Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier

Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
About Me
• Founder of Taproot Digital LLC
• 17 years of communications experience
• 10 years of online marketing experience (SEO,
SEM, social media, web analytics)
• Built my first website in 1994
• Once crashed a website for 4 days and still received
almost 1.3 million visitors/mo. (up from 300K)
• Wrote master’s thesis on consumer adoption of
wearable computers
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Brands I’ve worked with:
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Today’s Mental Journey:
1. Quick update/overview of search & social personalization
2. How to be effective and efficient with social media
3. Local SEO 101
4. Tips for how to build traffic to your website through links, citations, and
reviews
First pro tip:
Today’s slides are here: http://bit.ly/1HUZpcr
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
ONLINE
PERSONALIZATION
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Google Search Today:
“With your permission, you give us more information about
you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our
searches….we don’t need you to type at all.
We know who you are
We know where you’ve been
We can more or less know what you’re
thinking.”
- Eric Schmidt, Google
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Organic Social Reach - Facebook
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Average organic reach was 11% of number of fans
for pages with fewer than 10,000 likes.
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Organic Social Reach - Twitter
Even Twitter acknowledges that you may have to tweet 14-21 times in a
week in hopes of reaching only 30% of your total audience.
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Organic Social Reach - LinkedIn
LinkedIn has found that 20 posts per month can help you reach
60% of your unique audience.
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Personalization on LinkedIn
• Results and rankings are unique to each user/query
• Profile keywords of both parties (searcher, results) play a significant role
• Rankings are adjusted based on how prior searchers have reacted to your
profile
• LinkedIn usage and interaction with profiles/content/groups, etc.
• Skills feature - crowd-sourced classification of skills
• If user is logged in with Gmail, they will use Google search history and
Google+ interactions
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Key Takeaway
At current rates:
➔ If a brand that has fewer than 1 million followers on Facebook or
Twitter
➔ That brand is better off paying to promote its best content via
sponsored updates
➔ Than it is paying someone to post social content all day long.
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Effective Organic Social
Free ways to still play the social game:
● Make it easy for people to share your social content
○ Social media “like” and “follow” buttons on your site
● Prioritize building your team’s social media footprints over your corporate
accounts
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
LOCAL SEO 101
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
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https://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Local SEO Ranking Factors
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❖ Relevance
❖ Distance
❖ Prominence
➢ Based on information we have about a business from across the web
and offline
❖ Local CTR? ***
➢ In the past how many times has the listing been clicked on by users
searching with the keyword
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Mobile Friendly Website
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Local Search Association (LSA) research shows that:
● 50% of consumers state they are extremely likely to look at business
websites when searching for a local business, the second highest source
behind search engines
● 67% of consumers want improvements or mobile-optimized sites
from those businesses, according to Yodle.
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
CITATIONS, LINKS, AND
REVIEWS...Oh My!
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
CITATIONS
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Citations
What is a Citation? – A citation is a mention that references your site or
domain. It doesn’t have to link to it.
Tips:
● Create a unique description for each citation, but always remember to
keep your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) the same across the
web.
● Just pay for this: https://moz.com/local $84/year.
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Citations - Google My Business
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Answer:
● For maps, pick a service area
● For Google+, set up a brand page.

Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
LOCAL LINK BUILDING
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Building Local Links
Focus on links that:
1. Will drive direct referral traffic
2. Build visibility with your target audience for your brand
3. Build your reputation
- Eric Enge from Stonetemple
Don’t:
1. Pay for them
2. Get links from sites not related to your offering. They all need to look local
3. Spam people when asking for links
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Local Link Building Ideas
● Generate news (Chamber of Commerce, news publications, and major
publications)
● Local business awards
● Sponsor a Meetup
● Host a community event
● Local community development center business directory
● Speak at a college
● Sponsor or donate to a local club or organization
● Create and promote a local resource
● Get links from manufacturer websites that provide you products
● Build relationships with local bloggers
● See where your competitors get links
Other ideas: http://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/35-local-link-opportunities-you-missed/
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
How Do you Ask for Links?
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How do you ask for links?

Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Tips:
➔ Collection of link building email templates here
➔ Track your responses (all free).
◆ Gmail - Sidekick
● Tracks email opens
◆ Google Sheets
◆ Gmail - Boomerang
● Re-send your email if person doesn’t reply to, open, or click
◆ Gmail - Streak
● Has a “Journalism” pipeline to track the link building process
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
REVIEWS
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Power of Local Reviews
● 88% read/used reviews to determine the quality of a local business
● 93% said they checked reviews before dining or shopping.
● 88% said they trusted online reviews as much as they’d trust a
personal recommendation
● 85% read up to 10 different reviews while researching their purchase
- BrightLocal’s 2014 Local Customer Review Survey 2,000+ consumers
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
How to get reviews
1. Let your customers know that feedback is welcome and accepted.
2. Remind the customer to review you at the end of the transaction
3. Put up signs at your business location
4. Showcase the reviews you have
5. Use remarketing campaigns to target those who purchase from your
website
6. How to get Google+ Reviews today
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- 2015 Yodle study
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
How to Manage Reviews
● If you remain silent, only the reviewer’s perspective will be visible.
● Customers want to see that your brand cares about their concerns.
● How to monitor your reviews?
● https://www.freereviewmonitoring.com/
● https://www.brightlocal.com/seo-tools/reviewflow/
● http://www.trackur.com/using-trackur-to-monitor-local-reviews
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Delivering deep insights to improve your online presence
@kwatier
Katherine Watier Ong
@kwatier
www.linkedin.com/in/katherinewatier
gplus.to/katherinewatier
katherine@taprootdigitalllc.com
www.taprootdigitalllc.com
Contact
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