SEO & Social Media Explained

Who is TM?
Trademark Productions, Inc. is a full service website and software development company.
SEOMG, the Search Engine Marketing Group within TM specializes in Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing and Online Advertising.

Who have we worked with?
Website Development E-Commerce Online Marketing Business Plans
Consulting Copywriting Database Driven Software

Online Business Development & Marketing
316 1/2 South Main St. Suite 204 . Royal Oak, MI 48307
PH 248.586.9210 | FX 248.582.9212 | www.tmprod.com
Search Engine Marketing Benefits
Search engines represent a very unique medium, which allows you to precisely target an interested audience.
In other media, the audience is looking at something, and your advertisement is a distraction.
Searchers are looking for something, and are far more likely to respond to an appropriately targeted offer.

Search Engine Marketing Options
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Optimizing the content of your website to appear on the free side of search engine results.
Pay Per Click (PPC): Cost-Per-Action advertising targeting the “sponsored listings” on search engine results.
Blended Strategy / Search Engine Marketing: Utilizing both SEO and PPC to maximize your exposure to search engine users.

What is Pay-Per-Click?
Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising technique used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines.
Advertisers bid on "keywords" that they believe their target market (people they think would be interested in their offer) would type in the search bar when they are looking for their type of product or service.
For example, if an advertiser sells red widgets, he/she would bid on the keyword "red widgets", hoping a user would type those words in the search bar, see their ad, click on it and buy. These ads are called "sponsored links" or "sponsored ads" and appear next to and sometimes above the natural or organic results on the page. The advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad.
While many companies exist in this space, Google Ad Words and Yahoo! Search Marketing, which was formerly Overture, are the largest network operators as of 2006. In the spring of 2006, MSN started beta testing their own PPC service, MSN adCenter.
Depending on the search engine, minimum prices per click start at US$0.01 (up to US$0.50). Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular engines.
Abuse of the pay per click model can result in click fraud.

Banner / Interactive Advertising

Campaigns can be placed in a number of online sites and broken down to be extremely targeted:

Keyword Targeted
Site Targeted
Demographic Targeted
Gender, Age, Income, etc.
Traffic Targeted
Geographic Targeted
Countries & Territories
Regions & Cities
Language Targeted
Topic Targeted
Tennis, Formula One Auto Racing, etc.
Category Targeted
Animals, Auto, Entertainment, Food & Drink, etc.

Pay Per Click Advertising - Pros
Predictability - maintain control of costs, operate under a fixed or variable budget, adjust investment seasonally.
Immediate and predictable results - start advertising today, get traffic today. For the most part, the PPC advertiser can control where their site appears in search results.
Geo-targeting: the ability to restrict advertising to local markets, or deliver different ads to different geographic regions.
Tracking ROI is relatively easy. Feedback from PPC campaign results drives ROI higher over time, and can even help with SEO strategy.
With a well designed site already in place, minimal “on site” changes are required - just add landing pages.

Pay Per Click Advertising - Cons
ROI is heavily dependent on the Website’s ability to convert traffic into sales.
Requires an ongoing commitment to measuring, managing, and refining the campaign.
Traffic can be brought in immediately, but optimizing and refining a campaign can take months.
Depending on the scope of the campaign, developing creatives (ad copy and headlines) can be expensive.
PPC may be far more expensive than SEO, although effective PPC campaigns can actually cost less.

SEO / Natural Listings
Search engine optimization (SEO) as a subset of search engine marketing seeks to improve the number and quality of visitors to a web site from "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. The quality of visitor traffic can be measured by how often a visitor using a specific keyword leads to a desired conversion action, such as making a purchase or requesting further information. In effect, SEO is marketing by appealing first to machine algorithms to increase search engine relevance and secondly to human visitors. The term SEO can also refer to "search engine optimizers", an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients.
A range of strategies and techniques are employed in SEO, including changes to a site's code (referred to as "on page factors") and getting links from other sites (referred to as "off page factors").
These techniques include two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design, and those techniques that search engines do not approve of and attempt to minimize the effect of, referred to as spamdexing. Some industry commentators classify these methods, and the practitioners who utilize them, as either "white hat SEO", or "black hat SEO".
In all, the success of SEO is dependant on how the large search engines see your site useful to their end users who search on specific keywords to find what they are looking for.

SEO / Natural Listings

Search Engine Optimization - Pros
Leverage your site’s natural advantages – content, popularity, linking relationships
Can deliver substantial benefits at a very low cost, especially for a “content rich” site
Requires minimal ongoing activity for most sites
Initial investment in SEO can pay off for years to come

Search Engine Optimization - Cons
SEO influences, but does not control, the search engine results - there are no guarantees.
Delayed results - after the initial SEO effort, expect to wait at least 2-3 months for significant traffic.
Risk of becoming overly dependent on “free” traffic, because results are variable over time.
Some modifications to site are required; extent of changes dependent on many factors. A professional SEO consultant can help find the best path to results and ROI.
Poorly executed SEO campaigns can lead to search engine penalties and long term harm to the organization’s online presence.

What Users See

What Search Engines See

SEO/SEMProcess
Set specific goals – “What are your goals?”
Research – Where is / What is the Competition doing?
Current Conditions – Is your site SEO friendly?
Strategy & Tactics – Create a Game Plan, Implement it
Analytics– Track Results, Modify Campaign

It’s not Black Magic

Set Goals – “What are they?”
Research – Where is / What is the Competition doing?
Current Conditions – Is your site SEO friendly?
Strategy & Tactics – Create a Game Plan, Implement it
Analytics – Track Results, Modify Campaign

Where do I start?
Determine if you have the time, patience and can afford doing SEO to your site.
Understand your value of time. Sometimes people leave out their actual cost of their time!
Be prepared to crawl before you can run. SEO takes time to learn and implement. Results are not overnight!

Quick SEO Overview for Your Website
Let’s get you set-up to review your website. The key is having the best tools at your fingertips!
Use Firefox. It is a clean browser and displays websites the way they are meant to be seen. www.mozilla.com/firefox There are versions for Windows and Mac.
Once installed go to http:// tools.seobook.com/seo-toolbar and download the Firefox plugin. Install and restart Firefox.
If you are a web developer or do play with Dreamweaver at times it would be helpful to install the Web Developer Toolbar. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60

Step 1: Where do I rank?
Analytics. If you have them great! If not sign-up for Google Analytics – it’s free and powerful.
Keywords – list 5 keyword phrases that you feel you should be ranked for. They can be a product or a term. (I like to rank for “Web Design”)
Do a search for each keyword in Google. Note the amount of competition for each.
List where you are, and where your competitors are.
GO!

Step 2: My results
How did things pan out?
Are listed where you need to be? Why do you think?
What is the title and description say for your listing? What about your competitors? Any bolded words?
Is the competition ahead of you? Why do you think?
What does you site look like? Does it compare with the competition?
Are these even the right keywords?
*if you have analytics you can see how your being found already!

Step 3: Shock and Awe
Confused yet?
Go to Google and type in the search bar site:www.YOURDOMAINNAME.com
How do those results look? How many? Are they similar or different?
Now try a competitors domain name. How do you two match up?
Go to Yahoo! search bar and type linkdomain:www.YOURDOMAIN.com
How do those results look? How many? Are they similar or different?

Step 4: Understand the Data
What the search results say, Site: and LinkDomain:
Title Tags & the importance of keyword selection
Specific for each page; don’t exceed 60 characters including spaces; readable for humans
Meta Description Tags – are they unique, keywords present and written for humans? 150 characters max including spaces!
Where are your links coming from?
Are they relevant external sites? Are they interior?

Step 5: What to do?
Come up with keywords that best suit your needs; Google Keyword Tool
Pick your battles – how much competition?
Plural vs. Singular; Synonyms; alternative wording, lingo and geo-specific terms (pop vs. soda)
Make your list; Broad terms, Tough and easily achievable
Broad: Car
Tough: Chevy Volt
Easy: Warren Michigan Chevy Volt Dealer

Step 6: Title Tags
Make sure that your title tag includes your keyword (a greater weighting is given to key phrases at the left of the title tag)
A compelling call-to-action might help you get a better click-through rate in Google search engine results pages.
Make title tag unique on each page (Google Webmaster Tools can help you detect problems with the title tags)
Avoid keyword stuffing in your page title.

Step 7: Headings (H1, H2, H3)
Using your keyword in H1 or H2 has some positive effects on SEO
<h1> is the most important heading - use it only once or twice per document and include your keyword there
Include different keywords in subheadings within the document
Avoid keyword stuffing in any of heading tags

Step 8: Body Text
Make sure that the keyword you are targeting really is in your body text
Put main keywords closer to the top of the document
Avoid keyword stuffing in body text and don't hide text through colour by blending text color with background color
Avoid too high keyword density (>10%) as it may lead to penalty (use synonyms, related words and LSI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latent_semantic_analysis ) words - http://quintura.com/ will help you find them)
Pay attention to keyword density

Step 9: URL / Domain
Domain name: If possible, put your main keyword in the domain name
For SEO it seems that there is no difference between delimiting words in domain name or writing them together. From marketing standpoint it's better not to delimit words in domain name with dashes because of word of mouth marketing.
URL: Make "user-friendly" urls; put your keywords there and leave out stop words (http://www.ranks.nl/resources/stopwords.html) like "I", "a", "an" etc. Also try to avoid special characters like "&", "?", "=", "$", "%", "^" in the URL.Avoid keyword stuffing in URLs and try to keep them within a reasonable length.

Step 10: SiteMap / Robots.txt
Sitemap is a file or multiple files that list URLs for a website.
It is important to submit your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools
It is important to include a link to sitemap file in your robots.txt file. If you want to put sitemap on different domain you must put a link to it in your robots.txt file. All information about sitemaps - http://www.sitemaps.org/ You can also submit your sitemap to Yahoo! Site Explorer and MSN Live Webmaster Center. If you don't have a sitemap, try sitemap generators
Robots.txt is a file on your site that tells web spiders (like Googlebot) how to behave on your site.
Robots.txt should contain a link to your sitemap (for example: Sitemap: http://www.tmprod.com/sitemap.xml) . All information about robots.txt - http://www.robotstxt.org/

Step 11: Meta Description
Make sure that the keyword you are targeting really is in your meta description
Create unique meta description for every pagePut your keyword closer to the start of the meta description
A compelling call-to-action in meta description might help you get a better click-through rate in Google search engine results pages.
Avoid keyword stuffing in meta description
Keep the lenght of meta description under 160 characters (15 - 20 words) to make sure that your message isn't truncated in Google SERPs.
Make meta description different from page title (<title>).

Step 12: Links
For internal linking - put nofollow attribute on links to unimportant pages (from SEO standpoint - like "Privacy Policy", "Contact us" and other pages)
Put keywords in anchor texts
If link anchor is an image then put anchor text in image's "alt" attribute
Avoid keyword stuffing in anchor texts
Avoid using un-related phrases like "click here" or "more..." in anchor texts
Linking to similar external sites will help search engines to determine your site's theme
Check your anchor texts and nofollow attributes

Step 13: Load Time
100% Valid code is great but most of the time search engine spiders can process invalid code as well.
Using less <table> tags may result in faster page load
Having smaller HTML will result in faster page load
Avoid broken images on your site as it slows down page load (click on the "Load time" link to get list of broken images on site)
Put CSS in external files. If you can combine all CSS information into one file it will make your page load faster
Put JavaScript code in external files. If you can combine all JavaScript code information into one file it will make your page load faster
If you are using common JS libraries (like jquery, prototype, moo tools and others) use Google Ajax Libraries API

Step 14: Images
Use "alt" texts to describe the image - for accessibility and SEO reasons
Don't overuse "alt" texts, for example, don't add them to spacer images or layout of images
Put keywords in "alt" texts if they make sense in the context
You can also use keywords in filenames (write keywords together or seperate them with dashes)
Avoid keyword stuffing in "alt" texts or filenames

Step 15: Other things to consider
First Impression – make it SEO friendly but don’t forget the customer!
a. Accessibility / Spider ability (no CSS, JavaScript, Cookies)
b. Robots.txt
c. Crawl Test – Is your site accessible?
d. Browse as GoogleBot – (cloaking, can you see the same as a user, Google healthcheck)
e. Sitesearch / Brandsearch
f. Google cache (is content there, content the same)
g. Duplicate content (are you providing confusing info to search engines)
h. No www vs. www
i. Check all domains (sitedomainip check, multiple sites have the same content on ip)
j. URL’s – (structure, length, keyword rich)
k. Title Tags (unique ea page, descriptive)
l. Content Review (enough content, header tags with key phrases
m. Meta tags (stuffing, proper length)
n. Redirects (http headers {http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/}, non www vs. www)
o. Internal Linking – (# of links, anchortext, no vs. do follow, TOS, Privacy)
p. Geolocation – (Where is IP, domain, local address, Google Local)
q. External Linking – (what looks bad, anchor text, deep linking, look natural, paid links)
r. Symantec HTML – (bulky size, crawl rate, alt tags, images, poorly formatted code)

Why Hire A Professional?
Thorough assessment of business needs and current state.
SEO professionals can help determine the most cost-effective methods of making needed site modifications.
Professional PPC campaign management can greatly increase ROI, and reduce startup costs.
Focus: Is search engine marketing really your core business?

Search Engine Marketing Process
Stage 1: Business Assessment
Stage 2: Keyword Strategy
Stage 3: Pay-Per-Click
Stage 4: Website Optimization
Stage 5: Link Building
Stage 6: Tracking and Refinement

Business Assessment
Key Business Issues
Establish Business Goals
Identify Key Players
Examine Current Metrics
Conduct Site Review
Keyword Brainstorming

Keyword Strategy
Search Term Discovery
Keyword Metrics
Assess Relevance
Search Term Selection
Establish Priorities
Determine Methods

Pay Per Click
Initial Keyword Strategy
Develop Ad Copy and Headlines
Testing Phase
Add Negative Matching
Add Exact Matching
Track and Refine

Website Optimization
Map Keywords to Content
Site Structure and Organization
Modify Page Templates
SEO Copywriting and Rewrites
Optimize Internal Links
Set Up Tracking System

Link Building
Keyword Strategy Review
Directory Submissions
Press Releases
Link Partnerships
Link-Based Advertising
Affiliate Program

Tracking & Refinement
For SEO, Begin at 2 months
For PPC, From Day 1
Identify Key Search Terms
Identify Performance Gaps
Cost-Benefit Analysis
Refine Strategy

Social Media
What are best practices?
Which sites to use?
Get a game plan! Goals!
Set a budget & include time!
Track and refine!

The Gold Rush of the 21st Century
What I am notgoing to talk about in detail:

Quick Survey
• Facebook?
• Flickr?
• Linked In?
• StumbleUpon?
• Digg?
• Reddit?
• Have you ever searched for something on Wikipedia?
• Yahoo?
• Google?
• Do you read blogs?
• Do you use a RSS reader like Google or Bloglines?
• Have you submitted content to a social network?
• Do you or a client of yours do social media marketing?

What is Social Media?
“Social media describes the online technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives,
and media themselves.”
Social media is…
Editable
Popular
Conversation
Fast
Historical

Why should you care?
With the proliferation of niche sites and communities on the Internet, it’s becoming increasingly important to target long-tail search terms and cast
a wide net.
…and guess what?
Google Cares too!

How are Search Engines Changing?
• Social Network Endorsements
Methods and systems for endorsing search results
• Use of Trends and Bursty Topics
System and method for monitoring evolution over time of temporal content
• User Distributed Search Results
User Distributed Search Results
• Dual Trustrank
Yahoo’s augmented relevance ranking by community participation

How? Search Google for Obama!
Results return:
1. Books
2. Official website with “site links”
3. Wikipedia
4. Senate.gov
5. News results
6. Senate podcasts
7. MySpace
8. Snopes (urban legend site with huge community following)
9. YouTube videos

Search Google for “Dramatic Chipmunk”
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS234US234&q=dramatic+chipmunk&btnG=Search
Results return…..
Embedded You Tube video
Wikipedia article
3-10. More video and social network results
From that came….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw&feature=related

Social Media Big Players
• 14,000,000+ Professionals
• 500,000+ Senior Executives
• Executives from 498 Fortune 500 companies
• 65,000 new Professionals every week
• Average Household Income: $130,000+
• Average experience level: 15 yrs

Social Media Big Players
Guy Kawasaki’s 11 Ways to Use LinkedIn:
1. Increase your visibility.
2. Improve your connectability.
3. Improve your Google PageRank.
4. Enhance your search engine results.
5. Perform blind, “reverse,” and company reference checks.
6. Increase the relevancy of your job search.
7. Make your interview go smoother.
8. Gauge the health of a company.
9. Gauge the health of an industry.
10. Track startups.
11. Ask for advice. (LinkedIn Answers)

Wikipedia
More than a third of American adult internet
users (36%) consult the citizen-generated
online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
• Credibility has been called into question.
• Regardless, Wikipedia receives top placement on Google and almost 10% of daily Internet users visit the site.

How you can use Wikipedia
Create unbiased articles about your company,
executives and important news stories
> Web site traffic increase
• Cross-reference your articles with related articles
> New user discovery
• Reputation management
> Subscribe to updates to monitor changes
> Manage photos, links, content, etc.

StumbleUpon
More than 8.4 million users
FireFox Browser Plug-in

How you can use StumbleUpon
Submit articles, photos and videos
Get the Firefox Plug-in
Force friends to stumble your articles
Join groups
Add friends
Review friends
Grab successful stories and add to digg, reddit and other social networks

Twitter
Marketing Opportunities
• Build a company profile
• Network with users
• Post links to articles (on the social network you want them to action with)
• Become an authority in your space / industry
• Can be branded – carry a message

Twitter
Rule #1 – Ready, Aim, Fire!
Social networks reward early adopters. The rabbit wins every time.
The first to the top of the mountain wins. This is why our agency focused on the internet, building web sites and executing online marketing programs back in the late 90’s. We realized back then that the “new media” (totally played-out phrase) is online marketing and SEO would always be a service that has a long term shelf life.

Twitter
Rule #2 – Join in all, participate in a few
Get your name before someone else does. http://www.knowem.com
While it may be good to have an account in all the networks, it sometimes can sometimes have adverse effects. If prospective customers are searching for you, your company or for your services and one of the network profiles happen to appear in a search result what are the chances that the profile is stagnant or shows that you have not updated for months? Would that be the type of person that I would want to work on my business with?

Twitter
Rule #3 – Personal Brand Optimization
Optimize your personal brand, but focus!
Continuity is good and a lot of social network profiles are crawled and indexed by Google. PBO everywhere is good but do you have the time? Will every network be beneficial? Attach metrics and see what you are actually getting from each source.

Twitter
Rule #4 – Don’t pitch! Have a conversation
I once heard that for every 10 tweets only 1-2 should be about you, your company or sales. I believe that this is a good rule to follow.
Have a conversation. Have a goal going in. Modify and sway your conversation to be helpful and rewarding to the reader / friend.

Twitter
Rule #5 – Feed the Animals
You have no interest in last Tuesdays’ USA Today.
Your networks need content to survive. This needs to be updated regularly and relevant to what is going on. Google loves fresh content and so do your readers!

Twitter
Rule #6 – ROI or Die
Share the megaphone and learn when to increase ordecrease your own amplification.
Know how much participation you need to make in a social network in order for you to justify adding in in some self promotion. Find relevance in the conversations for your services, products or business ideas. Don’t just blurt it out. Also consider the keywords that you want to be relevant for in search back to you, your company and your website.

Twitter
Rule #7 – Know your ratio
You stop playing the slots when the credits are gone.
Plan, execute, analyze and repeat. If it is not working you need to change something or it is not going to benefit you.
Measure twice – cut once.

Twitter
Rule #8 – Build before you need
Plant, nurture and grow your networks before you expect to harvest.
Determine if becoming a part of 15 Social Media networks is going to contribute to the overall goal (because you sat and defined all your goals, budget and a time line before you ever started- right?).

Twitter
Rule #9 – Tools are not tactics
Owning a treadmill does not make you thinner.
Using the treadmill will.
Plan, budget, execute, analyze and repeat.

Twitter Advanced Search http://search.twitter.com/advanced

Twitter Advanced SearchChoose a word(s) and select a geo-range from your location – follow conversations or chime in with your expertise and help!

Twitter Tips
Build out your profile – add a picture, custom background and clear contact information
Listen for your name, company name, services.
Talk to people about their interests
Point out interesting in your space – not just about you
Share links to neat things in your community
Promote employees outside of work stories (Home Depot does this great)
Talk about non-business
Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?
Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.

More…Twitter Tips
Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
Share the human side of your company. If you’re bothering to tweet, it means you believe social media has value for human connections. Point us to pictures and other human things.
You don’t have to read every tweet.
3rd party clients like Tweetdeck and Twhirl make it a lot easier to manage Twitter.
Learn quickly to use the URL shortening tools like TinyURL and all the variants. It helps tidy up your tweets.
Commenting on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community.

Twitter Negatives
Twitter takes up valuable time.
Twitter takes you away from other productive work.
Without a strategy, it’s just typing.
Twitter is just for technonerds.
Twitter doesn’t replace direct email marketing.
Twitter opens the company up to more criticism and griping.
There are other ways to do this.

Twitter Positives
Twitter helps one organize great, instant meetups (tweetups).
Twitter works swell as an opinion poll. Twitter can help direct people’s attention to good things.
Twitter at events helps people build an instant “backchannel.”
Twitter breaks news faster than other sources, often (especially if the news impacts online denizens).
Twitter gives businesses a glimpse at what status messaging can do for an organization. Remember presence in the 1990s?
Twitter brings great minds together, and gives you daily opportunities to learn (if you look for it, and/or if you follow the right folks).
Twitter gives your critics a forum, but that means you can study them. Twitter helps with business development, if your prospects are online (mine are).

Digg
Marketing Opportunities
Write “linkbait”
Have a popular or top user submit your story (or become one!)
Network with other Digg users by soliciting diggs from IM,
StumbleUpon, Facebook, etc.
Watch as subscriptions and traffic increase
Track blog posts that mention your article and link to you

Digg
• TRACKING:
Digg Alerter http://www.diggalerts.com/
• TRACK FRIENDS:
Digg Entourage - http://www.thegooglecache.com/digg-entourage.php
• TROUBLESHOOT SUBMISSIONS:
Duggback - http://www.duggback.com/
• TRACK UPCOMING STORIES:
Wheel of Upcoming - http://brian.shaler.name/digg/wheelofupcoming/

Other SEM Opportunities
Yahoo! Answers - http://answers.yahoo.com/
Facebook -http://www.facebook.com/login.php
Custom applications
Groups
Questions
Blog Friends
Network with similar interests and employees
MySpace
Reddit
Delicious

More SEM Opportunities
Listings for your company OR as an individual
Google Local Business Center / Maps / Public Profile Page / Knowl
Yahoo! business listing ($299/yr organic listing), Maps
Bing Business listing
Wikipedia business profile
AboutUs.org profile page
Local Chamber of Commerce
Local municipality sites
Local organizations and online directories
Some require a site badge or backlink

Success Pyramid