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Posted on August 24, 2010 - by Adam Singer

Solving Duplicate Content And Multiple Site Issues

More and more website owners are concerned that they might get penalized accidentally or overtly because of duplicate content.  For example, if you run mirror sites, will search engines ban you? If you have listings that are similar in nature, is that an issue?

What happens if you syndicate content through RSS? Will other sites be considered the “real” site and rob you of a rightful place in the search results? This Search Engine Strategies San Francisco session looks at the issues and explores solutions.

Moderator:
Adam Audette, President, AudetteMedia, Inc.

Speakers:

  • Shari Thurow, Founder & SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive
  • Kathleen Pitcher, Senior Manager, Acquisitions Marketing, Pogo.com/Electronic Arts, Inc.
  • Michael Gray, Owner, Atlas Web Service

Shari Thurow, Founder & SEO Director, Omni Marketing Interactive

What can happen with duplicate content?

It lowers the indexation count on Google, which means the best converting pages might not appear in search results.

Web pages from your shared-content partners’ sites may actually end up getting better search visibility.

What duplicate content does to a searcher, is they end up seeing duplicate pages over and over again which translates into a poor user experience.

How do you deal with duplicate content?

1.  Information architecture, site navigation and page interlinking

  • Are URLS linked to consistently?
  • Are the links labeled consistently?

2.  Robots.txt file

  • Are you preventing the web page from being spidered?

3.  Robots meta tag

  • If articles are shared across the network of sites, are you implementing noindex, no follow appropriately?

4.  Canonical tag

5.  Ensure redirects are good (301s)

6.  Use of webmaster tools

The idea behind all of this is consistently.  Don’t say one thing in webmaster tools and then submit a sitemap that says the opposite.  Be consistent with search engines and they will reward you.

Kathleen Pitcher, Senior Manager, Acquisitions Marketing, Pogo.com/Electronic Arts, Inc.

What does duplicate content look like?

There are two camps when it comes to duplicate content.  The first is the malicious, bad kind of duplicate content.  The second is the good kind that serves a purpose.

Good:

  • Find content on different URLs
  • Print
  • RSS
  • Blogs
  • Forums
  • Retail site with products in multiple categories

Bad:

  • Same content and multiplied across your site
  • Blatantly stealing content from other sites

What are the consequences?

There are no specific penalties, but you may notice your organic search visibility slipping.  I.E. – content could get filtered into their supplemental index.

Learning’s and best practices

1. Determine if you have duplicate content

2. Leverage resources

  • Talk to other departments
  • Consult with your agency
  • Research industry sites
  • Review webmaster forums
  • Talk to industry peers

3. Be proactive

  • Write unique page content
  • Identify authority pages
  • Be aware of engine updates
  • Manage syndicated content

4.  Manage syndicated content effectively

  • Allow ample time for your content to get indexed
  • Require links back
  • Require condensed versions
  • Use generic meta data

And don’t forget not to freak out, there are always solutions.

Michael Gray, Owner, Atlas Web Service

As opposed to the other presenters who shared how to fix duplicate content, Michael discussed how to make it work for you.

There are some circumstances duplicate content is a good thing if you use it as a weapon.  When you syndicate content, many will take it “in whole.”  Use this as an opportunity to gain links, especially if the sites picking up your content are more trusted and authoritative.  Try to set up arrangements with people in your space (blogs, magazines, etc.) so they will pick up your content.

How to potentially outrank someone for their own content:

  • Take content or a data feed that someone else has legally syndicated or allowed to be re-used
  • Place that content on a different domain
  • Build in-links with very keyword focused anchor text to the content
  • If you can build more trust than the original website, you may be considered the originator in the eyes of Google
  • This is a very common tactic in shady/aggressive affiliate industries

Why I love web scrapers

Most web scrapers are stupid.  They search for keywords and leave whatever links they find in posts in place.  You should use this as an advantage by linking to yourself with high value focused keyword anchor text in every post.

As long as you offset these low value links with high quality links this works to your advantage.  Always insert links back to the original website and/or original page.

Further, change the anchor text, link and surrounding text of links inserted after your content (i.e. from something like Yoast’s RSS footer plugin) every 3-4 months so you’re getting different links to different parts of the website.

Takeaways:

  • Look for opportunities to syndicate your duplicate content, gain attention, trust and links
  • Refine your copy to target more keywords
  • Be on the lookout for people who may be reusing your content who aren’t helping you
  • Allow your blog and RSS feed to be syndicated with self-referencing and keyword focused links to commercial pages.

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TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Solving Duplicate Content And Multiple Site Issues | http://www.toprankblog.com


Posted on August 23, 2010 - by Adam Singer

The Four Pillars of Building Instant Trust Online – SES SF

Websites and landing pages face very real trust issues – for consumers they can be a scary and uncertain place. Before people will take a desired action, their concerns and anxieties must be addresses. But how can you do this on landing pages when you only have seconds to establish trust?

Tim Ash, SiteTuners CEO and bestselling author of Landing Page Optimization , shared how to effectively use the Four Pillars Of Trust and optimize your online conversion goals.

Tim started by reiterating what we know – it’s not about technology, it’s about people.  If you’re going to transact with anyone it’s all about building trust.

We can’t function without trust, we are social beings.  If we are going to cross the street, we have to trust that people driving cars will see the red light.  Trust is critical, it’s the glue that holds everything together.

People weren’t designed to be in mobs, we have our “tribe” of a few dozen people that we trust and it breaks down in crowds.

Users understand “cheesy,” unprofessional sites vs. authoritative looking sites.  So your site has to communicate authority instantly.

Four pillars of trust:

1.  Appearance

We judge a book by its cover.  Appearance is very important and a stand-in for fitness.  Standards are rising in web development and it’s not okay to have a site which looks like it’s designed in 1998.  There is a level of appearance and professionalism that is required in web development.  Have 5 random people look at your homepage and answer:  “is this clearly professional or not.”

Don’t get disqualified based solely on how you look.  Focus on:

  • Professionalism of design
  • Sparseness and neatness
  • Organization and clarity

2.  Transactional assurances

I don’t know who you are and you don’t know who I am.  Surveys say people are less and less afraid of getting online, but still 70% of users abandon shopping carts.  It’s an issue of trust.

Include trust symbols and don’t bury them below the fold.  If you’re paying for them, leverage them appropriately.  Relieve point-of-action anxieties before they arise.

  • Forms of payment and deliver
  • Data security and privacy
  • Policies and guarantees

3.  Authority

We trust outside experts who provide a layer of authority.  The trappings of authority are enough, such as uniforms or appearance.  By association of authority figures or brands, that can transfer to your brand as well.  We’ve seen authority symbols (such as “as seen in X or Y media outlets”) increased conversion rate by 40%.  Figure out a way to leverage authority on your landing pages to boost conversions significantly.

Borrow trust from better-known brands such as:

  • Reviews and awards
  • Marquee clients
  • Media mentions
  • Trade associations

4.  Consensus of peers

We don’t care what everyone thinks, we can’t possibly.  We care by what our peers think.  Are a lot of people taking the same action and have a positive outcome?  Great, but are you sharing it with other users?  Show specifics that are relevant to users.

Support automatic compliance by demonstrating social proof:

  • Use objective, large numbers
  • Likeness

Key takeaways

Take off the rose colored glasses and realize your website is ugly.  The next step is to get to work and start to improve landing pages to increase conversions.

Email Newsletter Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | The Four Pillars of Building Instant Trust Online – SES SF | http://www.toprankblog.com


Posted on August 23, 2010 - by Adam Singer

The Four Pillars of Building Instant Trust Online – Tim Ash Keynote

Websites and landing pages face very real trust issues – for consumers they can be a scary and uncertain place. Before people will take a desired action, their concerns and anxieties must be addressed. But how can you do this on landing pages when you only have seconds to establish trust?

Tim Ash, SiteTuners CEO and bestselling author of Landing Page Optimization , shared how to effectively use the Four Pillars Of Trust and optimize your online conversion goals.

Tim started by reiterating what we know – it’s not about technology, it’s about people. If you’re going to transact with anyone it’s all about building trust.

We can’t function without trust, we are social beings. If we are going to cross the street, we have to trust that people driving cars will see the red light. Trust is critical, it’s the glue that holds everything together.

People weren’t designed to be in mobs, we have our “tribe” of a few dozen people that we trust and it breaks down into crowds.

Users understand “cheesy,” unprofessional sites vs. authoritative looking sites. So your site has to communicate authority instantly.

Four pillars of trust:

1. Appearance

We judge a book by its cover. Appearance is very important and a stand-in for fitness. Standards are rising in web development and it’s not okay to have a site which looks like it’s designed in 1998. There is a level of appearance and professionalism that is required in web development. Have 5 random people look at your homepage and answer: “is this clearly professional or not.”

Don’t get disqualified based solely on how you look. Focus on:

  • Professionalism of design
  • Sparseness and neatness
  • Organization and clarity

2. Transactional assurances

I don’t know who you are and you don’t know who I am. Surveys say people are less and less afraid of getting online, but still 70% of users abandon shopping carts. It’s an issue of trust.

Include trust symbols and don’t bury them below the fold. If you’re paying for them, leverage them appropriately. Relieve point-of-action anxieties before they arise.

  • Forms of payment and deliver
  • Data security and privacy
  • Policies and guarantees

3. Authority

We trust outside experts who provide a layer of authority. The trappings of authority are enough, such as uniforms or appearance. By association of authority figures or brands, that can transfer to your brand as well. We’ve seen authority symbols (such as “as seen in X or Y media outlets”) increased conversion rate by 40%. Figure out a way to leverage authority on your landing pages to boost conversions significantly.

Borrow trust from better-known brands such as:

  • Reviews and awards
  • Marquee clients
  • Media mentions
  • Trade associations

4. Consensus of peers

We don’t care what everyone thinks, we can’t possibly. We care by what our peers think. Are a lot of people taking the same action and have a positive outcome? Great, but are you sharing it with other users? Show specifics that are relevant to users.

Support automatic compliance by demonstrating social proof:

  • Use objective, large numbers
  • Likeness

Key takeaways

Take off the rose colored glasses and realize your website is ugly. The next step is to get to work and start to improve landing pages to increase conversions.

Email Newsletter Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | The Four Pillars of Building Instant Trust Online – Tim Ash Keynote | http://www.toprankblog.com


Posted on August 20, 2010 - by Adam Singer

Real Time Storytelling – SES SF

real time storytellingFor mainstream media to survive, if not thrive, it must integrate with the social web and create engagement surrounding content.  For social media to remain relevant and compelling, it must work in tandem with news organizations to create a symbiotic storytelling relationship.

The future may be a stream with the authenticity of the social web and the reach of mainstream media.

Lead by moderator Khris Loux, CEO & Co-Founder, Echo this panel took a bleeding edge look on real-time story telling through an open discussion and Q&A.

Panel participants:

  • Dan Schmidt, Senior Product Manager, CBS Interactive
  • Andrew Lyons, Commercial Director, UltraKnowledge
  • Dermot Waters, Senior Director of Product Development, CNN.com
  • Louis Gray, Managing Director of New Media, Paladin Advisors Group

Moderator:  what is a brief definition of real-time storytelling?

Schmidt  Weaving a coherent narrative between disparate conversations.

Lyons:  Real-time story telling is disrupting the idea of an editorial filter.

Waters:  Real-time storytelling isn’t any different than it was 30 years ago; it has just become a participatory conversation as opposed to being broadcast.

Gray:  Real-time storytelling gets to find the most accurate, relevant content and floating that to the top.

Moderator:  how do you as a publisher ride the wave of citizen journalism?

Waters:  At CNN, we encourage everyone to be a part of the news and citizen journalism.  Join iReport and you can be a part of the wave.   What we have discovered is that we were dropping 97% of citizen content sent to us without publishing.  That was the inspiration to create iReport, take that content and reuse it in a number of different ways.  We’ve spread that philosophy throughout our site and to the rest of our properties.  Over time, we’ve built a tremendous network around the web of users reporting the news.

Lyons:  On the citizen journalism thing, you see the debate of “journalist” vs. “citizen journalist.”  Have you seen the “dark side” of things, where people try to fake news for profit?

Waters:  Overwhelming we haven’t seen this, we’ve seen it be mostly real stories, real conversations.  It is a testament to the community.  Further, the iReport community is tightly knit and will react to fake content.

Moderator:  how do you moderate/manage real-time conversation without squashing it?

Waters:  I think the community is who will manage that – you can’t stifle conversations or even allow real-time if you’re manually filtering it.

Moderator:  in a world with untold number of news resources, replies/comments/ReTweets, how can curation help?

Dan Schmidt:  People are using their friends as curators.  This is becoming more and more powerful as sites recognize users identities.  An opportunity for a news organization is to help people build their own network.  Users can bring that filter with them wherever they go.

Gray:  You talk about curation – I think CNN and CBS have grown their brand due to authority as a brand.  The act of aggregation and curation today is the act of finding relevant info from a third party source and sharing it with readers.

Dan Schmidt:  We thought about piping in feeds of content into our site – but we decided to introduce an editor to provide context.  In theory, being clear about the relevance of content is important.

Gray.  We’ve seen a battle between traditional media and new media aggregators.  What is the feeling from a CNN or CNet on other aggregators who are taking readers away or using your content to build your brand.

Waters:  Aggregators are a way to get those eyeballs.  We want to work with them not against them to ensure we are relevant and reach users.

Moderator:  there is no longer an opportunity to research stories and be “accurate,” now there is a push for publishers to be first.

Lyons:  The luxury of the deadline is gone.  You now have to be prepared to embrace the real-time world we’re in or be prepared to fight it.  For example, the journalists out there focusing on a specific be used to be thought of as the expert.  Now everyone has a voice – not just the journalists.  Subject matter experts such as scientists or other vertical-specific experts can be even more authoritative.  There has become a “return on integrity” – where you can build relationships with influencers in order to utilize them for information.

Gray:  You’ll find that some users actually have a fatigue about “breaking news.”  What you’ll find is not all of it is breaking.  You also will find a “half life” of a story – that if a newspaper is dead by the time it gets to someone (24 hours) – at what point does a news items actually become old?

Waters:  When does a story become old?  It depends on the consumer, because it might be new to them (it’s interesting/relevant to them, they just haven’t seen it yet).

Moderator:  The daily newspaper used to be the arbiter of truth, because they were the decision maker.  Now that’s no longer the case.  Who is the arbiter of truth in a real-time news cycle?

Gray:  What’s happening is you now have the ability of citizen journalists to create content.  With this, specific individuals have influence within different sub-sets of technology.  There are many citizen-fed blogs in the tech space, as one example.  And a lot of the smaller blogs cover the same story.  For example, Twitter announces a feature, they put it on their blog and then 500+ other bloggers will write their own spin.  Many reasons people do this is to keep users on their page and position themselves as the arbiter of truth.  Why are you choosing to read Gizmodo over Engadget?  Usually the answer is because they have access to something or a certain editorial perspective compelling to you.  So, based on personal preferences users will read items that reinforce their choices.  Now we have this issue, the truth used to be arbited by big names who had the access to real, verifiable facts.

Moderator:  it seems like the truth is being stressed to infinity and a race to break what is news.  It’s de-valuating investigative news that takes time to create.  What do you think?

Gray:  In terms of truth, the way that we solve that is figure out a way to reward the truth discovering machine.  You need to rely on the bigger organizations who can put reporters out in the field.  Are these individuals rewarded for what they’ve done or not?  What we’re finding is that people will break news ahead of embargos and push the limit on real-time to get on top of aggregators and attain pageviews.

Moderator:  with real-time storytelling, how will content publishers monetizing it?

Waters:  There are many ways you can make revenue from it.  By fostering the conversation and encouraging users to come to the site for real-time comments, you’re encouraging more people to your site and raising your brand awareness.  When talking about conversations offsite, we can re-aggregate it and monetize it in our own spaces.

Email Newsletter Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Real Time Storytelling – SES SF | http://www.toprankblog.com


Posted on August 18, 2010 - by Adam Singer

SES San Francisco Keynote: BJ Fogg On The Power to Change Behavior

BJ Fogg, Director, Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University gave the opening keynote on day 2 of Search Engine Strategies San Francisco.  BJ is perhaps best known for promoting the concept of “captology,” a word he coined to describe the overlap between persuasion and computers.

In his book, “Mobile Persuasion,” BJ proposes the theory that the mobile phone will soon become the most powerful channel for persuasion, more influential than TV, radio, print, or the Internet.

A visual explanation of captology:

Following is a summary of BJ’s key takeaways from his keynote – Hot Triggers: The Power to Change Behavior:

The other day, BJ was in his office at home checking email and an email came across with a message that he had been tagged in a photo on Facebook.  He thought “awesome Facebook, I’ve been tagged in a photo.”  He went in and checked it out – but got lost in Facebook and spent a lot of time there, more than he planned.  How did this happen?  He was “triggered.”

BJ thought, well, let’s look on the bright side of this.  Facebook is doing something right – the way they are triggering our behaviors is through the following formula:  put “hot triggers” in the path of motivated people.  This has become his design mantra and is one of the most powerful formulas for marketers.  However, it’s actually not new.  Putting hot triggers in the path of motivated people is how it’s always been.

More and more, technology can deliver these triggers at the right time in a way that can be measured.  If you look at Facebook, for example, as a platform that triggers behaviors you’ll notice they have evolved the platform in a way that does this.  Facebook is (love it or hate it) the #1 persuasive technology of all time.

BJ taught a class on Facebook a few years ago and it was all about getting students involved.  In 10 weeks and with no budget, they were able to create student project applications which attracted 16 million organic users.  Their success was due to putting hot triggers in the path of motivated people.

What triggers via Twitter?  Short links being shared of the best information.  If people are following you, they are interested in some level in your content.  Email is the grandfather of hot triggers.

Today’s tech dramas are all about control over the hot triggers – all companies want to be the ones who have that power.  The cycle is as follows:

People who control the platform can offer triggers to users, those triggers can control behavior, and when you control the behavior you are in a position of power.  Once you control the behavior you can create new platforms and control new platforms.

  • Twitter evolved from texting.
  • Facebook evolved from email.

Older platforms offer opportunities for new.  Will new platforms like Foursquare become successful?  We’re not sure yet, but you know you’ve got a platform when people pay you to put hot triggers in the path of users.  It’s true for Google – look at AdWords for a simple example.

Considering the social sciences…

The landscape of behavior change is messy, convoluted and confusing.  In the social sciences, things are messy and this is a reality.

The question is:  what actually motivates people?  The good news is that most humans are (fairly) predictable.  It is the context surrounding us which makes us seem complicated.  A lot of psychologists might think I’m wrong, but it’s my theory.

The 3 dimensions that motivate people:

1.  Pleasure/pain

2.  Hope/fear

3.  Social acceptance/rejection

If you try to motivate too much, it gets ugly and can backfire.  Use the lightest touch that works for success.  Example companies using this well are eBay feedback numbers or LinkedIn connections.

MAT is the model:  motivation, ability and trigger.  All three must be present at the same moment for behavior to occur.  If one is missing, behavior will not happen.

Also a key point:  increase ability by simplifying, not by training.  Making behavior super simple is how you’ll achieve success.  Make it so easy people can’t move forward without doing what you’re trying to do.

Simplicity has the following elements:

  • Time
  • Money
  • Physical effort
  • Brain cycles
  • Social deviance
  • Non-routine

The user needs to be motivated and able to do what you asked them to do, but that’s not enough.  You need to have a trigger as part of the path.  Live with this concept, look at behaviors in your life and try to understand behaviors in terms of the MAT model.  It’s not just accurate, it’s a practical way of looking at the world.

Technology always changes, but human psychology stays the same.  Study human psychology in tandem with technology so you’re able to recognize how to achieve results.  Consider what’s working in successful platforms from a sociological standpoint and how can you integrate them into your projects.

Email Newsletter Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | SES San Francisco Keynote: BJ Fogg On The Power to Change Behavior | http://www.toprankblog.com


Posted on August 18, 2010 - by Adam Singer

Content Marketing Optimization – SES SF 2010

TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden gave a solo presentation at Search Engine Strategies 2010 on content marketing optimization.  Following is a summary of Lee’s comprehensive presentation including 10 essential steps for your organization to achieve success.

The core of any search or social media marketing program focuses on content.  But what exactly is content marketing?  It’s creating and distributing relevant content to attract, acquire and engage customers which you know detailed information about.

It’s different than search – where you’re seeking in-demand phrases and creating content.  In content marketing, which grew out of the B2B marketing space, you’re developing personas.  In addition to this you should activate the intersection of search and content marketing.

Customers are expecting more.  It’s not enough anymore just to publish features/benefits and expect someone to buy something.  First they search, then they ask their friends, then they purchase.  Sales cycles are getting longer and consumers are getting smarter.

Content is why search exists – to organize the world’s information.  Content is also an outcome of social interactions.  And, search engines are indexing much of that social content.

Content is essential for social SEO and sits at the intersection of search and social.  What many traditional marketers are doing to leverage content and give customers what they want is delivering content in many avenues (press releases, blogs, videos, Ebooks, webinars, etc.).  What if you leveraged search in tandem with these items to expand their reach.

To do this, let’s consider what has changed recently in the world of search.

SEO’s effectiveness has not changed, it still equals increased conversions.  SEO is in fact the most effective online marketing tactic as ranked in a recent TopRank poll on digital marketing tactics.

Search itself however has changed – the major engines are constantly changing the landscape of search results.  A best practice of SEO is staying agile and following how engines are serving results, shifting what you are doing based on that.

If it can be searched on, it can be optimized – and that’s what guides a holistic online marketing strategy.

For an optimized content strategy – start with goals.  What are you trying to achieve?  Are you trying to chase just sales every month or are you actually trying to build engagement and a community which can help scale all results?

Fundamentally, what search is about is increasing revenue – but don’t just think about it like this, consider that it can also reduce costs.  People don’t just search to buy things; they also search for many other reasons (i.e. – what if you can reduce call center costs by answering common questions on an optimized page).

Where do search and social media collide?  It’s at the point where you create content.

10 Things to consider to get the most out of content and SEO:

1.  Goals

Increasing revenue is key, but there is more to establishing goals.  Think of building engagement (and permission) with an audience.

2.  Buyer personas

Buyer persons leverage demographic and psychographic information on customers in order to provide content that actually resonates.

3.  Keywords

You’re doing keyword research already for SEO, but what about social?  Think about this:  in the way you conduct keyword research to discover demand for search terms you can also conduct social keyword research.  And, social conversations drive search.  If you attain insight into what it is people are talking about, you can use that to fulfill future search demands ahead of competitors.

4.  Content & digital assets

The first thing is to make sure you are actually publishing new content.  If you understand your customers, you understand what it is they need and should be answering this through content.  But where to get content?  There are many avenues, including tapping social channels and taking inventory of existing digital assets (for example, you may find you have offline media you can put online.  No matter where you decide to take inspiration for content, you will need to create it consistently.

5.  Editorial plan

After understanding of an audience, you’ll need a plan (informed by keywords).  Further, understanding all elements of where people are in the buying process will help create content for prospects in all stages.

6.  Operationalize SEO

Many folks in the content optimization process within a company might not care about SEO.  But if you can share keyword lists with team members to inculcate their messages with, these team members can help.  It’s important to make everyone a part of the process.

7.  Develop off-site assets

You can search-optimize your website, but you need to socially optimize your website too.  This includes building off-site assets.  This is important and comes into play when repurposing content.  Creating unique versions of content on social destinations and linking back to the original can help get your content up and off your site.  When designing your strategy, plan in advance to repurpose content in a compelling way across platforms.

8.  Socialize

You’ve got to build social networks.  If you are repurposing content to various destinations that have social networking components – you need to take advantage of building a community there.  For example, if you aren’t creating connections within StumbleUpon or other social sites, you will never truly tap them.  You need to build an audience anticipating your next story.

9.  Promote

Build it and they will come is a fallacy.  Bad content with a great title will win against great content with a boring title.  Part of your editorial plan must be promotion.  If you engage with audiences in the course of developing networks, you start to understand how to share it.  Also, and a key tenant of social media optimization, you need to be promoting content in a way that demonstrates value.

10.  Measure

Not just web analytics or KPIs, but also take a look at social media monitoring and engagement metrics.  You can monitor what people are talking about and how they are reacting to your content.  The takeaway is to ensure you’re leveraging both web analytics and social monitoring offsite.

Key takeaways:

  • Develop & optimized content with persons in mind – go beyond just the keyword you are optimizing for
  • Create and promote content regularly
  • Develop channels of distribution & social links
  • Leverage both web & social media analytics

Q&A

At what point are you ever concerned about duplicate content?

If you have great developers and can mix/match content, you can avoid duplicate content while mashing up and repurposing.  The link footprint also makes a big difference.  Make a certain percentage of change to the content in order to make it unique and useful for search engines and users.

How much new content and on what frequency do you need it to satisfy users and search engines?

Search engines would love it if you published consistent unique articles every day.  But it has to do with the audience you’re trying to reach.  As a takeaway, you need to start somewhere – so let’s say you’re thinking about videos.  Consider creating a video every month (or even 2 weeks) – choose an interval and keep at it.  Be patient and stick with it, the right strategies will pay off.  There is no “magic interval,” but consistency is crucial.

When you try to teach 20-30 web editors how to re-purpose an article, how can you ask them to re-write it without frustrating them?

This shouldn’t be done after the fact, plan it out for someone to create and repurpose that content originally.  It can create debate when done after the fact because it doesn’t set expectation. Also, be sure to share the results with that person from the extra piece of content they created.  Reinforce success by sharing metrics and you can motivate your team.

How do you determine that you have created buzz or reached a “tipping point” for clients?

A social media monitoring tool or your web analytics tool will allow you to see results of your efforts and see spikes in activity.  What you’re monitoring lets you use the results.

We’d like to start syndicating our content for backlinks – how should we start?

Make it easy technically for content to be syndicated (via RSS, for example).  You could create another topic-specific site and syndicate there (along with other useful, niche-relevant content).   If you could do some clever queries to blogs that are open to guest posts, that could be a good avenue to find other sites who would be interested in your content.

We want to engage in social content, but we’re afraid of negative comments about our brand.  What should we do?

If users are already saying these things about your brand, why not have those discussions in your own backyard.  This provides an area to respond to them.  What if because you do have a blog, someone decides to comment there as opposed to doing something like submitting to Rip Off Report where you can’t respond?  At least here, you have the ability to counter the negativity and share your side of the story.

Email Newsletter Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Content Marketing Optimization – SES SF 2010 | http://www.toprankblog.com


Posted on August 18, 2010 - by Adam Singer

Conversion Optimization Secrets – 21 Must-Follow Tips – SES SF

The average conversion rate for a website is around 3 percent, but many websites convert at 10 percent or higher.  What are they doing right that you’re missing?

Bryan Eisenberg, NY Times Bestselling Author gave a solo presentation on the secrets of top converting websites and how you too can achieve high conversion results.   Following is a summary of his presentation.

What exactly is conversion rate?  In essence, conversion rate is a measure of your ability to persuade visitors to take the action you want them to take.  It’s a reflection of your marketing effectiveness and customer satisfaction.  For you to achieve your marketing goals, visitors must achieve their goals first.

No one should settle for a conversion rate of less than 10%.  Looking at top retailers, many have conversion rates greater than 15% monthly.  What are they doing that you’re not?

Well, the reason is everybody’s website sucks.  There just aren’t enough resources to make it perfect.

Increasing conversion rates is both simple and difficult.  The process is not really that mysterious.  An analogy would be considering how to become the best basketball player – to do this, it’s a fairly obvious path:  practice and dedication plus patience.  Michael Jordon didn’t become great without practice.  It has to be part of your corporate metabolism to make website changes.

The three basic items that impact conversion:

  • Relevancy
  • Credibility
  • Navigation

With that in mind, following are the 21 secrets of top converting websites.

1.   They communicate their unique value propositions and unique campaign propositions.   There is no product, no brand that is universally known.  If users don’t find a reason to buy, they’ll leave.

2.  Their offers are persuasive and relevant.  Understand what offers actually motivate your customers and provide them.

3.  They reinforce the offer site-wide.  Every page should seed the offer (and make sure the offer is persuasive).

4.  Maintain scent – in other words, similarity between pages to ensure you don’t lose visitors.  Effective online marketing maintains consistency and meets expectation.   Elements need to be connected as part of a process.  So if you have a certain type of creative on one page or ad, it should also be present during the next step of the conversion process.

5.  They understand the customer buying process.  Consider the issues your customers face when purchasing a product and promote them clearly.

6.  You must appeal to different personas.  Different people make decisions differently – some people are more left brained, some right – some logical, some emotional.  Personas build predictive models.

7.  They don’t do slice & dice optimization.  This is what tool vendors promise about multi-variate testing, but it’s in many cases the wrong approach.  Consider the 4 personas:  spontaneous (seek top sellers), humanstics (care about reviews), methodicals (find by genre) and competitiveness (search).   When you understand your customers, you can test more effectively.  Test for impact, not variation.

8.  Leverage social commerce:  use the voice of the customer.  Amazon is a great example; they get customers to help promote the product.

9.  They use reviews for navigation – i.e. show ratings and reviews (top products, sort by rating, etc.).  This can directly increase conversion rate significantly.

10.  They use social commerce for conversions.

11.  They use social commerce for credibility:  adds a layer of social proofing to products (other people thought something was great, so you will too).

12.  They use social commerce for user testing.  User testing used to be cost-prohibitive, but it is now within everyone’s reach.

13.  Use persuasion principles such as scarcity, reciprocation, authority, consistency, consensus, liking and urgency.  Consider using your thank you page to upsell in a compelling, relevant way.

14.  They even make forms more engaging.  Anything you can do to make a form not look like a “DMV form” helps increase conversions.  Don’t make people register to buy from you – use a thank you page for that.

15.  They provide point of action assurances.  Leads lose effectiveness the longer you wait to respond to them.  Set expectation for when a response will be sent.

16.  They keep you in the process.  Make it clear to users what they’re getting at every step of the way.  Use it to keep people seduced and going through the process.

17.  They consider email preview.

18.  They budget for experience.  Most people don’t have a traffic problem, they have a conversion problem.  Take the time to build better customer experiences.  That’s Amazon’s secret, at any given time they have around 200 tests running on their website.

19.  They utilize a system for prioritization.  If you have a list of 75 items to fix on a website, start simple, not necessarily what you think is highest priority.

20.  They make data-driven decisions.   The secret to making analytics work is to create a to-do list.  Figure out what marketing efforts or parts of your site have challenges.

21.  They know how to execute rapidly.  The one thing about the web is how fast things change.  Execution is not an event, it’s a way of life.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Conversion Optimization Secrets – 21 Must-Follow Tips – SES SF | http://www.toprankblog.com


Posted on August 13, 2010 - by Adam Singer

Make The Right Moves at SES San Francisco 2010 – TopRank Liveblogging

Search Engine Strategies San Francisco is upon us and marks a watershed year for this event.  For the first time the annual August conference hosts in San Francisco and integrates with Connected Marketing Week, boosting an already large happening to an all-inclusive digital marketing experience.

In addition to TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden presenting on several sessions as both speaker (Content Marketing Optimization & Blog SEO) and moderator (Selling Search to the C-Suite), TopRank team members (myself and Mike Yanke) will be out in force liveblogging the event.

During the 2009 conference we put together the “Search and Social Media Puzzle“.  Our 2010 conference coverage will be no different.  Online Marketing Blog readers won’t miss a thing.  We’re all familiar with such phrases as “content is king” and “context is queen.”  So this year, we’ll be helping you outsmart competitors, think strategically and “make the right moves” with expert advice from industry thought leaders.

See below for a brief outline of some of the cutting-edge sessions we’re planning to cover right here on Online Marketing Blog:

Deep Dive Into Analytics: When Bounce Rate No Longer Floats Your Boat
Once you have the fundamentals of Web Analytics under control it’s time to take the next step into Deep Dive Analytics. It’s all about answering specific business questions using your web analytics data to drive tactical and strategic decision making. This session will provide you with all of the essentials to get down and dirty with your data.

Secrets to Top Converting Websites
The average conversion rate for a website is around 3%, but many websites convert at 10% or higher. What do they do that you may not be doing? Bryan Eisenberg, who has been helping companies improve their conversion rates since 1998 will reveal 21 of his most valuable tips that will help you increase your conversion rate.

Real-Time Storytelling
For mainstream media to survive, if not thrive, it must embrace social media and take on the critical role of curator of the conversation. For social media to remain relevant and avoid slipping further into a wall of noise, it must work hand in hand with news organizations to create a symbiotic storytelling relationship. The result will be a new kind of curated grassroots conversation that has the authenticity of social media and the reach and authority of mainstream media.

The Four Pillars of Building Instant Trust Online
Websites and landing pages face very real trust issues – they are a scary and uncertain unknown to most visitors. Before people will act or transact, their concerns and anxieties must be alleviated. But how can you do this online when you only have seconds to establish trust? In this provocative keynote, SiteTuners CEO and bestselling author of Landing Page Optimization Tim Ash, will show you how to effectively use the Four Pillars Of Trust and smooth the way to your online conversion goals.

Search: Where to Next?
It’s been said that the best way to predict the future is to invent it. And almost everyone likes to speculate about the future. When it comes to search marketing, none are better at it than our veteran panel of industry insiders. Join us for an illuminating discussion as we peek into the next generation of digital marketing and predict what search might look like in the following five to ten years. The future is coming. Are you ready for it?

Meaningful SEO Metrics: Going Beyond the Numbers
As knowledge of SEO practices moves from the offices of the optimizers to the board room, the standard metrics used by the practitioners of this former dark art are straining under the weight of the all powerful bottom line. The days when upper management was impressed by subtle changes in Page Rank have been replaced by questions of LTV and ROI. This panel will discuss a myriad of ways to move beyond Page Rank, indexed pages or linked sites and into metrics that can make you a hero.

Getting Mobilized! Mobile Marketing Strategies
Learn basic mobile marketing strategies that are attracting mobile traffic today. This session will focus on mobile SEO, but will also touch on driving traffic and conversions with mobile applications, text messaging and mobile email. You will learn what you need to know to develop, launch and track an integrated mobile marketing strategy.

Enterprise Level SEO
The enterprise level SEO session is designed to meet the specific challenges of large enterprise organizations. Topics for discussion will include SEO tactics specific to large sites (sites with thousands, if not millions of pages), the challenges of educating key stakeholders in the organization including budgeting issues, and implementation hurdles common to large organizations including CMS issues and IT team challenges.

Learn more about the event on the Search Engine Strategies website.

Be sure to get live event updates from SES 2010 in real-time by following @TopRank on Twitter, our Flickr set for SES SF 2010 and our YouTube Channel.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Make The Right Moves at SES San Francisco 2010 – TopRank Liveblogging | http://www.toprankblog.com


Posted on July 30, 2010 - by Adam Singer

How to Cultivate the Socialization of Your Business

Brian Solis

Sponsored by JenKaneCo, well known social media evangelist Brian Solis recently gave a presentation to an enthusiastic group of marketers in downtown Minneapolis to introduce the concepts behind his new book:  Engage! The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate and Measure Success in the New Web. The following is an overview of his presentation:

Relations vs. Relationships

There’s something interesting that’s happening right now on the web:  relations are starting to matter more than relationships.  The key lesson for marketers, and what the rest of this overview discusses, is that people will engage around content that compels them in networks where that content spreads.

We are all going to have to shift from relationships to relations:  having more, thinner (but still relevant) connections is starting to matter more.  As a marketer, this shifts the power balance.  People are connecting around psychographics rather than demographics, and this means four degrees is the new six degrees of separation.  In plain English:  we’re all becoming better connected and users are vitally important to the equation of how information spreads.

A way for your marketing to succeed is to take the approach of a sociologist, an anthropologist and a philosopher rather than a traditional marketer.  That’s because it is people who are in control of the ideas that spread.  The web has changed things and marketing and PR have changed along with it.

Context Becoming as Valuable as Content

The challenges go deeper than marketing approaches.  When you join a company, you’re not given a Facebook page and Twitter account like you are an email account.  You already have those things.  And companies aren’t sure what to do or how they can leverage their own team members to increase their digital presence.  Your team members are vitally important because “content being king” is evolving into an era where context is king (yet, content still remains quite the powerful queen).  Context is proven to show who you are connected to and why around every conversation.  Your team members are a key ingredient to providing context, their actions equating to a type of social currency for your brand.

Speaking of content, how people react to your company’s content (something now public) equates to the stature of your community.  Reputation, trust and relationships are earned through these reactions and how you connect contextually is the experience prospects seek.

Content and context define the future of successful marketing.  You’re no longer marketing to individuals, you’re now marketing to “an audience with an audience.”  And every time they react to something you do, it shows the power of relations vs. relationships.  But without remarkable content and relevant context, you can never reach “an audience with an audience” effectively because you’re missing part of the equation of why people share ideas.

Getting Started

One of the easiest things to do is see what’s happening right now.  An approach that can be used is a “30 day window” to see a snapshot in time of what’s happening around a brand.  For a brand unsure about how much conversation was happening around their products – a sample search can reveal a staggering amount of messages across social platforms.  In many cases it’s a shock and can result in disbelief from management teams.  A social media monitoring service should be required for every brand to monitor the situation in an ongoing fashion.

Getting at least a snapshot is a good first step, and ongoing monitoring is even better, but equally important is to consider the data in perspective.  Or to put it simply:  share of voice vs. share of conversation.  Share of voice only gives you a partial view as it assumes everyone is talking about companies in a given industry.  A more relevant approach is to look at share of conversation.  As an example, consider  Old Spice – in the discussions on the social web regarding “body spray,” how well did they do?  While the overall conversations and reactions generated, putting it into context truly provides meaning of share of conversation.

Share of conversation matters more than most consider.  People are actively using the social web as part of the decision making cycle, and so this is the socialization of more than just marketing, but business as a whole.

Conclusion

How are you adapting to the socialization of business to help move these things in the right direction?  You need to extend divisions so that they are responding to consumers at the right point to become trusted and a part of the community.

All companies need to realize the fact that they are now in the media business, and that every company is now a media company.  This strategy is potent enough several companies embracing it have developed brands of media so popular they’re putting out best-selling books.  The influence they have over their markets is that big.

Influence is the ability to inspire desirability and measurable action and outcomes.  It is more than a click or more than a view.  As marketers, creating content and context to ultimately form influence is how to achieve long term, sustainable social media success.

For more on getting started in social media, consider creating a social media roadmap to plan your social media strategy.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | How to Cultivate the Socialization of Your Business | http://www.toprankblog.com


Posted on June 25, 2010 - by Adam Singer

Lee Odden On SEO And The Social Web – OMS Minneapolis Keynote

Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing CEO gave the opening keynote of Online Marketing Summit Minneapolis.  Lee spoke on the intersection of SEO and social media and provided key takeaways for companies on achieving success.

As the social web and search engines integrate and innovate tighter, the intersection between search and social is growing more meaningful daily.  Following is a summation of this info-packed presentation:

What would happen if your Google traffic disappeared tomorrow?  What impact would that have on your marketing and your business?  For many, this could be disastrous.  This highlights the importance of diversifying your brand’s referring sources and share of voice around the web.

Search and social are intersecting in many ways:  when you look at a comparison of the top search engines, more and more of the engines themselves are on social platforms, and more of the results on the big engines are social.

Think about amplifying the results you are getting from natural SEO by amplifying your content through social channels.

Google dominates search, but should it dominate your marketing?

Lee shared some stats that help support the diversification of your traffic and digital influence:

  • 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations, according to Nielsen, but only 14% trust advertisements according to Larry Weber
  • Facebook added more than 200 million users in less than a year according to the Facebook timeline
  • Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the US
  • 2nd most popular search engine isn’t Yahoo, it’s YouTube according to comScore
  • 80% of companies use social media for recruitment, 95% of those are LinkedIn

The stats paint a clear picture:  that social is vital to integrate with search and your marketing program overall.  According to SEMPO, 35% of B2B companies integrate social media and search engine marketing programs – is your brand?

HubSpot is a great social/SEO example – they receive 20,000 leads a month from inbound efforts.

What about search and social as it integrates with PR and media relations?  To research stories:

  • 89% of journalists use blogs
  • 65% use social networks
  • 52% use Twitter

Jon Gordon from NPR noted:

I use search engines on almost every story.  I use social networks to find additional sources as well as for the story idea generation and story feedback.

How to leverage SEO for marketing and PR:

If you already have a keyword glossary, that can be shared with PR to leverage for their content creation to be optimized for journalists.

How do SEO and social media intersect?

Add a layer of search to your social activity:  are you leveraging keywords across your social web participation?  If not, you should be.  Give your keyword glossaries to your social media marketing and PR team to use across marketing efforts.  Cumulatively this leads to better visibility not just in Google but in social search as well.

One of the problems of social media and SEO is that they are usually put in silos within an organization.  But, you can bring them together to amplify results.  You can’t afford not to combine social and SEO.  In fact, if you are in a competitive category, it’s difficult to compete if you aren’t engaged.  As just one example, it’s difficult to acquire lots of high quality, organic links unless you can promote great content to a significant number of people.

Ecommerce is social

Target, 1-800 Flowers, and other e-commerce brands are going social.  They are integrating their online purchasing with social sites in order to tap into networks along with purchasing.  Companies that are doing this type of activity are training their customers to make social a part of the purchasing process.

Customer service is social

Large brands are leveraging social tools for CRM purposes and sales opportunities.  All you need to do to see the opportunity is query a topic customers are seeking information on and you can be the one to respond.

Most importantly, people are social and people search.  As long as there is content that can be sorted, there is an opportunity to optimize it.

Is social a threat to search?  No – search isn’t going anywhere.  Social sites are popular but according to both consumer data and the nature of the web they are not a threat to search.

4 keys to Social SEO:

Listening, content, socialize, measurement

Listening – understand the channels so you can make smart decisions about your tactics.  Listening also provides you social keyword research to mine data from your target audience.  If you have ever created a social listening report, you know it’s keyword-based and the value of understanding the language audiences use.

Content – The thing that makes social or SEO fantastic is content.  If you don’t have a great message, you don’t have anything.  Take stock of content assets in order to be able to maintain consistency with communications.  After inventory, you can sync that up with an editorial plan.  Skipping this step can lead to failure:  for example, many create blogs and run out of things to say quite quickly.  Without a plan, it’s easy to get stuck.  Next, map your content to those social keywords developed to maximize visibility in search.

Socialize – give to get, and grow a network of relevant people.  Even if you have great content, no one will know to link to it or share it unless you promote it.

Distribution channels are essential – create content around the needs of your customers and send through distribution channels that are independent of Google – for example, RSS, email, social, media/PR and contributed articles.  The kicker is if done effectively, your performance in Google skyrockets.

Cycle of social and SEO:

Measure – get social monitoring tools and social analytics in place in order to understand and get feedback on your content and participation.  Look at the performance of your content and your competition’s content in order to provide insight.

Marketo (a TopRank client) as an example created a social SEO strategy that focused on keywords and content their customer finds valuable as opposed to limiting themselves purely to keywords describing the product.

3 things you can do now:
1) Establish a listening program

2) Implement a content marketing strategy

3) Leverage social media marketing campaign management tools (which will be explored in a future post at TopRank Blog).

Be sure to check out the OMS video interview (in a phone booth!) with Lee, Rick Burnes from HubSpot, Joe Pulizzi from Junta 42 and Aaron Kahlow of Online Marketing Summit. We cover what tactics marketers should put a hold on, which big brands are not to be trusted (Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft or Google). Guess which brand no one voted for? And the best thing about OMS. Click the image below to see the video.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. | Lee Odden On SEO And The Social Web – OMS Minneapolis Keynote | http://www.toprankblog.com