SEO and Social Media for Small Business 101

SEO And Social Media For Small Business 101

SEO Is Inbound Marketing

Theory• Ecommerce is beholden to PageRank. In order to achieve Page Rank, an SEO campaign must incorporate multiple forms of inbound marketing.• Search engine optimization is a form of Website marketing that seeks to achieve the best possible results in generating referrals from Web search engines. The search optimizer helps the Website developer define the focus and scope of Web content, as well as the internal structures that facilitate appropriate indexing in search engines. Because today’s search engines place great value on linking relationships, many search marketers concentrate on building links to Websites. This very limited approach often results in Websites losing or failing to achieve good rankings.• A complete search engine optimization plan balances resources (in time, effort, and money) between creating good content that is well organized for indexing and between promoting that content through links on other Websites. The best links are placed without request or exchange and give no consideration to “anchor text”, PageRank, or other marketing values. Links help search engines find new content. They also help search engines determine how trustworthy Web page may be. And links can (but do not always) pass value in the form of PageRank and link anchor text that may be used by search engines to organize the data in their indexes.

Practice• Make sure that the search engines can find and index all of your pages – Submit website to search engines – Create Sitemap page for site, along with XML file to submit to the search engines – Create search engine webmaster accounts to monitor progress and problems• Targeted keyword research – I will review some of your competitors along with your Google Analytics account to see what keywords are currently working for you and your competitors, along with using some additional keyword research tools to pinpoint the best possible keywords to optimize for. – I will provide page by page recommendations on how to best optimize for those keywords on each page• Social Media outreach• Local focus – Search engines are moving to providing more local results. Develop your Google Places listing, Yelp and other business directories and listings• Link building – The main thing is to get links from any partners that you work with, and I can provide some best practices for this.

PracticeThere are some very easy and efficient ways to accomplish this: – Focusing the website’s message – Issuing press releases – Link building – Social bookmarking – Posting pictures on photo sharing sites – Post videos on video sharing sites – Leading the online conversation – Localizing the website – Google Places

Keywords - Explanation• When looking for information online using search engines, a person will type a word or phrase relevant to the topic they wish to find information on – this is a keyword – ‘Los Angeles Self Storage’ – ‘San Diego storage units’• Frequency, Proximity, Prominence and Density of keywords are all factors in your Google Page Rank• Focus on a few targeted keywords for each video or picture. Here is an example of the keywords we used for a picture recently: – Los Angeles Self Storage, Los Angeles Storage unit, Los Angeles mini storage, 90064 self storage, 90064 storage unit, 90064 mini storage

Keywords - ResearchHow do you find the keywords relevant to your business?• There are lots of great tools out there to help you determine how much activity your keywords are receiving (such as ‘Los Angeles Self Storage’): – Wordtracker - This is very useful for figuring out how difficult it will be to rank for a given term by looking up popular keyword phrases to determine activity &popularity among competitors. – Google Keyword Tool - A free tool that gives you search numbers to determine most popular searches. – Google Suggest – Great way to find synonyms and related word suggestions that may help you expand your original list.

Keywords - ResearchHow do you find the keywords relevant to your business?

Keywords – Geo-Targeting and Long-Tail• Reagan-Era Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil once famously said ‘All politics is local’ – online search is very similar• Geo-target your keywords by city/town and zip code: – Los Angeles self storage, Los Angeles mini storage, Los Angeles storage units, 90064 self storage, 90064 mini storage, 90064 storage units• Short-tail keywords (self storage) - more heavily searched, much more competitive to achieve Google Page 1 results• Long-tail keywords (Los Angeles self storage) - more specific to local businesses and less competitive to gain an advantage on Google Page 1. Trending upward in popularity.

Practical Keyword ApplicationOWN YOUR SEARCH! … Search Tips• Explicit Phrase: – Lets say you are looking for content about internet marketing. Instead of just typing internet marketing into the Google search box, you will likely be better off searching explicitly for the phrase. To do this, simply enclose the search phrase within double quotes. Example: "internet marketing"• Exclude Words: – Lets say you want to search for content about internet marketing, but you want to exclude any results that contain the term advertising. To do this, simply use the "-" sign in front of the word you want to exclude. Example Search: internet marketing -advertising• Site Specific Search: – Often, you want to search a specific website for content that matches a certain phrase. Even if the site doesn’t support a built-in search feature, you can use Google to search the site for your term. Simply use the "site:somesite.com" modifier. Example: "internet marketing" site:www.smallbusinesshub.com

Practical Keyword ApplicationSearch Tips• Similar Words and Synonyms: – Let’s say you are want to include a word in your search, but want to include results that contain similar words or synonyms. To do this, use the "~" in front of the word. Example: "internet marketing" ~professional• Specific Document Types: – If you’re looking to find results that are of a specific type, you can use the modifier "filetype:". For example, you might want to find only PowerPoint presentations related to internet marketing. Example: "internet marketing" filetype:ppt• This OR That: – By default, when you do a search, Google will include all the terms specified in the search. If you are looking for any one of one or more terms to match, then you can use the OR operator. (Note: The OR has to be capitalized). Example: internet marketing OR advertising

Practical Keyword ApplicationSearch Tips• Phone Listing: – Let’s say someone calls you on your mobile number and you don’t know how it is. If all you have is a phone number, you can look it up on Google using the phonebook feature. Example: phonebook:617-555-1212 (note: the provided number does not work – you’ll have to use a real number to get any results).• Area Code Lookup: – If all you need to do is to look-up the area code for a phone number, just enter the 3-digit area code and Google will tell you where it’s from. Example: 617• Numeric Ranges: – This is a rarely used, but highly useful tip. Let’s say you want to find results that contain any of a range of numbers. This type of search is useful for years (as shown below), prices or anywhere where you want to provide a series of numbers. Example: president 1940..1950

Google Places• 97 percent of consumers search for local businesses online• 73 percent of all online activity is related to local content• Achieve a 100 percent score to land on 1st seven local businesses and Page 1 search – Encouraging reviewers – Upload business photos and videos with keyword-friendly tags – Use 2-D barcodes

Free Advertising With Google LocalFrom Hubspot.comMany small businesses do not know that you can get some free advertising on Google, using Google Places. Google is looking to increase the value of their local search and their mapping application, so they have a simple way for you to tell them some information about your business, and now they are infusing those results into their main search engine. It is basically a way to advertise your business on Google for free, and everyone loves a free advertisement. This will help your advertisement show up in searches and can help you get more traffic, leads and customers. For example, a Boston volunteer organization I work with called the Boston Scholars Program is currently listed at the TOP of the Google search results for searches like "volunteer in boston", "volunteer boston ma", and "volunteer boston, ma".

Free Advertising With Google Places

Free Advertising With Google PlacesThings You Need Before Starting Your Free Advertisement• A description of your business• Your phone number, address and any other contact info you want to advertise• A logo or image that represents your business (some people use a picture of their office, store or restaurant)• A coupon or special offer you want to advertise (Google also lets you add a coupon for FREE if you want)Step-by-Step Guide to Free Google Advertisement• Go to www.google.com/places and search for your business to verify it is not yet listed with an advertisement.• Go back to www.google.com/places and click on Add/Edit Your Business at the bottom left part of the page.

Free Advertising With Google Places

Free Advertising With Google Places• Follow the steps provided by Google. They are pretty simple and straightforward. As part of the process you will need to verify your business either by phone or mail.• Check back in a few weeks with Google and verify your listing. If you want to update it, you can use the same process outlined here to update your listing. See image below of the advertisement for the Boston Scholars Program including details and logo.

Search Ranking Factors

Content

Content• Content of your website is the most important factor in achieving Page Rank: – Social Media Profiles • Search engines are quickly moving toward community reviews (Yelp), Facebook shares, Re-Tweets and Google +1s of your content to determine authority and Page Rank – Link Building • Search engines determines website authority through inbound links to your website • Press releases, videos, pictures and articles are great ways to entice other websites to link to yours

Titles, Descriptions and Tags Title includes top keyword and name of company Description includes top keyword in 1st sentence, company and url Tags include top keyword and other related keywords

Titles, Descriptions and Tags• When posting pictures and videos to file sharing sites (YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, etc) – both are accompanied by titles, descriptions and tags.• Titles – always include your top keyword phrase in title• Descriptions - include: – Top keyword phrase in first sentence – The name of your company – Other important and relevant keywords – Location of property / called geo-targeting – Link to website – http://www.yourcompany.com• Tags (or Keywords) – include company name and all relevant and related keyword phrases.

Gathering Visual Media• Pictures – Take pictures of your business, download to your computer, optimize and upload to photo sharing sites. Infuse them with personality – it is called SOCIAL media• Video – Buy a flip cam and film a walking tour of your site explaining your business.• Optimization – Download the videos to your computer, optimize and upload the file to video sharing sites – When optimizing pictures and videos rename them according to your business or event using relevant keywords. – Programs such as Photoshop will resize and rename pictures automatically in bulk. – Quicktime Pro will allow you to pack a ton of information into the back of a video file (QuickTime Player > Window > Show Movie Properties)

Picture Optimization on Wordpress

Video Optimization in Quicktime

Photo Sharing Sites

Optimizing For Vertical Search

Video Sharing Sites

Video Sharing Sites• Uploading, titling, describing and tagging videos to sharing sites such as YouTube ensures recognition by Google (which owns YouTube)• By having video on other sites you can link traffic back to your site with external links• Social media often thrives with video because it is more emotional, influential and memorable. – It is easy to share a video – A well created video has a lot of potential to go viral• The number of web pages still massively outnumbers indexed video assets, and for as long as that continues, publishers will have an opportunity to jump to the top of Google’s search results through Video SEO

Optimizing VideoViral Video Strategy• CONTENT – Creative, funny, authentic, short – Timely – Call to Action• OPTIMIZATION – Thumbnail – Keywords – Title – Tags – Description – Back-end information fields in Quicktime file• RELEASE – Time-Sensitive or newsworthy videos have a better chance gaining attention• SEEDING & PROMOTION – Video hosting sites, video search engines and social media platforms – Your members/ subscribers / channel / fans – Local Media – Influencers: Bloggers, YouTubers, Editors and Celebs – Home Page Placement with proper optimization framework

Link BuildingLink building remains one of the most important Page Rank strategies for your website through:• Articles• Press Releases• Directory registrations• Infographics• Asking similar websites for links to your website

Link Building Case StudyPampers published an article on their website - "New Baby Boy Names for 2011” - http://bit.ly/iAczgX• The title and first sentence both contained the keyword phrase – Times "New Baby Boy Names for 2011" mentioned in article – 7 – Word count – 333 – Tags - baby names, new baby boy names, 2011 baby names, 2011, baby boy names, most popular names, new baby names – Similar articles linked to – 6 • This is internal linking within your website – very important• By offering this content to blogs about kids, moms, families, etc there is a chance to gain many links back to the website• Google Results - Page 1 listing for web page on which article was posted

Social Bookmarking

Social BookmarkingSocial Marker• Social bookmarking is a powerful tool in promoting a website enabling content producers to submit blog posts to content sharing and bookmarking sites. – Helps sites get backlinks – Increases traffic – Gets links indexed by Google quickly – www.SocialMarker.com

Link Building IdeasCapture Trends

Link Building IdeasEmail is alive and well – statistics from the 2010 holiday season:

Social Media

Social Media Profiles• Aside from the obvious advantage of monitoring and framing the online conversation for your business; registering social media profiles for your business is important because: – The profile information sections often contain places for your url – which is great for link building – Social media sites are well respected by search engines and enhance your search engine results – Social media profiles are a great place for customer reviews which are fast becoming a major driver of business and influencer on search engine results

Social Media Ranking Factors

Facebook

Facebook• 800,000,000 active Facebook users• 48% of 18 to 34 year olds check FB right when they get up• 28% check FB on their smart phones before getting out of bed• 48% of young Americans get their news on FB• 750 million photos were uploaded to FB over New Year’s weekend• 57% of people talk to people more online than they do in real life• “Facebook” most searched term online 2009 and 2010

FacebookOther top searches (AND HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING HERE) from various categories in 2010 include:• Personality – 1. Kim Kardashian – Oprah, Rush Limbaugh, Miley Cyrus, Glenn Beck• Movies – 1. Star Wars – Paranormal Activity 2, Avatar, Transformers 3, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow• Music – 1. Lady Gaga – Justin Beiber, Eminem, Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson• Branded Destinations top 5 search terms: – 1. Disney World – Disneyland, Six Flags, Universal Studios Orlando, Great Wolf LodgTop• TV show searches from – 1. Dancing with the Stars – American Idol, Young and the Restless

Twitter

TwitterTwitter is a relationship building and maintenance tool. The most obvious business use of Twitter is to meet potential customers and leads the same way you would at networking ev ent or tradeshow.However, you can also use it to:– Develop and promote your brand– Interact with your customer base– Track what people are saying about your company and brand– Create buzz around upcoming events– Help individual employees act as liaisons to the public– Promote content you’ve created,– Develop relationships with bloggers

Twitter Stats• 3 years, 2 months and 1 day - Time between 1st tweet and 1 billionth tweet• 1 billion tweets per week• 456 tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died• TPS record – 6,939 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day• Mobile users • Jan 2010 – 14.28 million • Jan 2011 – 26 million

Twitter DictionaryTwitter Handle: Also known as a username. This is the name you select to represent yourself.To Follow: To subscribe to someone’s updates on Twitter. You do this by clicking the “Follow” butt on on that specific person’s Twitter page. When you follow someone, their updates will be displayed on your Twitter page so you know what they are doing.To Follow Back: To subscribe to the updates of someone who has recently started following you. Whenever a new person follows you, you receive an email alert from Twitter. In the email, th ere will be a link to that person’s profile. By clicking the link, you can check out who they are and decide to follow them back or not. It is not required to follow everyone back, but many people like to.Follower: A person who has subscribed to receive your updates. You can see your total number of followers on your Twitter profile page.Update: Also known as a tweet. They can be no longer than 140-characters.@Reply: A public message sent from one Twitter user to another by putting @USERNAME at the beginning of the tweet.

Twitter VocabularyDirect Message (or DM): A private message sent from one Twitter user to another by e ither clicking the “message” link on their profile or typing D USERNAME.Twitter Stream: A list of a person’s real- time updates. Every time you post an update, it goes into your Twitter stream.Tweetup: An event specifically organized for Twitter users to meet up and network.Hashtag (#): A tool to aggregate the conversation surrounding an event or theme. Crea ted by combining a # with a word, acronym or phrase (#WORD).Retweet (or RT): To repeat what someone else has already tweeted. People do this if s omeone has said something especially valuable and they want their own network t o see the information too. (Example: Retweet @USERNAME: Check out this cool r esource).

Twitter Tips• Show your credibility• Flattery is easy • Link request emails come across as forced or spammy • Twitter is a more natural place for brag on someone – RT, #FF, Lists, Reposts, Personal thank you• Finding emails on websites can be tough but people go out of their way to promote social profiles• Hashtags = Opportunities • Monitor conversations • Find followers • Interact with potential customers• Find content for your blog • “guest post” + keyword

Twitter AwesomenessTwitter is the best way to contact people• Easiest way to search for people in your industry • Search specifically by name • Search for potential followers by industry • Hundreds of tools at your disposal• Twitter is the best way to monitor conversations • Use hashtags - #storageunit – Searchable – Can monitor on dashboards

Twitter Tools - Twellow

Twitter Tools - HootsuiteSocial Media DashboardMonitor keywords, manage multiple Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, Ping.fm and WordPress profiles, schedule messages, and measure your success.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUponAfter 24 hours a popular shared link will get:• More re-tweets on Twitter – 0%• More “Likes” on Facebook – 5%• More Stumbles – 83%Half-Life Of A Link – the point in time when a link has garnered half of the engagement• Link shared on Twitter – 2.8 hours• Link shared on Facebook – 3.2 hours• Page shared on StumbleUpon – 400 hours

StumbleUpon AwesomenessStumbleUpon Ads• Very targeted• Low daily ad spend • Can start at $5/day• Cost per click $.05

LinkedIn• Business oriented social network for professionals with 100 million users.• You can encourage your customers, clients or vendors to give you a “recommendation” on your profile.• Find groups that have a connection to your small business and become involved in the conversations.• Great resource for links to your website.

Yelp• Incredibly important resource to monitor• Fill out your profile completely and incentivize customers to leave reviews• Reviews from Yelp are great ways to optimize your website• Use the administration page to: – Announce special offers and announcements to customers – Keep track of how many customers view page – Send messages to customers that reviewed your business – Access ‘Review Badges’ • Embed badges on your business’s website or blog that show that you’re on Yelp and engaged with your community. They’ll even tell visitors how many positive reviews you’ve had.

Google +1

Google +1• Great place to: – Add links to your site – Get +1s which are like positive reviews – Maintain conversations• This is how Google explains Google +1: – The +1 button is shorthand for "this is pretty cool" or "you should check this out.” – Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1s can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.• Whatever … Google owns the world, you’ll know when you can ignore them. That time isn’t now.

Google +1The new backlinks - Google has already explicitly stated that the more +1s a website receives, the better its results will be in a Google search.Personalization• Twitter and Facebook are very influential on search engine rankings. Google +1 is taking personalization very seriously with respect to its algorithm. Google +1 will further increase the significance and influence of personalization in SEO. Pages that have been tweeted, re-tweeted, and liked are seeing the greatest increases in search engine prominence.Social Authority Influence• With +1s, re-tweets, and likes being used to determine content relevancy, it should be obvious that social networking is gaining strength as a major component of Google’s algorithm. The more friends and followers you have, the stronger your influence as to how a website will rank for its keyword.

Google +1Competition• With +1s making an impact on search engine results, you’ll be able to see why you are ranked below your competition. However, you won’t be able to see how they are getting their +1s, making competition analysis a bit tougher.Longevity• Longevity will be a major factor as to how Google +1 affects SEO for a multitude of reasons. Aged domains have always influenced search engine rankings. With Google +1, the aged domain factor may still play a slight role, but it is likely that it may be neutralized.Aggregation Services• Aggregation services have played a significant role in the way Twitter, and other social media has influenced search engine rankings. With the help of social aggregating services, a simple tweet could lead to a webpage reaching the top of Google for its targeted keyword.

Mobile“In the last twelve months, customers around the world have ordered more than $1 billion of products from Amazon using a mobile device," – Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com (July 2010).Google Commissioned Study• People who browse the Web on their device – 81%• People who use native applications – 68%• (68%). – For ecommerce sites and other businesses, these numbers suggest that investing in ones mobile-optimized Website could be more important than building native apps.Shopping• People who use their smartphones for shopping – 80%• People who use smartphones while in stores – 70%• People who use smartphones for product research – 67% – The researchers also looked at what types of actions people take after conducting a mobile search. More than half (53%) ended up making a purchase and 68% visited a business online

MobileThe Next Generation• Students Use Smartphones – Smartphone – 57% – Basic – 43%• Market Share – Android – 43% – IPhone – 42% – Blackberry – 12% – Windows 7 – 2%

MobileThe Next Generation• Students That Text Everyday – Yes – 94% – No – 6%• Students Admit Smartphone Addiction – Yes – 60% – No – 40%• How Important Is Texting For Connecting With People – Very Important – 54% – Important – 36% – Not Very – 7% – Not At All – 3%

Optimize Your Website

Optimize Your WebsiteTitle tags - Add Meta Text to source code, including page titles with keywords to let search engines know what your pages are about – Above the URL by the top red arrow is the title tag – Google reads that title tag to help determine search results – in this case the top two listings on Page 1 (realize the keyword search was very specific)Also• Submit your URL to all search engines• Set up webmaster tools accounts with each search engine• Download free plugin SEO Quake to monitor progress on indexed pages• Add Google Analytics code to website

ResourcesSeoQuake• SeoQuake is a popular and handy analytic seo-tool for Firefox, Chrome and Opera browsers.• Helps to obtain an information about any site for page rank, Google index, Alexa and many others.• Keyword Density tool serves to demonstrate a number of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page.• www.seoquake.com

ResourcesDropbox – File Sharing• Transfer large files, pictures and videos• www.dropbox.com

ResourcesGoogle AlertsGoogle Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.• http://www.google.com/alerts• Enter the topic you wish to monitor, then click preview to see the type of results youll receive. – monitoring a developing news story – keeping current on a competitor or industry – Be vigilant about your brand – Watch for comments and reviews

ResourcesSeoMoz• Campaign management• Keyword tracking• How to videos• Best informational blog in the biz• www.seomoz.org

ResourcesShared Count• Tracks the social sharing statistics of any page you desire, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and raw Twitter counts.• Open API to build tools on top of it• www.sharedcount.com

ResourcesGraders• Twitter Grader is a free tool that allows you to check the power of your twitter profile compared to millions of other users that have been graded.• http://tweet.grader.com/• http://blog.grader.com/• http://facebook.grader.com/

ResourcesDiggSocial Bookmarking Site• The Digg community votes on the best news, videos and pictures on the web submitted by other members.• Great source for both links and traffic

ResourcesGoogle Suggests – Above the URL by the top red arrow is the title tag – Google reads that title tag to help determine search results – in this case the top two listings on Page 1 (realize the keyword search was very specific)Also• Submit your URL to all search engines• Set up webmaster tools accounts with each search engine• Download free plugin SEO Quake to monitor progress on indexed pages• Add Google Analytics code to website

Future Of Search

Glossary• Title – what you name an actual file (video or photo)• Description –Explanation of picture or video using keyword rich text• Tags - are keywords attached to a blog post, bookmark, photo or other item of content so you and others can find them easily through searches and aggregation.• Keyword - A significant or descriptive word. A word used as a reference point for finding other words or information.• SEO - Acronym for Search Engine Optimization A good beginners guide to SEO can be found at SEOmoz.• Upload - is to transfer a file or other content from your computer to an Internet site.• Download - is to retrieve a file or other content from an Internet site to your computer or other device• Indexing - the process of collecting, analyzing, and storing data for fast and accurate data retrieval .• Alerts - search engines allow you to specify words, phrases or tags that you want checked periodically, with results of those searches returned to you by email. (I highly suggest you Google Alert your business name and key industry terms).• Links - highlighted text or images that, when clicked, jump you from one web page or item of content to another. Linking is another aspect of sharing, by which you offer content that may be linked, and acknowledge the value of others peoples contributions by linking to them. It is part of being open and generous.• URL - A URL is most popularly known as the "address" of a web page on the web.• Metadata - Refers to information — including titles, descriptions, tags and captions — that describes a media item such as a video, photo or blog post.

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SEO and Social Media for Small Business 101

by William Soule on Nov 04, 2011

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SEO and Social Media for Small Business 101 Presentation Transcript