reading it, you will be struck by two realizations: Content marketing is huge Content marketing desperately needs conversion optimization The “huge” part you probably already suspected from the deluge of blog posts out there on the subject. However, this report [...]
Amazon Opens Up Maps API To Kindle Developers, Google Street View Covers The Frozen North
After a several year lull the mapping segment is really hot again. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Nokia and Amazon are now competing fiercely in a newly reinvigorated mapping arena. Yesterday, Amazon announced that its Maps API is now generaly available to developers who want to integrate maps into their Kindle Fire apps. Google Maps isn’t available for Kindle devices. [...]
Curtain Rises On Act 3 Of Google Antitrust Drama As Larry Page Meets With FTC
Google CEO Larry Page met with representatives of the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) yesterday, according to a Bloomberg report, as the company engages in antitrust-settlement talks to avert potential litigation. The article also says that formal settlement discussions have been going on for about a week. The Bloomberg piece also reports that the FTC “has [...]
Updated: Google Webmaster Tools Security Bug Re-Opens Access To Old Accounts [Now Fixed]
A security bug in Google Webmaster Tools has given users access to old accounts and websites that they’re no longer supposed to be able to access. The problem was discovered Tuesday and reported on several SEO blogs and news outlets — including (first, I believe) by Dave Naylor — and was discussed pretty heavily by [...]
The Big Ask Of 2012: Do You Search For Team Kstew Or Rpatz?
Ask.com’s 100 million users remain almost as loyal as Twihards, prompting us to ask if searchers are on Team Jeeves or Team Diller when putting in their queries. For the 2012 installment of the series in hot searches, Ask added a new twist to the searcher saga, layering in a thicker plot and seeking a [...]

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Semantic Relationships, Intent and Content Sculpting, marketingchris.com
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Video, Music & Image Search

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Tons Of "Not Selected" In Google Index Status?

Google Webmaster Tools About five months ago, Google introduced additional index status reports that showed a lot more information about how Google indexed your site.

Recently, a lot of webmasters have been asking about the "not selected" number. Technically, Google explains it as "URLs from your site that redirect to other pages or URLs whose contents are substantially similar to other pages."

John Mueller of Google explained it a bit more in depth in this Google Webmaster Help thread saying:

The number of "not selected" URLs is based on URLs that are either substantially similar or redirecting -- if you have changed your site's URL structure and have redirected those URLs, then that would be a good explanation for that. That curve would also be fine and not a signal of a problem.

Now, what happens when your not selected number is well above your other numbers, such as index count? Should you be worried? I might be. It may show signs of some structural issues with the site.

Here is one chart of someone who has such an issue:

Google Index Status Not Selected

Now, to me, this is a bit scary. Can a site like this do well in Google? It is possible but look at all that lost potential.

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help & WebmasterWorld.

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Google Quality Raters Handbook Emerges Again

Time and time again, rumors of a Google “rater’s manual” take the web by storm. This manual is, in fact, a book of guidelines for a team of people assigned by Google to rate the quality and relevancy of webpages that are indexed in its search engine results. Now, The Register claim they have seen a copy of the book.

In October 2011, Miranda Miller, at Search Engine Watch, wrote an extensive piece about a 120+ page training manual for new URL raters, initially discovered by PotPieGirl. That book was called the 2011 Google Quality Raters Handbook, and it magically vanished from the Internet a few days after PotPieGirl (Jennifer Ledbetter) made the link public.

Today, The Register revealed the existence of a second manual, perhaps an updated version of the first. At 160+ pages, this is also supposed to give detailed advice for raters on how to label search results.

The technology behind Google's great results

A Google April Fool’s Day 2002 joke might be truer than the search engine likes to admit.

But The Register reveals even more, they tell us who the raters are:

“Google’s outsources the ratings to contractors Leapforce and Lionbridge, who employ home workers,” the article reveals. “According to one Leapforce job ad there are 1,500 raters. The work is flexible but demanding – raters must pass an examination and are consistently evaluated by Google. For example, a rater is given a “TTR” score – “Time to Rate” measures how quickly they make their decisions.”

Even this is not new information. Lionbridge has been mentioned by several publications, including by Search Engine Land, earlier this year.

So if the existence of the handbook is nothing new, and it is already known who these raters are, why is The Register reigniting the conversation? It probably has a lot to do with the fact that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) could be dropping their antitrust case against Google. Andrew Orlowski, who wrote the exclusive piece for The Register, does not mention the FTC deal, but ends his piece with a valid observation:

It’s amazing how the image Google likes to promote – and politicians believe – one of high tech boffinry and magical algorithms, contrasts with the reality. Outsourced home workers are keeping the machine running. Glamorous, it isn’t.

How do you feel about having human raters in the equation?

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Mihaela Lica Butler

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Mihaela Lica Butler is the News and Mobile editor for Search Engine Journal. She is also senior partner at Pamil Visions PR and editor at Everything PR. She is a widely cited authority on search engine optimization and public relations issues (BBC News, Reuters, Al Jazeera and others), with an experience of over 10 years in online PR.

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Google Quality Raters Handbook Emerges Again - November 27, 2012
TweetLevel: Making Sense of Twitter Influence Beyond SEO - November 27, 2012
DuckDuckGo Vs. Google – The War Gets Dirty - November 22, 2012

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Tuesday, 27 November 2012

DuckDuckGo Not Respecting Robots.txt Directives?

There is an interesting thread at Hacker News on DuckDuckGo being toyed by Google. That part honestly doesn't interest me as much as the core SEO topic in the thread.

Google's Matt Cutts is very active on Hacker News and he questioned Gabriel Weinberg, the founder of DuckDuckGo, about the DuckDuckGo spiders and crawlers. There are some folks asking if DuckDuckGo's spider, aka DuckDuckBot, respectes the robots.txt directives.

Some noticed DuckDuckGo crawling under the IP range they own but not declaring the useragent and thus not respecting the robots directives set by the webmaster.

Matt Cutts asked Gabriel:

Gabriel, does DuckDuckGo's crawler have a distinct user agent? Can you talk more about how DuckDuckGo observes/respects robots.txt?

I emailed Gabriel and he explained that in this case, they are only checking for parked domains. He wrote, "what they're seeing there is not a crawler but a parked domain checker." He added, "it doesn't crawl through a site. In fact, it only checks the front page." When I questioned why they can't do this using the DuckDuckBot useragent, he said, "some parked domain networks show different things based on the user agent, and we want to find out what is really shown to the user."

He added also:

We don't believe it needs to be identified as anything else as it only makes one request very infrequently and doesn't index any information.

Forum discussion at Hacker News.

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A Content Marketing Thanksgiving Feast, With All The Fixings

Thanksgiving Feast After months of waiting (or stressing) Thanksgiving is finally here. Your relatives are on their way, you’ve gathered all of the last minute ingredients (hopefully), and you’re ready to start cooking the meal you’ve been planning.

When tackling an entire Thanksgiving feast it doesn’t take much to become overwhelmed. As you begin rehashing the planning of the meal, cooking all the elements, and making sure you please your guests it’s likely you may feel like you’re in over your head.

However, if you break up your planning and execution into smaller and more digestible elements you’re more likely to be at ease, and have a much more enjoyable time. How does the planning and execution of a large meal relate to your online marketing strategy, and what are all of the moving pieces?

#1 – Appetizers

Gourmet Cheese Plate

The beauty of appetizers is that they’re quick and easy to make, and keep your guests satisfied while you prepare the bird, side dishes, and dessert. A good appetizer will provide “nuggets” of information without filling them up.

When creating “appetizers” as a part of your online marketing strategy, you want to wet the appetite of your audience, but entice them to stick around for the main course. This can be accomplished by frequently sharing helpful but easy to understand tips, stories, and news articles that will help them with day to day issues.

#2 – Side Dishes

Green Bean Casserole

The pairing of side dishes with your main course is key in creating a well-balanced meal. Side dishes are used as a compliment to the main dish and while important, they are not hearty enough to stand alone as their own meal.

Similarly, you can use your content “side dishes” to augment larger content objects. Consistency of these content objects is essential, think smooth mashed potatoes. While more hearty than your appetizers, this content will be used to engage and interact with potential and current clients.

#3 – The Turkey

Thanksgiving Turkey

If there were one element of the Thanksgiving meal that you would like to wow your guests with what would it be? Chances are the bird is what will receive the most preparation and TLC, making it the centerpiece of the meal.

Now it’s time to get to the meat of your marketing strategy. The “turkey” is your stellar content meant to convert your prospects into customers. Unique content types such as Visual eBooks, infographics, videos, and more are a great way to showcases your talents.

#4 – Gravy

Turkey Gravy

What does gravy do? It can make what was already good, great. Gravy is used to enhance the flavors of your much labored over turkey and side dishes in a way that will have your guests gobbling up their portion, and asking for seconds.

When it comes to your marketing strategy, the “gravy” is your promotion of content objects large and small. While your content may be good, it doesn’t become great until it is shared!

#5 – Dessert

Colorful Desserts

For many this is their favorite part of the meal. After a feast filled with savory goodness, it’s time to top it all off with something sweet. Instead of serving your guests the expected slice of pumpkin pie, try something new and less traditional as an added surprise.

Try to give your audience something awesome out of the blue every now and then. An example might be to step outside of the regular promotion of your content and recognize your peers, or others within your industry that are truly having an impact. For example, each year TopRank creates the list of “25 Women Who Rock Social Media” in order to shed some light on those having a true business impact using social media.

#6 – Doing the Dishes

Sink of dirty dishes

Now it’s time to survey that damage. Was the meal a success? Did all of your guests gobble up the food you prepared, or are there lots of untouched plates?

Measuring the success of your content strategy is key in determining how to adapt and refine your approach. You can easily survey your audience to determine what they would like to see more of (or less of) or simply use your analytics to determine what pieces or types of content are most popular.

#7 – Bonus: Leftovers

Leftovers in fridge

Finding new ways to reuse your leftovers is a great way to avoid wasting good food.

Take a crack at repurposing elements of content that your team creates to get more mileage out of something that has already performed well with a particular audience.

Phew! See how much easier it was to take the meal step by step instead of tackling the whole thing at once? The same applies to your content marketing strategy. Don’t get overwhelmed just make sure that each individual piece is quality so that everyone can enjoy your content marketing feast.

I would also like to take a moment to show thanks to my fellow teammates, our rockstar clients, and those of you that read and interact with our content! Happy Thanksgiving!

Image credits via Shutterstock: Thanksgiving feast, appetizer, green bean casserole, Thanksgiving turkey, gravy, dessert, dishes, leftovers.

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Bing Adds Translator App for Windows Phone 8

Bing translation app For Windows Phone users Bing has just released their free Bing Translator app for Windows Phone 8. Continually one of the most popular apps in the Windows stable, the translator combines so called “Augmented Reality Translation” via users’ cameras to translate text along with other modes of use. As a mobile search component, the new app would seem to have great implications.

While not spanking new technology, Bing’s app using a user’s camera, with speech & text translation technologies combined, plus adding in little learning features such as “word-of-the-day”, gives Windows Phone fans have a powerful tool at their disposal now.

Aside the implications for travel, like being a local and “understanding” in a foreign land, etc., the technology behind the translator app here will likely lead to more dramatic future iterations for search tools. For one instance, object recognition algorithms, combined with the appropriate database driven information system, can help smart device users accomplish fantastic (futuristic) tasks.

That’s fodder for another article, but for Bing search, this little app announcement bears notice if for nothing more than catching up with Google and Android a bit. Search, particularly with the proliferation of mobile, may be in for a sort of quantum leap soon. Without over stressing what Bing and Microsoft are up to here, let’s also consider the down side of using your Windows, Android, or Apple device to point at stuff and “recognizing” same.

As Joel Hruska over at HotHardware pointed out in September when reporting on Google’s shiny new patent:

“…The privacy implications of such an automated system or enormous. Facebook’s own automatic facial recognition software was highly controversial when it debuted, and what Google has now patented puts Facebook to shame.”

Okay, Bing just announced a translation app that helps people understand languages, sure. I am not suggesting Microsoft is up to anything Machiavellian here, it’s just that competition with Google and others tends to make corporations push the envelope too. The thinking person has to ask; “If Microsoft (Google) can tie in a massive linguistic database to solve for language via images, what other databases might be employed?” Users?

Now that I have interjected some food for thought, back to this very cool looking language (relevance) tool. With version 2.5.0.0, Windows Phone users get the added WP8 support to go with the already powerful features of version 2.2 (Quicker app startup, Faster installation of language packs, and the ability to delete individual items in history), and version 2.1 (Copy/paste of translation results, Swapping the languages with a single tap).

The video below reveals the basic and some advanced features of the app. Meanwhile, interested readers may want to investigate Orbeus, kooaba, and perhaps recognize.im.

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Phil Butler

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Phil Butler is Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Journal, Editor at Everything PR, Argophilia Travel News, and Senior Partner at Pamil Visions PR. He’s a widely cited authority on beta startups, search engines and public relations issues, and he has covered tech news since 2004. Phil wrote in the past for ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, Profy, SitePoint, Search Engine Journal, AltSearchEngines. Follow Phil on Twitter or send him an email at phil [at] pamil-visions [dot] com.

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Bing Adds Translator App for Windows Phone 8 - November 27, 2012
It’s Cyber Monday – Time for a Monday Meme - November 26, 2012
Has Google Done a “Matrix” Bullet Dodge On the FTC? - November 23, 2012

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Reverse Engineering Human Rating to Predict the Future of Search

The key to remaining competitive in organic search is to always be two steps ahead of the search engines. Given the frequency and impact of search engine algorithm updates, those who don’t consider the long-term effects of their optimization efforts are subject to pitfalls similar to those many brands experienced after Google’s Panda and Penguin updates of 2012.

Part of the puzzle of predicting the future of search engines will take with respect to changes to their search algorithms is first understanding their goals and aligning them with the goals of any brand’s SEO campaign. Google’s mission is to provide users with the most relevant and useful information relevant to a user’s search. Therefore, in order to maintain organic performance, a brand’s content plan must take similar aim.

The other important puzzle piece in predicting how search engines will evolve is gaining a deep understanding of the current landscape and what quality signals the engineers at Google, Bing, etc. are closely monitoring. This allows search marketers to begin to understand the direction search engines are moving toward in further tweaking their algorithms. This direction was much easier to see in the days of Google Labs, which allowed public observation of some of the new products Google was testing – unfortunately, Google Labs was shut down in 2011.

Although the Google Labs project was discontinued, Google gave SEO professionals a very useful clue this year as to where its search algorithms are headed. This came with the leak of the company’s human rater handbook in early September. As part of its internal process to improve search results, Google recruits hundreds of individuals to manually assess the quality of content on specific URLs. Google then uses that data to modify its algorithms and (hopefully) provide a better user experience for its search engine users.

The handbook provides clear cues as to how Google assesses the quality of brands’ content.

By understanding the information Google is attempting to gain through this human-review process, SEO practitioners can begin to understand the direction search engine algorithms will be moving as they progress.

In order to translate this knowledge into tactical SEO operations, it’s important to think about how Google could algorithmically look for the signals it’s asking human reviewers about.

Of course, Google can’t possibly use human raters to assess every webpage in its index. It’s up to the company’s engineers, therefore, to develop ways for Google’s spiders to look for the same quality factors that humans use.

For example, Google asks, “Is it clear who is responsible for the content of the website?” and “Is it clear who is responsible for the content of the page?” By thinking about how these factors could be used algorithmically, it would make sense for search marketers to have a visible link on all content pages to an “About Us” page, which succinctly describes the company, brand, relevant individuals, and provides contact information for those who manage the website.

In order to understand who is responsible for the content of the specific page, search engines could look for a byline marked up with rel=author rich snippets. Therefore, those elements should be used wherever applicable.

Before a new page goes live, a good way to determine if it has potential to rank in search engines for a substantial amount of time is to test the content against Google’s quality guidelines by conducting a heuristic quality evaluation with real test subjects. Recruit target users to review the page(s) and ask them the same questions Google asks its human reviewers. If the content passes the human evaluation, chances are it will fit within Google’s quality guidelines and satisfy its algorithms.

In the modern era of limited positive impact from SEO tactics aimed at artificially enhancing search engine results, it’s time to start focusing on optimizing content for users first and search engines second—not the other way around. Optimizing content to engage actual users, and providing them with real value, will not only help build trust in a brand it will also build long-lasting organic search performance.

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Marc Purtell

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Marc Purtell is director of SEO at MediaWhiz, an integrated digital media agency.

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Reverse Engineering Human Rating to Predict the Future of Search - November 27, 2012
SEO in 2013: The Rising Influence of AuthorRank - November 20, 2012

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Friday, 30 November 2012

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Wednesday, 28 November 2012

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Tuesday, 27 November 2012

#1 – Appetizers

#2 – Side Dishes

#3 – The Turkey

#4 – Gravy

#5 – Dessert

#6 – Doing the Dishes

#7 – Bonus: Leftovers

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