How to Make Public Relations Drive SEO

Integrated marketing relies on being able to capitalize across channels and disciplines that were once, and often still are, perceived as unique "silos" in the marcom universe: Each discipline can do great work, yet typically mainly serves the goals of that department.

PR and social media are about creating and spreading fame. Driving awareness and positive impressions relies on being top of mind, being present, and being found. And, as each day passes, the importance of ongoing SEO becomes even more critical.

To achieve the greatest publicity—being found and heard from, both online and offline—we have to transition away from the way we think about marketing in general. Having all functions of marketing, from PR to SEO/SEM to social media, working on a planar level increases the power of the keyword strategy.
Here's how marketing used to look:

 

 

 

Read more: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2016/29819/how-to-make-public-relations-drive-seo#ixzz47fvlHXkZ

Social Media and SEO

I often hear business owners claiming “I don’t have time for Social Networking”. I also hear “Facebook is for kids”.

The point that these business owners fail to see is that Social Media and Social Networking sites have a great impact on their search results.

Both Google and Bing have publicly admitted that shares on Facebook and Twitter (and now Google+) have a direct impact on ranking results.

Example: You share something relevant to your business on your Facebook Page and Twitter profile.

• User 1 comes along and “likes” your post
• User 2 comes along and shares your post (reposts it on their wall and/or re-tweets it on the Twitter profile)
• User 3 re-tweets user 2’s post
• Users 4 – 20 see the Facebook post that user 2 shared and visits, likes and reads your Facebook Page.
• Users 13 – 19 share that same post on their Facebook page

You get the idea. By sharing in the social sphere, you generated a bunch of inbound links and introduced your business to a number of potential buyers who had no prior knowledge of you.
But what about consistency? Does participating in social networking increase your odds of being consistently found at the top of the search engines? Yes it does. Make no mistake, inbound links, authoritative user status (gained by likes and +1 clicks) and content all factor into your rank result.

Once these items are posted, liked, and shared online, they are there forever. Searches garner much more than just web site results. A search result includes pictures, videos, news items, and results from social media sites. So, by simply participating in social media sites, your odds of being found in search have increased exponentially. Google also pays attention to who shares your information. If someone is deemed to be an authoritative user and they like, +1, re-tweet and share your post, your rank just got upped too!

To be truly successful in the social media realm, you have to practice reciprocity. In other words, don’t be there to just post about you. Make sure you share relevant content from other people in your networks. Consider the difference between a link farm (low quality) web site and a content rich, authoritative (high quality) site. Sharing other people’s information in your social networks shows the search engines you are there to provide a rich, authoritative experience to your community and not just tossing out links to generate link bait to your site.

Social Marketing is something every business owner needs to make time for and work. The bottom line is, your SEO plan is incomplete without including a Social
Element.http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/social-media/social-media-and-seo/

HOW TO: Correctly Test to See if Starting SEO is a Worthwhile Investment for Your Business?

The incremental approach to SEO, the approach of making small investment in SEO for proof of concept and scaling on it –  is very tempting: it seems low cost and low risk. Also, for companies that are heavily focused on paid advertising, it is common to have a small test budget to run small cheap tests with, so it would seem that on face value that the same logic would work on the SEO side.
Unlike several other types of online marketing activities, several features of SEO activation make it more difficult to implement:

• Results from SEO efforts are not instantaneous but are cumulative, over time
• SEO of requires teams in various parts of the organization and sometimes outside entities to work together to execute on SEO projects and campaigns
• If you’re new to SEO, there is no institutional knowledge for how to “do” SEO and there are not processes or workflows around it

Because of poorly implemented tests that are not tailored to the nuances of SEO, many organizations trying this approach either never get SEO off the ground and the project just remains an idea or they abandon SEO all together claiming that it did not work for them.
Here are some tips to help you not be one of those organizations and for your to test if SEO works for your organization

Start Your Project With A Clear And Reasonable Goal In Mind

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Often times, the goals that are applied to SEO tests tend to be the same goals as paid search. Very common goals are

“I want an X CPA from organic”
“I want 2-to-1 return on spend in organic”

Other goals are keyword focused:

“I want to rank in the top 5 for [keyword]”

The key thing to keep in mind with these types of goals is where you are starting from. Unlike paid advertising, you cannot turn the faucet on and off, your returns are cumulative. If your website is brand new or if the placements (rankings) are all branded, you’ve got some investing before you can apply your standard KPI’s to organic search. For a brand new website, instead of using traditional KPI’s to test to see if you want to ‘start’ doing SEO, build a test plan based on traffic and engagement metrics.
Think of this as a funnel:

• Engagement
• Traffic
• Impressions
• Placements In Top 20

Using this model will help you see the results from your efforts with greater precision and will allow you to see if there is opportunity that would be invisible if you applied your standard KPI’s right from the start.
It is common to see a low amount of movement, at first, especially if your website is fairly new or if you’re in a very competitive niche. The key thing during this early phase is to fast track SEO projects and get them done fast. The fast you make changes to the website, the faster you see results. Also, keep in mind that the search engines run different algorithms at different times, also impacting when you will see outcomes. Once you have completed some initial projects and a small campaign, you should start to see fluttering in some of the metrics.

Schedule Your Test To Be Long Enough To Show Reasonable Outcomes

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In online marketing, you can run some pretty short tests. You can test ads, landing pages, campaigns, and more all very quickly. Testing if organic search makes a sound investment as a new traffic source, well, it takes more time. How long it takes to run an effective test depends on your goals, how quickly you can get SEO projects done, and how competitive the niche that you’re in is.
On the low end, if you’re one of two of the worlds only manufacturers of kitten-only prosthetics, you don’t have much of an uphill battle and you can see some meaningful results in just a couple months. On the high end, if you’re a insurance, automotive, hosting etc. website, you may need to run your test for longer, depending on what an acceptable test outcome is for you.

Assign An Owner For SEO

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If you’re really serious about testing SEO for your business, it is key to have someone in house that can manage the day-to-day workflows, this is particularly important if you’re working with a vendor or agency to help you try to get things off the ground.
SEO projects that don’t have someone coordinating within the organizations between individuals that ‘own’ the website front-end, the content, and the decision makers, get lost or get de-prioritized. Incomplete SEO projects will have a negative impact in terms of the outcomes you see from your test.

Draft a Detailed Project Plan

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Having a detailed as possible view of what everything that needs to be done to get the test completed beforehand helps things go significantly smoother. It gives an opportunity for key stakeholders to sign off or provide feedback on the whole test, saving time. It also gives an opportunity to identify an technology challenges as well as uncover any requirements that may have been missed or not mentioned in the initial project scoping.







http://www.internetmarketingninjas.com/blog/search-engine-optimization/test-worthwhile-investment/

SEO PowerSuite – Everything You Need for Your Website’s SEO

One thing that generally drives me nuts about SEO tools is the waiting game. A lot of tools that I have tried in the past would have you enter your domain and it would take time to compile the data about your website. For this review, I set up the Mac-version of SEO PowerSuite in ten minutes. Four tools, ten minutes. Within fifteen minutes, I had entered my website information, connected my Google Analytics & AdWords accounts, and received most of the data from each tool. That I find impressive – especially for a toolset that offers a free license.

The SEO PowerSuite Toolset

Now, let’s take a quick look at what each tool within the SEO PowerSuite can do for your SEO.

Rank Tracker

Rank Tracker is the keyword monitoring portion of the SEO PowerSuite that will keep track of your keyword rankings. When you start up the tool, it will ask for your website. It will then generate a list of keywords based on your Google Analytics data and what your website is optimized for.

Once you have added your keywords, you can select them all and click on the Check Rankings button to get your current rankings in search for each keyword. Select all of your keywords again and click on the KEI button to get search volume for all of your keywords.



There are lots of additional things you can do with Rank Tracker. For example, you can highlight one of your keywords, click on the Keyword Difficulty button below your list of keywords, and then click on Update to get detailed metrics about your competitors in search to determine difficulty.



You can also get keyword suggestions based on a highlighted keyword from your list using the Suggest Keywords button at the top left.



From here, you can add new keywords to your project and check the rankings.
As you can see, Rank Tracker does more than just check your rankings. It’s a powerful keyword research tool!

Website Auditor

The Website Auditor tool does a comprehensive check of your website’s on-site search optimization. Any errors it finds, it details for you so you can get them fixed.



In addition to an overall site check, Website Auditor will do an in-depth review of specific pages / content on your website and give you an overview of key metrics including domain strength, domain info, and social sharing signals.


By the time you have reviewed and acted upon the data provided by Website Auditor, you will have a fully SEO optimized website.

SEO Spyglass

SEO Spyglass is a tool that analyzes your website’s backlink profile. You will receive a detailed view of your backlinks.



Using the tabs, you can see additional link details, penalty risk, and links organized by category. You can click on the Statistics button to get a wide variety of statistics on your backlink profile, such as the percentage of .com links, the number of root domains linking to your website, and much more. You can also run a summary report of your backlink profile.



SEO Spyglass is, overall, a powerful backlink analysis tool.

LinkAssistant

Last, but not least, is LinkAssistant. This is the tool you use to build links to your website. It will help you find link opportunities based on keywords, competitors, submission forms, and URLs on a specific webpage.



LinkAssistant will collect any contact information for the potential link opportunities that you select and give you the option to email them a link request. While the software has templates that promote reciprocal linking, I would HIGHLY suggest using those and instead customizing the template to ask for a link based on content relevance and worthiness. Alternatively, you can just grab the email addresses LinkAssistant finds and email the website owners through your own email service.

Pricing

SEO PowerSuite has three editions – free, pro, and enterprise. Click on the image below to get a the rundown of the overall features you will get with each edition.



You can visit the comparison page for more details on specific features offered with each of the four tools included in SEO PowerSuite for each edition.

All of the screenshots and features mentioned earlier are part of the free version. For startups, small businesses, and individual website owners, the free version will give you plenty of valuable insights and actionable items for your SEO strategy. The biggest downside to the free edition is the inability to save your project. So if you stick with this edition, you would need to re-enter your data each time you re-opened one of the tools. That alone makes the license worth it.

Resources

When you sign up for your free license for SEO PowerSuite, you will be redirected to a page with a quick, step by step guide on how to use your new software.



You can visit their video tutorials page to watch short tutorials that help you use each of the features that come with SEO PowerSuite’s toolset.
You can also visit their screenshot library to see different features in SEO PowerSuite plus get tips on how to use them.



In short, no matter how you like to learn, SEO PowerSuite has a guide to help.





http://kikolani.com/seo-powersuite-everything-need-websites-seo.html

4 eCommerce SEO Best Practices You Can’t Forget

eCommerce SEO is a very common concern for many of our clients. Given the depth and breadth of their different product, category and transactional pages, their eCommerce websites tend to be much larger than a typical website. While many classic SEO best practices are still applicable, there are some crucial considerations that must be in play to see true success with SEO and eCommerce.

1. Keep it clean

There is a lot of advice out there on SEO, but you need to be savvy enough to understand which tactics will help, and which ones will be hurt, your rankings. Google is getting increasingly adept at ranking sites based on quality of content and relevance to search queries. “Black hat” SEO techniques often employ tricks to fool Google and other search engines into believing that there is more to a page than the user would actually see. If someone suggests that you add as many keywords as possible to a page, or that you should hide keywords using text colors that match your site’s background colors, stay away!

This post from Moz delves into deeper detail on the major black hat SEO tactics: Knowing Black Hat SEO. This is a must-read before you begin outlining your SEO strategy!

2. Remember your personas

You’re targeting a specific group of people with your offerings, and you need to fully understand the online behavior they exhibit when searching for products. There’s a certain push/pull interplay when it comes to your web traffic. Email marketing, social media sharing, and display ads are all strong sources of qualified traffic, but these visitors are often pushed to your site because something caught their eye. Conversely, a potential customer searching for a product is actually raising their hand, and admitting they need help. In this sense, your strong placement in search engine results pages (SERPs) will pull these types of visitors to your site. Better yet, since they’ve already sought you out, they’d be more likely to make a purchase!

To start effectively pulling traffic from Google, think about how your target audience raises their hand. Some folks know exactly what they want, and more often than not, a well-optimized product page will rank highly for your specific product. On the other hand, some visitors know they have a problem to solve, but don’t quite realize exactly what it is that will help them.

Let’s say you’re in the market for new hiking boots this summer. It rained during your last outing, and you realized your old boots can no longer keep you dry. At this point, finding the most waterproof boots is the top priority, not necessarily buying a specific brand or model. To find the perfect boot, you’re likely to start with Google, trying a query like “waterproof hiking boots.” Or maybe, if you’ll get a bit more specific and give “GORE-TEX hiking boots” a go. I gave the first query a try and here were the results:



If you click through each of the top results – with the exception of REI – you’ll find one thing in common, which brings me to my next point.

3. Optimize your category pages

In my previous example, I stumbled onto several category pages – not specific product pages. These pages offer a ton of opportunity to retailers to build a larger story around the term that was just searched, and should be treated as individual homepages, not a middleman between your product pages. These pages need to be content rich, and place an emphasis on the keywords – especially in the page title – that echo the problem that a potential buyer might be looking to solve.

Deep links from category to product pages are also critical, not just for the SEO value of internal linking, but also for user experience. Going back to the hiking boot example, maybe I did search specifically for “GORE-TEX hiking boots.” A category page that clearly indicates which boots use the material would make my shopping experience much smoother. Product pages shouldn’t be the only location linked to, however. It’s critical to link to contextual content relating to the search query, such as blog posts, videos or pages specifically dedicated to a related topic – such as hiking tips.

Take a look at Merrell’s category page here and note the SEO rich page title, product links, and copy at the bottom of the page. Merrell also does a great job of linking to a hiking boots buyer’s guide, which only strengthens the site’s position in the eyes of Google.

4. Alt tags, all day

Google Image search also plays a very important role in pulling visitors to your site. Often times, potential customers are more visual in their online behavior and will search for photos of a product they’d like to buy first. This is especially true when researching any apparel or fashion products.

Alternate text (or, alt tags) is especially useful for sites with many products that fall into a single category. For example, if you have multiple photos of a given product within a product page, tag each image with alt text that reflects different features that people may be searching for.
For example: alt = “Merrell Pulsate – waterproof men’s hiking boots”
Or,
alt = “Merrell Pulsate – cold weather men’s hiking boots”

These are just a few tips to get you started, and to help you think a bit more high level about the way you pull potential customers to your site. As you explore SEO strategy further, consider how you can avoid duplicate content, and how you can manage product pages for unique challenges, such as out-of-stock or out-of-season items.




http://www.optaros.com/insights/blog/4-ecommerce-seo-best-practices-you-can%E2%80%99t-forget

SEO: Prioritizing Keywords and Content

With limited resources and a vast sea of keywords and content that need optimization, some marketers need to prioritize the search engine optimization work they do to focus solely on the areas that will yield the highest return. Fortunately, the data will tell you exactly where to start.

Research and optimization are a means to an end: getting more organic search performance from your site. The areas you focus on and depth to which you go in your research and optimization efforts will naturally impact your level of success.

The areas you focus on and depth to which you go in your research and optimization efforts will naturally impact your level of success.

In addition, the end goal of increased SEO performance has zero chance of success until the optimized content is pushed live on the site. Therefore, the combined speed and precision with which you complete the keyword research, keyword mapping, and content optimization determines how quickly you could see the performance impact of that work.

Determining which content sections to prioritize for optimization determines where to start with keyword research. However, the keyword research itself can also highlight the most fruitful places to begin optimizing. But you have to have done some keyword research first to know which areas to prioritize for content optimization, which will then require deeper keyword research, which in turn will probably identify additional areas for content optimization, and so on.

This sort of cyclical process prevents some marketers from doing keyword research and content optimization at all.
When I’m mentally stymied by the enormity of a project like keyword research and content optimization for a major ecommerce site, I remind myself of physicist Albert Einstein’s far-reaching observation: “Nothing happens until something moves.” Here’s how to start.

Prioritizing Content to Optimize

Estimate the highest priority section of content based on the value that increased organic search visits can provide.

• Do some quick, high level keyword research on the categories in your navigation in the Google Keyword Planner to identify the approximate search demand for each.
• Analyze each section’s current SEO visits and conversions to identify which sections are underperforming based on the search demand.
• Consider business drivers like profit margin to focus on product areas that will yield the highest return.

You’ll likely also face high pressure to optimize for the product lines currently being heavily marketed by other marketing channels.

On the one hand, combined marketing support from multiple channels, especially offline channels like television and print ads, tend to increase the likelihood that people will search for your brand.

On the other hand, those searches tend to be navigational searches intended to reach your brand’s home page. In most cases, the site should already be able to win those searches. Very few consumers will search for characters and catchphrases in advertising, unless they’re either vintage or viral. Yes, you should optimize the landing page in the ad’s call to action, but typically not the whole site or even major categories or product pages unless they’re also the landing page.

Zappos’ 2011 “More Than Shoes” print ad.

For example, this memorable 2011 print and online ad campaign from Zappos featured models who appeared nude with strategically placed banners bearing the catchphrase “More than Shoes.” The world didn’t suddenly begin searching for the phrase “More than Shoes,” and Zappos didn’t switch its optimization targets away from product type phrases to this catchphrase.

 

Prioritizing Keyword Research

Even with the scope narrowed to a specific section of content or products, the amount of keyword research involved can be staggering.
Choose ways to gather this data that are the least daunting to you, but that will still yield a deep and varied set of keyword research. The method outlined in “SEO 101, Part 5: Google Keyword Planner,” combining keyword stems to create lists of potential keywords to research, is one way of mining for new keyword opportunities. Others ways to identify phrases to research include the following.

• Landing page URL. In the Google Keyword Tool, enter the URL for the page you want Google to find keywords for in the “Search for new keyword and ad group ideas” option. Keep in mind, though, that the tool won’t tell you what phrases to optimize the page for. It’s only telling you what the relative keyword value is for the phrases already on the page, and suggesting related phrases. Do not rely solely on this option, any more than you would rely solely on any other keyword research tactic.

• Competitors’ landing page URLs. Same as the above, but using competitors’ URLs. Broaden your definition of “competitor” to include any site ranking in search results for the phrases you need to rank for. Consider other brand sites, other ecommerce sites, Wikipedia — anything that’s ranking. They’re ranking for a reason, and researching the phrases on their pages can identify optimization targets you can use, as well.

• Top paid search phrases. Paid search is different because you can pay to rank for keywords that you can’t rank for organically. But both forms of search marketing rely on keyword data. Analyze the top phrases that drive paid search traffic to the site, paying special attention to the ones that convert well, and feed those through the keyword tool.

• Keyword analytics data. Analyze the keyword data in your web analytics and Google Webmaster Tool reports to identify the top phrases that drive paid search traffic to the site, paying special attention to the ones that convert well, and feed those through the keyword tool. Keep in mind that optimizing your site based on the keywords you already receive visits for will only reinforce the keyword themes that drive your current SEO performance. These need to be one data source, not the entirety of your keyword research.

The resulting lists of keywords will still be quite large and tiresome to sift through because that’s the nature of keyword research, but the act of collecting the initial data may be easier for you to complete.


A commenter on my previous “SEO 101″ post indicated that she had come to 216,000 potential keywords after using the method outlined in “SEO 101, Part 5: Google Keyword Planner.” This is not uncommon and with focused attention could be done in about three hours in 270 batches of 800 keywords each, but it is undeniably tedious. In addition, that’s just one phase of the keyword research complete, with additional research needed to identify keyword suggestions on the higher value keywords in the data set.

Frankly, all methods of deep keyword research are tedious, but they’re worth it as discussed in “SEO 101, Part 6: Going Deep on Keyword Research.” Still, if the highly repetitive nature of the work keeps you from doing keyword research en masse, find ways to narrow the scope to a more manageable level and schedule it out over a longer period of time. Or contract with someone you trust to do the job thoroughly. It’s in large part a mental battle and you need to find a way to approach it that enables progress vs. stagnancy.

Use the keyword research techniques that feel least daunting to you and that you find yield the most valuable data sets. Prioritize the keyword and content sections that have the most value to your business. Get started today and you’ll be that much closer to improved SEO performance already.



http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/75125-SEO-Prioritizing-Keywords-and-Content

37 SEO Experts You Should Be Following on Twitter

I've been speaking at search conferences since 2001 and have spent a ton of time getting to know who is who in the industry. In fact, I look forward to seeing some of you at SES Chicago to discuss Buyer Legends. Every day it seems that there are another dozen experts to follow on SEO. But, who should you really be paying attention to in 2014?

For starters, solid SEOs need to have a proven track record in the ever-changing world of search - remember, search engines like Google frequently update their algorithms. Another criterion is the ability to master everything from creating content for social media accounts to establishing PPC campaigns to turning profits for their clients. After all, it is about delivering the results.
With all those factors that in mind, here is a selection of 37 SEO experts you should know about in 2014, in no particular order. Some you may have heard of, others not so much. Regardless, these experts have the chops to deserve your attention.

Kris Jones
Kristopher B. Jones is an industry leading SEO expert, entrepreneur, and author of the best-selling book Search-Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint to Effective Internet Marketing. Kris is the former president and chief executive (CEO) of the Pepperjam Affiliate network and is currently an advisor to our friends at Internet Marketing Ninjas.
"Get your most supportive customers to write reviews about your business and submit them to Google+." - Kris @ SEM Rush

Marcus Tober
Marcus got his start in search after developing the SEO tool linkvendor.com, which led to him becoming a pioneer in search analytics software. He founded Searchmetrics in 2007. His clients include very well-known brands like Siemens, T-Mobile, and Symantec.
"The cool thing about search is the way it just keeps changing and growing, meaning website owners and marketers are constantly needing to adapt and exploit new opportunities to maximize their search presence." - Marcus @ Econsultancy

Bruce Clay
Bruce has been involved in search since its infancy, having founded Bruce Clay, Inc all the way back in 1996. Bruce has been at the forefront of the SEO industry ever since. He is a popular speaker at industry conferences, and is also the author of Search Engine Optimization All-in-One for Dummies.
"Too many companies think SEO is easy, cheap, and that you can successfully fool Google. Clearly Google is fighting deceptive tactics, and the penalties are severe. Take a shortcut to save time and money and you will be hurt by Google." - Bruce @ Delaware, Inc 

Murray Newlands
Murray Newlands a well-respected online marketer and professional who manages SEO PR at Influence People. Murray is deputy editor of Search Engine Journal, and is a frequent contributor to well-known business brands Inc., Entreprenuer.com, and VentureBeat. He wrote Content Marketing Strategy for Professionals with Bruce Clay.
"It's not enough to just produce content. Your content must educate, inspire, or entertain your audience." - Murray @ Entrepreneur

Mikkel deMib Svendsen
Mikkel has been working around search engines since 1997. He is the host of the Strike Point radio show and is now publishing shorter and more focused books on one specific topic rather than the traditional textbook, which tries to cover too much information and gets outdated quickly in this industry. The first two books are good examples of how specific the topics will be: Search Engine Reputation Management and Digital Marketing for Healthcare.
"I published this idea about 10 years ago. It is a very effective strategy...I'd call it the best SEO strategy ever, and it's very, very simple. DO NOT OPTIMIZE FOR SEARCH ENGINES. Focus on users to stay ahead of the engines, this is the best SEO strategy I can offer you today and tomorrow." - deMib 

Marty Weintraub
With a "Search Personality of the Year" award under his belt, Marty is a very successful innovator in search. He is the founder of AimClear, serving large clients like Intel and Firestone, and is often found speaking at industry events all over the world.
"The coolest SEO practitioners test their keywords, messages, landing pages, and funnels with PPC and then apply what they know to SEO." - Marty @ SEOCopywrtiting.com

Pierre Zarokian
Mr. Zarokian is an industry veteran with three distinct company foundations under his belt. He started by founding his search engine marketing company Submit Express in 1998, followed by social media firm iClimber in 2008, and most recently Reputation Fighters in 2013.
"SEO [enables] businesses to push down negative pages [to] the second page or lower, where they will be 'buried' and attract less attention." - Pierre @ SEJ

John Rampton
John is sometimes referred to as a "start-up addict." He is the founder of Adogy, a Palo Alto-based advertising agency, is a frequent contributor to Search Engine Journal and The Examiner, and has twice been named in the top 10 of the "Top 25 Most Influential PPC Experts" by Hannapin Marketing.
"Put up amazing content that their customers want. Build products they want to use. Be a company people have to talk about." - John @ Reputation.com

Brent Csutoras
Brent is the CMO of Pixel Road Designs and founder of Kairay Media, which specializes in content marketing and viral content creation. You can find him speaking on the search and social marketing conference circuit or being mentioned in leading publications such as Forbes and Wired.
"[The] secret sauce is just hard work and dedication. Those are the keys to success with social media, or actually just about anything in life." - Brent @ SEJ

Cynthia Johnson
Cynthia "The Social Media Girl" is the director of social media marketing for RankLab. She's been involved with major corporate social media campaigns including clients like Chevrolet and Levis. She has also been a keynote speaker for PubCon.
"Social media as it is now is not here to stay and we should hope that it isn't. The concept and idea of social media will remain, however, and it will evolve and change just as anything in life should." - Cynthia @ CytnthaLive.com

Travis Wright
Travis is a self-described "eternal smartass" who got his start as a standup comedian. He's spent the last 15 years developing and optimizing hundreds of business websites and can be found the speaking at industry conferences like SMX and SXSW.
"Success and fortune are a fickle bitch, so you have to keep moving forward, learning, growing, and evolving in this business world. Eventually, one of these ideas will bust through." - Travis @ traviswright.com

Duane Forrester
Duane is known as "the online marketing guy" whose current role is a senior product manager for Bing and their Webmaster Outreach Program. He is also staff at Search Engine Forums and speaks at search conferences like SES and Pubcon.
"If it's me and it's my budget and I'm spending the money, I'm putting the money into usability before I'm putting the money into SEO." - Duane @ Stone Temple Consulting

Jayson DeMers
Jason is the founder and CEO of Seattle-based marketing agency AudienceBloom. He is a very frequent contributor to popular sites and blogs like Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Search Engine Watch. Jason is very passionate about demystifying SEO for small business owners.
"[More] content results in higher quality, and that's good for everyone. Lower-quality content will be buried in the noise and won't yield any ROI." - Jayson @ Oktopost 

Heidi Cohen
Heidi is president of Riverside Marketing Strategies and has held top marketing positions at well-known content brands including The Economist and DoubleDay. She has also taught marketing at a variety of universities including New York University and Rutgers.
"You always need to keep tabs on what's happening around you. Keep up with changes in the environment (including styles, politics, and economics), transformations in technology, and the evolution of competitors." - Heidi @ TopRankBlog

Aki Libo-on
Aki is the author of a beginners guide to blogging called How to Start a Blog and Earn From It. She also is a regular contributor on topics such as content marketing and blogging at Search Engine Journal.
"Every action must have a goal - and not just any ordinary or broad objective, but something that is clear, specific, reasonable and actionable." - Aki @ SEJ

Drew Hendricks
Drew is the president of AudienceBloom and also serves as a freelance social media strategist and freelance writer. He has several years of experience creating tons of successful social media campaigns for his clients. Drew is also a frequent contributor to publications including The Huffington Post, Technorati, and Forbes.
"The best writers have their favorite authors, so read a few favorite blog posts before sitting down to write. Imitation really is the best form of flattery." - Drew @ The Huffington Post

Loren Baker
Loren Baker is founder of SEJ and Foundation Digital, his digital marketing agency. Loren has been on the SEO scene for more than 15 years, working with some large fortune 500 companies like General Motors and Disney, and is a bona fide legend of the industry.
"It may sound counter-productive, but focusing less on link building can actually gain more links." - Loren @ SEW 

Mitchell Stoker
For the last five years Mitchell has used his online strategy skill-set to help more than 40 national and local businesses thrive online. He is currently the owner of Red Barn Ventures and contributes content to Mashable and the Wall Street Journal.
"The solution to this is to build your brand and business on sound principles that will earn trust over time. It takes quite a while to earn 'real' trust, but is well worth it." - Mitchell @ Maple North

Stuart Draper
Stuarts's mom refers to him as a "social butterfly" but he's also the founder of Get Found First, a pay-per-click advertising agency founded in 2008, as well as a cutting-edge Internet marketing simulator and course Stukent.
"I would argue that the number one reason all agencies lose business is lack of strong and effective communication." - Stu @ Get Found First

Greg Boser
Greg has been involved in search engine optimization since what feels like the beginning of time! He is currently the president and co-founder of Foundation Digital, located in the Greater Los Angeles area. You can usually find Greg at leading search engine industry conferences like SMX and the Affiliate Summit.
"I look at [SEO] like I'm a weather man. I think I'm a really good weather man, but there are times when you say it's going to be 75 degrees and sunny and somebody's party got rained on. That's because we don't control everything." - Greg @ The History of SEO

Zac Johnson
If you're looking for super affiliates tips, Zach will tell you how he has made millions of dollars over the last 10 years in affiliate marketing. Be sure to check out his podcast titled "Rise of the Entrepreneur," which can be found on iTunes.
"Anyone can write an article, but actually being able to write something that people can relate with and makes them want to take action immediately... now that's powerful!" - Zac @ Agile Leverage

Matt Southern 
Matt Southern is a freelance writer who simplifies search engine and content marketing with a self-proclaimed "uncanny talent" for breaking down the complex subjects into digestible bits of information.
"A solid strategy is like a road map for success. Without one you're just navigating through the Web aimlessly."- Matt @ mattsouthern.com

Ania Dziadon
Ania is the CEO and chief strategist of Add Optimization, as well as the CEO of EasyFinance.com. With more than 10 years experience in inbound marketing, her insights have made her a pioneer in the search technology field.
"There is a big connection between lead generation and SEO due to the fact that the majority of quality leads come from the [search] space." - Ania @ LeadsCon

Bob Rains
Bob's "official" job title is "SEO Nerd" at CBS Interactive. Bob is known internationally as a "SEO of the Stars" and you can usually find him sharing his knowledge of creating and implementing innovative digital strategies at SEOktoberfest.
"SEO isn't purely a link game, so why should negative SEO be purely a link game?" - Bob @ SEJ

AJ Ghergich
AJ is this founder of Ghergich & Co. and has been involved in SEO since 2004. His boutique agency creates and promotes visual assets such as infographics, blog posts, and other forms of kick-ass content marketing.
"When you are learning SEO it can be easy to just get into the habit of reading best practices and assuming they are true. The best knowledge you can give yourself is by doing." - AJ @ Powered by Search

Ann Smarty
Ann Smarty is indeed very, *ahem* smart-y when it comes to SEO and content marketing. She is currently a blogger and community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas and founder of MyBlogU and ViralContentBuzz.com
"I never offer a guest post unless I am 100% satisfied with it and unless I am 99% sure (you can never be 100% sure) that it's a useful one." - Ann @ Brick Marketing

Eric Siu
Eric is the CEO of Single Grain, a Southern California-based digital marketing agency who works with both Fortune 500 companies and up-and-coming start-ups. Eric is also a frequent contributor to Entrepreneur.com.
"The number-one cardinal sin most new social media marketers commit is not sticking to a regular posting schedule." - Eric @ Entrepreneur.com

Marcela De Vivo
Marcela has been involved in SEO for the last 15 years and is the founder of Griffin Media, which serves many internationally recognized clients. She wants you to know if you are interested in learning more about SEO she is absolutely your girl!
"To know what your audience craves, you have to get into their heads. Building marketing personas goes a long way in helping you create content targeted to their interests." - Marcela @ Social Media Explorer

Pratik Dholakiya
Pratik prides himself in the providing his clients with real, tangible results. He's been doing just that within the digital marketing space for more than seven years. You may have seen Pratik featured in such publications as Forbes, Moz, and SEW.
"Estimates and correlations might not count as proof of ROI, but when you tie your strategy to numbers, your actions become harder to ignore." - Pratik @ Crazy Egg

Brian Honigman
Brian's byline is "Smart. Social. Storytelling." He's a marketing consultant, freelance writer, and also a professional speaker - Brian has spoken at NYU, UNICEF, and for The American Advertising Federation. He has also contributed to such publications as The New York Times and The Next Web.
"People tend to trust other people more than they do the idea of a brand, which is why it's important to occasionally focus on the key individuals that have built your business in order to help build trust as your team explains its story to others." - Brian @ The Next Web

Andrew Pincock
Andrew is currently the CEO of Traffico, a content marketing, digital strategy, and PPC management firm. Andrew has worked for major players like AOL, as well as several start-up Internet technology companies.
"Metrics are essentially a way for decision making to be easier. At a glance, you can see how much traffic your website is getting, whether your pages are performing as intended, and see ways you can improve your sales." - Andrew @ SmallBizTechnology

Peter Daisyme
Since 2010, Peter has been the director of search at Pixloo, which helps people sell their properties online. When he's not busy with Pixloo, Peter shares his love for SEO and online marketing on publications like Search Engine Journal.
"Online reputation management is no longer just about being the most popular. It also has to do with security of a financial asset, personal assets, personal safety and well-being."- Peter @ SEJ

Joost de Valk
Joost is the CEO and founder of Yoast, which he started in 2010. Yoast consults clients on SEO, online marketing, and WordPress. In fact, you've probably used - or are currently using - one of his powerful WordPress themes. Prior to founding Yoast, Joost launched the biggest CSS3 resource on the Web, CSS3.info, and the extension Quix.
"There is a lot of snake oil and a lot of people selling weird stuff around SEO that either does, or doesn't work, or just works temporarily, which is why the trade has a bit of a bad name. But in the end, today good SEO means getting your site in order technically, then writing awesome content, and have people link to that awesome content so you can get found, which is a bit of a three stage rocket." - Joost @ Zerply

Eric Hebert
Eric has been working behind-the-scenes in the SEO world for more than 10 years. In 2006 he founded evolvor.com to help those in the music and entertainment industries, and has turned it into a boutique marketing and advertising agency. He recently took on an additional role as director of marketing for DineAbility.com
"Stop reading articles about SEO. Stop reading articles about 'How Facebook is Going to BLAH BLAH BLAH' your business. Start caring about your customers, about your service, about being the best damn business owner you can be." - Eric @ evolvor.com

Dr. Peter J. Meyers
Dr. Pete is a marketing scientist at Moz. Because he's a cognitive psychologist, he is able to use his knowledge to make "data cool." He specializes in SEO, online marketing, and data science. He was previously president of User Effect.
"Be curious - about how things work, about what makes people tick, about anything, really. Curiosity is probably the driving force behind data science, and it leads to the kind of passion that can also make you a good marketer. Connect with people early and often - don't wait until you're between jobs to network. Building up relationships takes years, and it's vital to your long-term career opportunities." - Dr. Pete @ Job Shadow 

Rae Hoffman 
Rae Hoffman, aka Sugarrae, is an outspoken blogger who covers everything in the SEO, social media, and affiliate marketing field on her blog. She's also the co-owner and CEO of PushFire, a Texas-based Internet marketing agency.
"You and you alone determine whether or not you'll be successful in your business goals. There are no acceptable excuses in life. There's only action and inaction-and your choice of which road you decide to take." - Rae @ Flippa Blog

Avinash Kaushik
Avinash is the best-selling author of Web Analytics 2.0 and Web Analytics: An Hour a Day. He's also the Digital Marketing Evangelist at Google, co-founder of Market Motive, and runs the website Occam's Razor.
"I love SEO. It is such a fascinating science and the rewards are awesome. The thing that appeals to me personally is that there are, mostly, a clear set of logical things we have to do in order to rank high for relevant keywords. It is fun to do those things at a system or marketing level." - Avinash @ Moz



http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2374336/37-SEO-Experts-You-Should-Be-Following-on-Twitter 

Increasing Web Traffic – The How To’s

Everyone who runs a website has the same thought going through their minds at some point every day – how do I generate more traffic to my site?? Especially when it comes to a small business with a tight SEO/marketing budget!

There are a few options that cost money – ie SEO, PPC and banner ads – however there are a few ways to generate traffic without spending any extra money. Let’s review those options! After all, why spend money when you don’t have to?

1 – Social Media
This is without a doubt the easiest way to generate traffic for free. By posting links to your site – with a great landing page of course! – those who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer, will be able to click right over directly to that page. Not only that, but you will be able to reach people who may be interested, but just didn’t know it yet! Along with posting links to your site on social media networks, you need to install a widget on your site that allows readers to quickly and easily share the page to their own social media networks. All it takes is one person sharing your page and your traffic will increase exponentially!

2 – Search Engine Optimization
By optimizing the sources of traffic you already have, you will be able to organically raise your ranking through search engines as well. By using keywords, negative keywords, and keyword rich content, you will be able to increase your traffic by simply keeping your content coming!

3 – Create Great Content
Along with SEO traffic increasing, it is necessary that your website/posts/pages are full of relevant, interesting information that a user will want to read in the first place! The truth is, when it comes to increasing traffic, you will only be able to increase traffic if people are searching for what you have to say. Your site must serve a purpose, solve a problem for a user, and fulfill some sort of objective that your users are searching for. By creating great – relevant, entertaining, interesting, and helpful – content, your readers will continue to come back to your site because they know it is full of reliable information.

By using the three tips we discussed above, your site will be able to not only generate more traffic, but it will be valuable traffic, and not just traffic that in essence becomes nothing but white noise. Keep in mind that increasing traffic is a slow process, and one that takes a lot of time and effort on your part. Be willing to put in that time, and you will be rewarded greatly! Also, keep in mind that large amounts of traffic mean nothing if they aren’t qualified readers – quality readers are sometimes much more valuable than just the quantity of readers. By following the three steps listed above, you will be able to increase both quality and quantity visits – and that’s what we are all looking for!



 http://www.johnchow.com/increasing-web-traffic-the-how-tos/

30 Tips for Great Digital Marketing

A man walks into a bar/restaurant/hotel/car repair shop. Chances are, he found it online. That’s because today’s consumers, 80% according to Google, rely more on the Web to find and choose local businesses.
So how do you make sure that these consumers find and choose your local business? By using a mix of these four strategies for great digital marketing: search advertising, webSite, search engine optimization, and social media. Here are 30 tips to get you going.

Search Advertising Tips

1. Identify and follow the rules of Bing, Yahoo!, and Google search ads before running your campaign as all have slightly different formats.
2. Optimize the URL displayed in your search ad so that it’s relevant to the product or service you are promoting.
3. Include target keywords in your headlines and copy that either match or closely match the keywords you bid on in order to boost the chance that your ad appears for those terms.
4. Write strong calls to action for your search ads that directly state what you want consumers to do. For example “Contact for a Free Estimate” or “Get a 50% Coupon.”
5. When using a click-to-call extension, consider using a tracking number so that you can identify and measure which ads perform the best.
6. Don’t spend precious text ad character count on your business name. It should already be in your optimized URL.
7. Do capitalize the first letter of major words in your ad. Don’t (read “NEVER”) go crazy with all caps.
8. Should you use correct punctuation in text ads? Yes! It just makes good sense.
9. Using trademarks in text ad copy is a no-no unless, of course, you own them. You can, however, bid on terms relevant to your business.
10. DUUA (don’t use unknown abbreviations). While it could pique the interest of a few searchers, why take that chance?

Website Tips

11. If you haven’t updated your website since 2010, do it now. A clean, modern design is key in digital marketing, plus it ensures that you meet today’s best practices and Web standards.
12. Make your website mobile-friendly! The 2014 Local Search Study results indicate that nearly 80% of local mobile searches end in a purchase. This is a big audience you shouldn’t ignore.
13. Accurately complete your site’s metadata (title tags, descriptions, alt text, etc.). Not doing so can negatively impact your visibility on SERPs.
14. A business blog is a winning addition to your website. It can help boost your site’s SEO, set you apart from the competition, and demonstrate your knowledge and expertise. It’s a win-win situation.
15. In order to get found by local consumers, you need to optimize your site with local information like your address and geo-targeted keywords.

Search Engine Optimization

16. Having a business blog is useless if you don’t regularly create and promote original and sharable content to help prove relevance and therefore rank in search engines.
17. Enable share buttons on your blog so that readers can easily post your content to their social media pages and drive visitors back to your website.
18. Optimize your Google+ Local page to help your business name, phone number, location, and even opening hours show up in Google Maps and Google’s local search results.
19. Much like Google+ Local, Yelp is platform to complete and post information about your business. More importantly, it helps feed Apple Maps with local business results.
20. Include geo-specific keywords, such as your city, neighborhood, and zip codes, in your website, blog, and even social media copy to appear in search results for these terms.
19. Don’t only promote blog posts once. Repurpose them as engaging images, quotes, or questions in order to generate additional views, shares, and subject relativity.
21. Getting backlinks from influencers and other industry-related websites that have already established credibility are great for building your own authority and driving more visits back to your site.
23. Enable Google Authorship to help build your personal brand. By establishing yourself as a subject matter expert, you can share your own content, generate more shares, and drive more website visits.
22. Since positive reviews rank in search engine results, generate positive reviews with high rankings to help persuade consumers to choose your business.
26. Once you receive positive reviews, promote them on your website and social media sites so that consumers who search for you business on social sites or local directories see the great things others say about your business.
25. Images can help sell your business, and they also rank in search engines. Don’t name your images “photo.jpg,” and instead name them more descriptively, add alt text, or captions on your website to help images show up in search results.

Social Media

27. Think, review, and review again before you make a social media post or comment. The ability to easily take screenshots makes it difficult to take back a social media mistake.
28. Since your employees also represent your brand, both in person and online, implement a social media policy that at the least permits them from sharing internal information.
29. Before you jump on a trending hashtag, make sure you know the origin of it. Not doing so can potentially cause social media regrets.
30. Like it or not, you “share” your brand on social media. And since consumers can start good and bad conversations about you, make sure to set up alerts that notify you of new mentions, comments, or messages.


http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2014/07/25/tips-digital-marketing/