With tight budgets, companies are trying to make decisions about where and how to allocate resources. The much-lauded options for social media are ever present in the press, which pushes many to shuffle resources from search marketing to social media. But really the two should operate hand in hand.
Social media is all about content creation. Search is all about indexing content and making it easy to find.
You need a strategy for both. And, a supercharged content strategy combines search and social media to maximum effectiveness.
For example, social media search functions are increasingly important for monitoring the conversation about your industry, organization, competitors and customer conversations. Twitter’s advanced search lets users track various keyword phrases that can be filtered by language of the page, timeframe and other criteria. Monitoring the social web can inform your understanding of the language, terms and tone used by your customers. Commonly used keyword phrases can then be integrated into your blog post titles, page headings, meta descriptions and title tags—all things relevant to search engine optimization.
The feedback loop created is invaluable. Your business strategy informs your social media strategy, which informs your search strategy, which validates the assumptions made in your business strategy, allowing you to refine your messaging, audience targets, and sales pitches.
The beauty of a circle is that it has no beginning point. Your search strategy can inform your business strategy, which informs your social media strategy, which feeds back into your search strategy.
When you combine search and social media, the left hand not only knows what the right hand is doing but is able to act on it, and vice versa.
Posted by Monique Sherrett | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Everyone wants to rank #1 on Google, but how do you get your site to rank higher? MarketingExperiments held a web clinic: Live Optimization: Improve your SEO Clicks and Conversions, to explain how to better optimize your site for search. These are their tips.
There are two trends in search:
1) It’s getting more and more competitive to get to the top of search rankings.
2) If you’re not on the first page, you’re invisible - as of a 2008 study, 68% of web users never get past the first page.
5 SEO Factors You Must Get Right
1) Keywords
* They should be short and concise.
* Scour competitive sites for keywords that would bring in a lot of potential traffic.
2) Content
* Place keywords strategically within the content on your site
* You need 100 - 500 pages of content on your site to rank at the top (this is why blogs rank high).
3) Meta Content
* This is what Google sees; it is the code behind each of your pages.
* Titles and meta-descriptions (what searchers see on Google) are what matter.
* Page Titles: Don’t put the company name first, your site is already ranking high on your company name so you’re wasting ‘juice’.
* Use two key phrases in the first two positions in the page title. Use a word separator between keywords like a bar, dash or comma. Don’t use ‘&’, use ‘and’.
* Descriptions: It’s important to have unique meta descriptions on every page. It’s what searchers see on Google so it needs to be compelling
4) URLs
* You need your keywords in the urls of your pages.
* Keywords should be separated with a dash.
5) Inbound Links
* Often called ‘link juice’.
* These are one-way links from other highly regarded, relevant sites linking to you.
* It’s good to have inbound links coming from highly regarded blogs, articles, press releases, forms and directories.
* You need a certain number of links linking to all of your pages - not just your homepage.
* The clickable link and the descriptive text surrounding the link (anchor text) should contain your keywords.
Looking for related information? Check out Stickyeyes.com’s SEO Tips for 2007. This is a great article with excellent, easy to follow tips that still apply in 2009.
Posted by Crissy Campbell | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Do you want to attract more visitors to your website?
Register for the QuickLearn business training series. Our first session is Search Marketing 101.
QuickLearn: Search Marketing 101
presented by Alexandre Brabant of eMarketing 101
hosted by Monique Trottier of Boxcar Marketing
April 11th
10:00am - 12:00pm
Location: Workspace, 400 - 21 Water Street, Vancouver BC, V6B 1A1
Cost: $150
Search marketing is one of the cheapest, most cost-effective ways to promote your company and drive qualified leads to your website.
Most people find search engines to be a mystery. How do I get my website to rank higher in search listings for key phrases related to my business, products or services? Should I consider paying for advertising placement on search engines?
Effective search marketing and optimization is the key component to any successful online presence. If you are unsure of how search works, how to integrate search into your existing promotional campaigns, or why search is important to your business—this is the session for you.
For more information or to register in person, contact Monique Trottier at 778-837-9012.
Alexandre Brabant is the president of Vancouver-based eMarketing 101. He is a leading Search Marketing Specialist and the Co-Chair of SEMPO Canada, Canada’s Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization.
Posted by Rachael Ashe | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Do you want to attract more visitors to your website?
Register for the QuickLearn business training series. Our first session is Search Marketing 101.
QuickLearn: Search Marketing 101
presented by Alexandre Brabant of eMarketing 101
hosted by Monique Trottier of Boxcar Marketing
February 19
6:30-8:30 pm
Location: Boxcar Marketing offices, suite 302, 70 East 2nd Ave. (corner of Main and Quebec)
Cost: $120
Search marketing is one of the cheapest, most cost-effective ways to promote your company and drive qualified leads to your website.
Most people find search engines to be a mystery. How do I get my website to rank higher in search listings for key phrases related to my business, products or services? Should I consider paying for advertising placement on search engines?
Effective search marketing and optimization is the key component to any successful online presence. If you are unsure of how search works, how to integrate search into your existing promotional campaigns, or why search is important to your business—this is the session for you.
For more information or to register in person, contact Monique Trottier at 778-837-9012.
Alexandre Brabant is the president of Vancouver-based eMarketing 101. He is a leading Search Marketing Specialist and the Co-Chair of SEMPO Canada, Canada’s Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization.
Posted by Monique Sherrett | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
One of the hazards of working from a home office is receiving telephone marketing.
For instance, Jacob Krause from ReMax called today to tell me all about the hot real estate market in my (nameless) area. Except, he didn’t. I mean he didn’t call and he didn’t tell me anything. When I picked up the phone a recording of his voice played from an automatic phone dialler. Oh my this is crap, I thought to myself, except I probably didn’t think ‘crap’ and I probably didn’t put things so politely or succinctly.
But Jacob’s call piqued my curiosity. I did a Google search for ‘jacob remax vancouver’ and up came his website (link removed at Mr. Krause’s request) as the first and second listing. I had a quick look at the site and recognized the mode he was operating in. This was an extremely over-optimized website, a website built for discovery and indexing in search engines, a website built only secondarily for humans. From the domain name (vancouver-realestate-condo-and-home.com) to the, ahem, blog, the site is designed to game search engines, to trick them into listing the site highly for specific key search terms.
So? Who cares.
Well, I care. As someone who tries to help clients understand how they should conduct their web marketing, I care. This is the type of website that gives web marketing a bad reputation. The tactics employed by Jacob and/or his web marketeer are dishonest. They also make it harder for legitimate websites to compete. My two touchpoints with Jacob - the recorded voice message and his spammy website - both left me with a greasy taste in my mouth.
Competing against over-optimized websites is kind of like playing a professional sport where some of the athletes use steriods. They have a short-term positive impact by boosting their users’ performance. But overall, beyond the short-term boost, they hurt everyone. The users rationalize their use by saying things like ‘everyone else is doing it’ or ‘who can argue with the results.’ But people lose faith in the system, people can see through the dishonesty.
So, if you’re looking for a real estate agent to buy or sell a home in Vancouver, I advise against using Jacob Krause. I’m actively trying to discourage his marketing tactics. His use of them tells me that he does not respect people and he will do whatever it takes to achieve questionable results. Is that who you want to trust, advising you on your single largest investment?
It’s also likely, and here I’m just guessing, that since the real estate business is largely driven through word-of-mouth referrals, Jacob has to resort to grey-zone tactics (telemarketing spam, search engine spam) because he can’t generate business through word-of-mouth. But there I’m just speculating. Any real-world experiences out there say otherwise?
Posted by James Sherrett | Email to a Friend | Of course, you should follow me on twitter here
Monthly Newsletter
Conferences & Events
What we’re talking about 
Project Highlights
Did you know?
Vancouver internet marketing strategists 
Looking for the bee? 
Subscribe to our blog.