Sales & Marketing Services | SALESWORKS » Search Engine Optimization

Automate Your Social Media Promotion in 15 Minutes

Colin Greig — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 21:59:57 +0000

There are two sides to the argument of whether or not you should automate your social media presence. To be clear, I’m talking about automating the syndication of your content through to multiple social accounts – I don’t condone automation tools that auto-direct message individuals or automatically try to add friends to your account. (Although those tools have their uses)

This article assumes that you recognize the benefits of social media but don’t have the time in your day to dedicate to the constant checking, posting, re-checking required to really make the most of social media tools. Cutting down that time and focusing on the basics of social promotion, by automating the syndication of your content, will allow you to focus your time on the creation of more valuable content and/or relationship building via social tools.

Getting started with social media automation

Step 1) Get your content ready

Ideally you’re running modern blog software (WordPress) on your website which allows for the syndication of your content via RSS feeds.

To find the RSS feed on your website, navigate to your blog’s homepage, view the source of the page and look for a line like this:

http://www.YOURWEBSITE.com/feed/” />

Alternatively, you can follow the directions here.

Step 2) Choose an automation tool

I’ve used http://ping.fm in the past but recently discovered http://dlvr.it/ which offers more options and a slicker UI.

Step 3) Add your feed and choose your destination

Paste the RSS feed address you copied from step 1 into the tool then select an icon of the social media tool you want to get started with.

Follow the instructions to provide dlvr.it with access to your first social media profile. (Don’t worry, you’ll be able to add more profiles in just a second.,)

Step 4) Setup additional destinations

The standard method of setting this up will involve a single RSS feed on the left (Sources) and a handful of accounts on the right (Destinations)

You can setup destinations for:

Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Tumbler
Google Buzz
MySpace
Status.net

There’s even an RSS destination option which gives you the ability to take a handful of sources, process them, and combine then into a single RSS feed to be used elsewhere.

Step 5) Double check

Make sure your delivery is set to “active” otherwise nothing will happen.

Step 6) Check your stats

Give it a week and then log back into dlvr.it, click on the Stats tab and monitor changes in your audience as well as click-throughs on the links the system is posting to your account.

Step 7) Advanced techniques

Once you’ve got the basics covered, I’d recommend playing around with some of the unique features this service offers.

You can have the service add Google Analytics tracking parameters to the URLS the software posts for simplified segmenting within Google Analytics.

Automatically replace instances of keywords with hash-tag versions. This is very powerful as it allows you to extend the reach of your posts by having them show up for popular hash-tag searches. I highly recommend you don’t overdue this as it could destroy the readability of your posts.

That’s It

You’ve now automated the syndication of your blog posts to all of your social accounts.

Wind-up bird photo source: http://www.etsy.com/listing/34437041/vintage-wind-up-bird-toy-luli-western

4 Website Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make

Lori Kittelberg — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 18:16:30 +0000

A large part of our job here at SALESWORKS this summer has been auditing company websites, including our very own – we launched our new site in July.

This has had me thinking plenty about not just about what we do to build effective business websites, but also about the things businesses still do that can defeat the purposes of their website, those purposes being:

Raise brand awareness;
Boost prospects and leads;
Drive sales.

As a writer and communications specialist, there are the top 4 mistakes I see on company websites:

Unclear Messaging

You know what you do – after all, you live and breathe it. However, your average website visitor does not necessarily know what you do or the depth and breadth to which you do it. It seems obvious that your target audience needs to easily identify what you do, but a lot of businesses fail to make their messaging clear.

Many website home pages seem to be written under the mistaken assumption that if the browser found your website, they automatically know what you do. In fact, your homepage is where you should make your elevator pitch, which can be expanded upon in the About page.

Lost Identity

Yes, you resell software made by another company, be it Microsoft, Sage, SAP, Epicor, etc. But don’t lose yourself in the process. You need to tell visitors why you’re the best outfit to buy it from, implement it and maintain it. After all, selecting the right solution provider is the key to software solution implementation success.

This of course also relates to creating unique copy rather than simply duplicating copy from software vendor websites – not only will doing this bury your identity, but it will also hurt your SEO (read Website Copy – What is it Saying About Your Business? for details). Make your identity clear on each and every page through your copy and page design. Drill in why you are the No. 1 choice and make your business unforgettable.

Squandered Lead Gen Opportunities

Your responsibility doesn’t end with getting warm bodies to visit your website; it’s only the beginning. Offering visitors an opportunity to give you valuable contact and/or business information in exchange for a relevant resource – a white paper, video or evaluation tool – can drive leads.

There are 2 keys here:

Offering something unique and valuable to prospects. Ditch the tired brochures that can be found on the websites of your competition. Invest in creating unique downloads that speak to the expertise your business offers clients.
Creating compelling offer copy. Rather than simply providing a link to your offer, create compelling copy to “sell” it, with a graphic treatment that makes it stand out. Placement of the offer can also drive lead generation; often, placing it in the middle of the page rather than at the bottom boosts conversions while also providing a visual break to the rest of the page copy.

Ineffective or Nonexistent Blogging

Consistently posting content to a blog on your business website means you always have fresh content, and search engines like this, meaning it drives your SEO.

However, there are a few ways you can negate these benefits. One is to have a single person identified as your company blogger, usually someone in marketing (don’t be offended, marketing/communications folks – I’m one of you!). You want your blog to reflect your business’s depth of experience, so have different people from various departments blog on their respective areas of expertise.

Make sure you share your content too. No point producing it if no one knows it’s there. Encourage visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed. Posting links via social media like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook will help drive brand recognition in addition to SEO.

Now Get Cracking

Now you know the mistakes most businesses make and you suspect you’re making a few of them. Not sure how to proceed, or lacking the time and resources to do it yourself? Contact Us to talk to one of our website design and consulting experts.

*World’s Worst Website image © http://www.angelfire.com/super/badwebs/

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words…

Bryan Villanueva — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 17:00:16 +0000

Information graphics or infographics are graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. These graphics present complex information quickly and clearly, such as in signs, maps, journalism, technical writing, and education. With an information graphic, computer scientists, mathematicians, and statisticians develop and communicate concepts using a single symbol to process information.¹

Infographics are best way to instantly capture the attention of the masses (with data), without saying a one word.

Spice Up Your Web Life

Data visualization and infographics are powerful ways to communicate data in a way most companies never consider. Yet, we are in a world full of data and information, so why not make it more interesting.

Spicing up your infographics for presentations or white papers can say a lot about your company.

Just like your company website and your core branding, you want to keep it consistent. Dry, boring data becomes a lot more interesting when it’s visualized in unique manner.

Reading charts, graphs and pdfs can be pretty boring. You need to keep your audience intrigued to keep their attention. Visual design can help translate charts and graphs into different languages without losing essential information in the process.

Translate Any Language Visually

Whether you have a chart in Chinese, Russian or English graphics will help translate confusing concepts. Graphics, like fonts and colors, help breakdown and group necessary information that will enhance the impact you are trying to make on your readership. Not only do infographics make difficult topics easier to read, it is also aesthetically pleasing.

Infographics will tremendously enhance your website content as well as your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), by keeping your readers engrossed in graphics and valuable content.

Samples of Infographics

1 – http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Information-Graphic–Bus-Ride-37-Mintutes/215694

2 – http://digitalpodge.co.uk/2009/

3 – http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2637/4242191963_03823c2a62_o.jpg

4 – http://www.flickr.com/photos/densitydesign/3409542518/sizes/l/

5 – http://www.alwayswithhonor.com/#308765/GOOD-Transparencies

6 – http://www.focus.com/images/view/6962/

Infographic Resources

Take a deeper look at your data visualization and see if your data visualization is up to par with the trend of displaying data.

Here’s a list of infographics resources sites to spice up your website:

The 3 Rules of Infographics

If your considering creating an infographic for your next meeting or for your website remember these 3 rules:

1. Accurate Data – Make sure all your data is accurate before creating the graphic.

2. Attractiveness – Consider your usage of fonts and colors. Do not overwhelm your reader with loud colors and hard to read fonts.

3. Message – The whole point of having a infographic, is displaying a core message you are trying to convey. Having raw data and a cool graphic won’t mean anything if the two are not properly in sync.

Resources:

1. “Information Graphics“. Retrieved 2010-11-28.

Using WordPress with Windows

Ryan Folstad — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:51:30 +0000

WordPress on the Windows platform

Many Microsoft partners are hesitant to use WordPress™ to power their website for a multitude of reasons. Partners want to focus on Microsoft^® products as they tend to integrate together more seamlessly and have commercially available support. Their expertise lies in Microsoft products and services and using Open Source UNIX^® software in their infrastructure is akin to using a Ford part in a Ferrari. This article is going to help you understand why we recommend the use of WordPress for partner sites and why we think it fits in nicely with the rest of your Microsoft infrastructure.

Not Just a Blogging Platform

Most people think of WordPress as simply a blogging platform. This is how WordPress got its start however recently the community has released features that allow it to be used as content management system as well.

Some of these features are:

Revision management;
Ability to create custom post types;
Template System;
Plug-in Architecture;
UTF8 data types for full multilingual support;
Theme architecture.

Typical Partner Website

Typical partner websites are not complex beasts requiring massive customizations as this would lead to just confusing potential prospects. Your website should be cleanly designed with SEO in mind to help drive prospects to your site, allow them to find the information they need and drive them towards a contact request to become a prospect. Ability to integrate with marketing automation software is a must and your site also needs the ability to be quickly updated with new copy as your business changes. Adding new landing pages for campaigns, for specials and for deals is also a major requirement.

WordPress with its basic content management and tagging capability makes it easy for anyone to edit content and tags to quickly spread search keywords throughout your site. Setting up a blog for creating events and marketing campaigns is also relatively simple. It’s platform agnostic design should provide no hindrance to integration with any marketing automation software available.

What About Sharepoint/MOSS?

Implementing a Content Management System (CMS) can be a costly affair if you are implementing a complex CMS like Ektron, MOSS or Sitecore. These products contains bells and whistles that are great for large corporations with complex department structures, intranet requirements, eCommerce and document management capabilities; however, most are lacking basic features relating to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that partners need. These products also come with a large purchase price tags and annual maintenance costs. This money is better invested into developing your site and paying for hosting rather than paying for features you need to pay a consultant to remove.

It Can’t Be Good, It’s Free

People often use the term “You get what you pay for”. However, this is not always true in the software world. WordPress is the #1 CMS on the internet today based on install base alone. A quick Bing™ search for “Powered by WordPress” returns 645K results. There are more than 350K WordPress blogs on WordPress.com alone. No other for pay or free CMS can boast this large of an install base with such a huge consultant network.

Not Compatible with Microsoft Windows

Microsoft itself has seen how useful a tool like WordPress can be. This year, they not only announced the migration of Live Spaces™ to WordPress.com, but also released an installer for Windows. Microsoft Web Matrix Beta can install PHP, MySQL^®, WordPress and automatically set it up in IIS^®. This has always been the most difficult part of getting WordPress up and running on windows. If you use IIS7, you’ll have full support for permalinks and file uploads without any issues.

Has your organization deployed WordPress for your main website or blog? Let us know your experiences running WordPress on the Windows platform in the comments section below.

References

http://WordPress.org

http://www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix/

http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2010/09/27/118149.aspx

4 Key Tactics for Optimizing Landing Pages

Roman "The Intern" Schirling — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:03:30 +0000

A landing page is any page on a website where traffic is sent specifically to prompt a certain action or result. For most landing pages the primary goal is to generate as many leads as possible.

To drive traffic and achieve a high conversion rate it is necessary to have a good landing page(s).

Optimizing Landing Pages

1. Make A Good First Impression

Normally you don’t optimize words or images in a page. Rather you try to make a good impression on the visitor. To achieve that you have to consider a few points:

Eliminate any unnecessary length or difficult wording on the landing page.

Display the benefits of the solution/service prominently.

Do not ask for private or sensitive information.

Show creditability with client testimonials and case studies to build trust.

Above all, keep it simple.

2. Address Real Questions

Answer the crucial questions for the prospect when they hit your website:

Why do I really need this solution/service?

Why should I choose this company?

Why should I trust this company?

Why should I provide my information?

3. Differentiate From The Competition

Identify and communicate the key factors that differentiate you from your competitors.

The unique features, solutions and services you provide.

The distinct implementation methodology you apply.

Show your strengthens and the unique opportunities/advantages you afford your clients.

4. Building Creditability Instantaneously

Use specific, quantitative and instantly credible language. Look at the following example:

Achieve Higher Conversion Rates

The following pictures illustrate examples of how optimized landing pages can look.

Now is the time to optimize your landing pages, so you can turn your regular website traffic into valuable leads.

Reference Sites:

http://www.hubspot.com/Portals/53/docs/landing-page-webinar.swf

http://www.marketingexperiments.com/images/multifiles/articulate/webclinic-08-11-10/player.html

http://www.searchenginecity.org/seo-glossary/

http://gorichonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/gorichonline_dot_com_experiement.gif

How Does Google Instant Affect Your Site’s SEO?

Colin Greig — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 17:43:48 +0000

Google recently introduced a fundamental shift to the front end experience of using a search engine. The change, titled Google Instant, displays search results as you type out your search query without requiring you to hit submit through the use of AJAX & DHTML.

Does Google Instant Affect SEO?

Yes and no. Matt Cutts, principal engineer at Google, was quick to respond to concerns over Google Instant stating that Google Instant was a change to the front-end experience and not the search engine ranking algorithms. Matt’s right, there have been no major shift in rankings reported, however, many experts are theorizing that by changing the front-end experience you will change the way people search; essentially changing the SEO world.

Less Organic Results?

The new search suggest region requires about 100px of vertical real estate which results in pushing the search engine results down on the page. The sponsored links on the sidebar stay in the same space, but the sponsored links & organic results in the center column get pushed down.

The image above, courtesy of SEO book, shows a snapshot of the new search engine results along side a pixel based ruler indicating screen resolutions.

The end result, as much as 20% of the organic results get pushed off the page making the sponsored links that much more inviting to click on. Good for Google, who profits from each sponsored ad click, good for PPC advertisers who could get additional traffic/exposure and bad for sites that are in the #4-10 search engine result placements.

Keystroke Optimization?

It’s plausible to consider that we may see AdWords advertisers and SEO experts optimizing for partial variations of keywords. In theory, half a keyword should be easier to rank for than a full, very competitive keyword. The jury is still out on how effective this would be. More info on keystroke optimization for Google Instant.

In Summary

The search engines are constantly working to provide the best experience for their customers in order to gain market share in the lucrative search advertising industry. It won’t be long before we see Bing & Yahoo adopt something similar. There is already a YouTube Instant out there.

With time you will be able to statistically say that instant results, combined with suggested keywords, have made a positive impact on your organic and paid search traffic. At this point, one week in we haven’t noticed any trends that we can attribute to this change. If your search traffic has increased/decreased since Google Instant has been implemented, please post a comment and let us know.

Bonus: Disable Google Instant?

We would advise against it, but you can disable Google Instant on your computer. We recommend that marketers try to view the search experience through the mainstream users eyes as much as possible in order to recreate their experience.

Update:

Case study on advertising on partially spelled keywords.

3 Reasons You Should Not Plagiarize Your B2B Copy

Lori Kittelberg — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 17:16:54 +0000

Plagiarizing B2B copy, whether for marketing your products and services or for your blog, is a dangerous idea.

To be clear, plagiarism is not republishing someone else’s story with their permission and credit given to them – it is taking someone else’s work and representing it as your own original work.

Though the Internet has arguably made it easier for writers to gather information, it has also made it easier to steal someone else’s work. And yes, it is stealing.

Business Content Plagiarism on the Rise

In most cases where business copy is misappropriated, the culprit is another business, says Jonathan Bailey, editor of Plagiarism Today and a copyright and plagiarism consultant.

“The business side of plagiarism is growing more rapidly as the rise of freelancing and small Web-based business are putting more people with limited experience (or scruples) in the position to be a business plagiarist,” Bailey explained in an email interview.

So before you copy and paste, consider these 3 Reasons You Shouldn’t Plagiarize B2B Copy:

1. You’ll Hurt Your SEO

As noted in Website Copy – What Is it Saying About Your Business, recycling copy is frowned upon by search engines and penalized accordingly. Search engines filter out duplicate content based on a number of factors, including date published, effectively neutering your ability to rank with them. Makes reusing that copy pretty pointless, doesn’t it?

This is the biggest issue Partners who reuse Microsoft copy face. Microsoft obviously isn’t going to sue you for reusing their promo copy. However, if you think you’re going to rank above Microsoft using their copy, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you.

2. You Lose Credibility

Blogs seem to be increasingly targeted by the copy-paste bunch. I was recently researching a story and found a great blog post with tons of valuable information. I later found the same story, word for word, posted on a different, unassociated blog with a different writer’s byline.

Now, if I was a customer I would certainly not be inclined to do business with someone who had stolen content from another website. A blog is really supposed to be your stories told in your voice. So to me, reusing someone else’s content is an indication of a lack of honesty.

3. You Are Breaking the Law

You read that correctly. Though the act of copying and pasting may seem innocuous, it is indeed illegal.

The content’s creator has copyright on their work right from the moment it’s created. In other words, it doesn’t need to be registered for that copyright to exist (though it does provide a handy paper trail if the creator takes a plagiarist to court). Visit the US Copyright Office or the Canadian Intellectual Property Office for more information.

Though you may be concerned about the resources it will require to put together unique, compelling copy for your website, in the end, it pays off. Stay tuned for tips on what to do if your company falls victim to a plagiarist.

SALESWORKS Exclusive: WordPress Sitemap Plug-In

Ryan Folstad — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:19:16 +0000

Sitemaps were first introduced by Google in 2005, since then they have been implemented by all major search engines including (Yahoo, Bing and Ask). Sitemaps allow you to inform search engines about content on your website. The information you can communicate includes: when it was last updated, how often it changes, level of importance and related URLs. Sitemaps allow search engines to intelligently crawl your site without exhaustively scanning every page for changes.

The Internet Has Changed

A lot has changed in search and in the technical infrastructure of the internet since 2005. The Internet’s bandwidth to a large percentage of the world has increased dramatically, allowing for more and more media rich websites hosting video & images for mass consumption.

There are also a plethora of smart phone devices connected to 3G/Wi-Fi networks with fully functional web browsers, music players and video players. Search engines now need to provide a means to find this new rich content, but cannot simply scan every word of content to find all the relevant keywords. Content now needs extra META information added to enable faster, easier searches.

Google Sitemap Protocol Update

In June 2010, Google extended the sitemap protocol to address these needs and introduced specialized sitemaps. You can now identify News, Images, Videos, Mobile Pages, Code and Geo in the new sitemap format.

Google has already enhanced their Image and Video search to include this new sitemap information. To increase exposure, we recommend for those clients that have a large inventory of videos and images in the form of webinars, training and promo videos share these to Google Search via the new sitemap format.

SALESWORKS’ Exclusive Sitemap WordPress Plug-in

In order to speed this process, SALESWORKS has developed a new WordPress plug-in that creates a specialized sitemap for video posts in WordPress. The sitemap plug-in is now available to SALESWORKS clients at: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/salesworks-media-sitemap/

Once you have added and activated this plug-in in WordPress, go to the settings and identify the categories you mark posts that contain videos. You must add some custom fields to the posts to allow the sitemap to be generated.

These fields are:

video_filename – The URL to the video file
video_duration – The duration of the video

Here is an example of the settings page filled out:

Select Build sitemap to review how many video posts where found and added to the sitemap.

Now every time you add or edit a post in your blog, the sitemap will regenerate. You can test the sitemap by going to: http://yourblog/video_sitemap0.xml

Your sitemap will now be built in WordPress and can be submitted to Google.

Once your sitemap is submitted, you should start seeing your video files in Google search results under the Videos tab:

We hope you find this plug-in useful. Please share your experiences below and if you have any questions or comments you can email me directly at ryan@salesworks.com.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitemap

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/06/sitemaps-one-file-many-content-types.html

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/12/introducing-video-sitemaps.html

Does Your Website Need a Redesign?

Bryan Villanueva — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 17:21:06 +0000

First impressions do matter, especially when potential customers are visiting your website. Your prospective customers will start making assumptions about your organization at the first glance of your website. If your website has an unattractive user interface or poor navigation, potential customers will immediately leave your website in search of something better.

So what factors do prospective customers evaluate on your website to decide whether or not it’s worth their time? Is all the content on your website relevant to your business? Do you think it’s time for a website redesign?

Knowing When to Start Over

Obviously, all websites need continuous improvement. Just surf through your competitors’ websites or any website for a few minutes and discover that they are looking at old and obsolete graphics and content. But there are so many other reasons to redesign your website; some of them not so obvious, but are at the core of your website.

Making Your Website Your Priority

It is common for all businesses to neglect their website just dealing with the day-to-day business activities. It is not enough just to have some random information and few contact phone numbers. These days, to stay ahead of your competition you need to pull your customers in with an interesting website design and relevant content. This will not only attract the first-timers, but also make them repeat visitors.

Website Redesign Checklist

Here is a simple checklist to help you evaluate and then decide if it is time to redesign your website:

Are your current business goals and strategies consistent with your website?

Does your offline and online marketing complement each other?

Is your website constructed of CSS and XHTML, as well as HTML?

Have you eliminated all broken links and/or typos from your website?

Is your website easy to read – legible font sizes, colors and style?

Is your website information and contact information up to date?

Is your website’s appearance clean and simple (i.e. not jumbled up with flashing images/graphics or overwhelming content)?

Does your website display properly in all the web browsers, specially the new ones (e.g. Apple’s Safari, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome)?

Does your website have a low visitor bounce rate (i.e. visitors click to your website and do not leave immediately from the first landing page)?

Does your website rank on Google and other search engines?

Is your website updated regularly with blogs, news releases, newsletters, video demos/webinars and white papers?

Is your website mobile friendly (e.g. accessible to iphone and blackberry users)?

Is your website easy to navigate (i.e.it’s easy to get from one page to another with top and sidebar navigation, including breadcrumb navigation)?

Does your website generate PPC leads with capturing mechanism to collect emails, like a form?

If you answered NO to most of the questions, then it is highly recommended that you immediately consider redesigning your website.

Act Quickly & Cautiously

Once you are aware that your website requires a redesign, you need to do your homework. There are many web designing companies offering expert solutions, but not all website architects and designers are worth their price.

Look for those that use latest market trends, have a portfolio of website redesign projects that they are willing to share with you and take the time to understand your needs before making blanket recommendations about what your website should look like.

Little Updates Can Make An Impact

Make sure to ask for the simple solutions that can make a big impact at a fraction of the cost; like adding conversion forms, contact forms and other interactive elements that will allow you to collect leads.

Make Your Redesign a Priority

These little updates will save time and get you moving forward until you are ready for a complete redesign. These subtle changes should not take the place of a much needed website redesign, but will get you headed in the right direction until you have allocated the funds needed for a complete overhaul of your online presence.

SEO Takeaways for B2B Software Resellers from SMX Advanced 2010

Colin Greig — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:57:34 +0000

I had the pleasure of attending SMX Advanced, the premier Search Marketing Expo, earlier this month. SMX Advanced is recognized as being the go-to event of the year for Search Engine Marketers and all the big names in the industry are in attendance.

Let’s take a look some of the information that was put forward that business software resellers can use in their inbound marketing strategies.

SEO For Google Vs. Bing: How Different Are They?

Speakers: Matt Cutts, Google Inc. | Janet Driscoll Miller, Search Mojo | Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz | Sasi Parthasarathy, Microsoft

Description:

The event opened with this excellent session that covered how different the SEO ranking factors were for Google vs. Bing.

The question came up, should you build “Google specific” and “Bing specific” pages on your website to target each of the engines differently. This was a common technique used years ago when there wasn’t a clear, dominate player in the search engine space.

Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz used real-world testing data to analyze specific ranking factors and their effect on both Google and Bing. His comparison data/results were fantastic, but not for the feint of heart. Rand analyzed how specific factors influenced the ranking of sites within Bing compared to Google. Some of the factors explored included query matching in the domain name; exact match domains by top-level domain (TLD) extension; keywords in subdomains; on-page keyword usage; link counts and link diversity; TLD extensions; length of domain, URL and content; website homepages; and anchor text link matches.

Takeaway:

While there was some minor differences between the engines, there wasn’t anything that would give an existing site a glaring advantage. The experiment proved, if anything, that Bing’s algorithm has come a long ways in the last 2 years. The consensus was that marketers should focus their strategy on what the search engines are trying to achieve, the best possible user experience, as this is where both Search Engines are heading anyways.

Emotional Rescue: What You Need To Know About The B2B Buying Dynamic

Speakers: Jenny Dibble, SearchMarketMe | Gordon Hotchkiss, Enquiro | Brian Lewis, Engine Ready

Takeaway:

In the information age of today, buyers have the same info, if not more info, than sellers.
Users buy product (features) and buyers buy the purchase (trust in the vendor).
Very rarely are sales lost to price.
Brand = perception, perception = emotion. Uncover the buyers feeling-based pain points.

Show Me The Links: Real Life Link Building

Speakers: Chris Bennett, 97th Floor | Arnie Kuenn, Vertical Measures | Debra Mastaler, Alliance-Link | Roger Montti, martinibuster.com | Gil Reich, Answers.com

Takeaway:

Use advanced queries like, allintitle: “dynamics ax” site:.org, in Google to identify topical sites that would be good to get links from.
Competitor backlink trolling is still a popular strategy using Yahoo OpenSite Search.
.us domains can’t hide domain ownership details so marketers are finding they are less likely to be spam.
Example strategy time breakdown:
- 50% Content development & promotion (social);
- 20% Blog post & article placement (guest blogging, sponsored posts, etc);
- 10% Basic link development (directories, comments);
- 20% Targeted link requests.
Infographics are very successful as linkbait. Data, complex ideas combined with aesthetics.
Submit to RSS directories.
Do media releases as well or instead of press releases.
Add an attractive person at the end of your videos asking for a link.

Demystifying Online Attribution

Speakers: Jonathon Colman, REI | Cameron Cowan, Omniture, An Adobe company | Dennis Goedegebuure, eBay, Inc. | Richard Zwicky, Enquisite

Takeaway:

Most Partners aren’t attributing conversion ROI properly.
6 different attribution models:
- Last Click;
- First click;
- Linear;
- Decaying;
- Reverse Decay;
- U-Shaped. Which one is right for your business? Most likely U-Shaped.
Use a proprietary permanent cookie to track your visitors over lengthy buying cycles that exceed 30 days.
Start simple, attribution is difficult.
53% increase in conversions when B2C company’s URL appeared in both PPC and Organic results for brand name keyword.

You & A With Matt Cutts

Speakers: Matt Cutts, Google Inc.

Full transcript.

Takeaway:

Caffeine, the anticipated Google algorithm update, is live (rolled out live while the event was on!).
Uniqueness and editorial control of content bigger factors.
Video sitemaps are available now. Perfect for sites with self-hosted videos, not reliant on youtube.
Javascript processing announcement. Good for sites with bad navigation, bad for sites hiding links in Javascript.
Bounce rate is apparently not used as a ranking signal at this time – but that may change.

Build It Better: Site Architecture For The Advanced SEO

Speakers: Adam Audette, AudetteMedia | Maile Ohye, Google Inc. | Lori Ulloa, R2integrated | Brian Ussery, Search Discovery Inc.

Takeaway:

Increasing the load-time of your site can not only improve your rankings, big retailers have found an increases of 7-14% in conversions!
Use microformats for reviews, recipes, contact details and events for inclusion in Google results.
For catalog sites, make the “View All ___” page the canonical version for max SEO and no duplicate penalties.
Google says it’s not recommended to use text-indent to hide text over images.
The URL specified in your sitemap will take priority over other potential versions of duplicate content on your site.

Final Notes

Yahoo Search will be powered by Bing’s algorithms by end of 2010. Your website’s rankings in Bing will be the exact same in Yahoo (so we’re told).
Microsoft’s AdCenter PPC platform will display your ads on both Bing and Yahoo for a combined total of 30% search market share. It will finally be worthwhile to advertise on PPC networks other than AdWords.
Microformats for events are now mandatory for Partners who want their events showcased in the Search Engine results.

Sales & Marketing Services | SALESWORKS » Search Engine Optimization

Automate Your Social Media Promotion in 15 Minutes

Getting started with social media automation

Step 1) Get your content ready

Step 2) Choose an automation tool

Step 3) Add your feed and choose your destination

Step 4) Setup additional destinations

Step 5) Double check

Step 6) Check your stats

Step 7) Advanced techniques

That’s It

4 Website Mistakes You Can’t Afford to Make

Unclear Messaging

Lost Identity

Squandered Lead Gen Opportunities

There are 2 keys here:

Ineffective or Nonexistent Blogging

Now Get Cracking

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words…

Spice Up Your Web Life

Translate Any Language Visually

Samples of Infographics

Infographic Resources

The 3 Rules of Infographics

Using WordPress with Windows

WordPress on the Windows platform

Not Just a Blogging Platform

Typical Partner Website

What About Sharepoint/MOSS?

It Can’t Be Good, It’s Free

Not Compatible with Microsoft Windows

References

4 Key Tactics for Optimizing Landing Pages

Optimizing Landing Pages

1. Make A Good First Impression

Normally you don’t optimize words or images in a page. Rather you try to make a good impression on the visitor. To achieve that you have to consider a few points:

2. Address Real Questions

3. Differentiate From The Competition

4. Building Creditability Instantaneously

Achieve Higher Conversion Rates

How Does Google Instant Affect Your Site’s SEO?

Does Google Instant Affect SEO?

Less Organic Results?

Keystroke Optimization?

More Long-Tail Keyword Searches?

In Summary

Bonus: Disable Google Instant?

Update:

3 Reasons You Should Not Plagiarize Your B2B Copy

Business Content Plagiarism on the Rise

1. You’ll Hurt Your SEO

2. You Lose Credibility

3. You Are Breaking the Law

SALESWORKS Exclusive: WordPress Sitemap Plug-In

The Internet Has Changed

Google Sitemap Protocol Update

SALESWORKS’ Exclusive Sitemap WordPress Plug-in

Does Your Website Need a Redesign?

Knowing When to Start Over

Making Your Website Your Priority

Website Redesign Checklist

Act Quickly & Cautiously

Little Updates Can Make An Impact

Make Your Redesign a Priority

SEO Takeaways for B2B Software Resellers from SMX Advanced 2010

SEO For Google Vs. Bing: How Different Are They?

Emotional Rescue: What You Need To Know About The B2B Buying Dynamic

Show Me The Links: Real Life Link Building

Demystifying Online Attribution

You & A With Matt Cutts

Build It Better: Site Architecture For The Advanced SEO

Final Notes