On a whim I ducked into the Podcast & Audio Search Optimization seminar, and it was a nice surprise to be jolted awake by the energy and audio search stylings of Amanda Watlington, owner of Searching for Profit, and Daron Babin, CEO, Webmaster Radio. This session was moderated by Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing.

Amanda Watlington started off the seminar with an overview of how podcasting fits into overall strategy. She stated something I’ve heard a lot of in the SES NY seminars: interruptive advertising is no longer effective, there’s diminished brand loyalty, and we’re moving towards targeted, personalized communication. Niche, niche niche!

An Audio Strategy for Customer Engagement: Punjabi music
Getting customers to your audio goodies is a process, going from general to specific searches. Your communication and interaction with them must become more targeted and personalized as well. Amanda showed a super-specific music niche, punjabi music, as an example of this process.

Users start with keywords that are general when they are first searching, like “mp3″ or “free podcasts.”

As their awareness of their needs grows, they become more focused, using terms like “free punjabi music.”

You can take advantage of their focus even more with focused keywords like “punjabi songs by Malkit Singh” or “Jassi Sidhu mp3.” At this point users should be steered towards artist and music sites. If they are presented with RSS feeds or portable personalized players they will engage even more.

From Recording To Learning: Audio/Podcast Process

1. Record the Podcast
2. Optimize the Recording
3. Edit audio tags
4. Post (on blog, webpage, iTunes, linked file)
5. Distribute (RSS)
6. Users find it (iTunes, podcast directories)
7. Users play it (computer, ipod, phone)
8. Users learn!

Before you begin podcasting – what decisions do you need to make?

• One-off standalone or short series of podcasts? Amanda says, “it’s like potato chips, you won’t do just one.”
• What’s your niche? You can’t be too niche-y – there’s a “turkey talk” podcast at Butterball.com for pete’s sake!
• Scheduled series of podcasts? This is a good idea, but if you do, you have to COMMIT to a schedule. Listeners will get annoyed if you don’t keep to the schedule.
• What’s the name of your show?
  • Make sure your show name isn’t already in use
  • Show names aren’t as easy to come by as domain names
  • Decide carefully, as if you have to change your name mid-stream, you will definitely lose listeners
• How will you brand it? By host, show name or site name?
• Will you transcribe the show or just abstract the show contents?

Before you begin – preparations

• Distinguish between a show name and episode names
• Carefully write the titles and descriptions for your show AND episodes
• Develop a keyword list for the show
• Write audio tag information in advance (because you’ll want to upload it quickly)
• Get album art ready – even for non-musical shows
• Review iTunes categories to look for right fit
• Be prepared to edit the audio tags yourself for each episode (download and test tag editors)
• Build your infrastructure in advance so you can rapidly mount your show

Podcast Search Optimization

1. Optimize ID3 tags
2. Optimize filename
3. Optimize web pages/landing pages
4. Create/validate RSS feeds
5. Submit/monitor distribution

Optimize the ID3 tags: Essential Fields (id3.org)

You can put 256MB of information into the ID3 tags. These tags are prepended to the audio – so if it takes a while for a file to load, it might be because of these tags. Audacity is a free audio editor that can edit ID3 tags.

• Title: name of the show and date (mm/dd/yy) or episode name
• Album: name of your podcast
• Artist: Your name or the host’s name
• Year: year podcast was released
• Track: Episode number
• Genre: Podcast or other
• Comments: URL, a transcript or abstract and/or contact information

Optimize the file name!

Use a unique name (how it appears in podcast directories – not numbers)

Use shortened name + date or episode number

Podcast Marketing, 3.27.07 = pdmktg032707.mp3

or

the third episode of the show=pdmktg03.mp3

Optimize web pages/landing page

• Have a main Podshow page with links to individual episode pages. The content will stand on its own legs, and individual user episode pages will show up in search results.
• Use separate landing page for audio content to limit possibility of broken links
• Have separate RSS feed for podcasts vs. blog
• SEO all these pages
• Always have information on show’s schedule to attract subscribers and tell how to subscribe. In fact, provide subscription information on every landing page
• Include abstract or transcript of each episode (could monetize for premium subscribers)
• Include an embedded player for listening online
• Include length and size of each audio file (because people are sometimes reluctant to commit)
• Use multiple feeds if you provide multiple formats

Promote online audio beyond search engines!

• Content is king! Interviews and topical subjects draw listeners
• Use PR and Word of Mouth techniques. Embed links to audio in online press releases distributed by newswires
• Use marketing communication to drive listeners
• Make URL/name memorable and easy to spell
• Feature links on your website to boost awareness of your podcast
• Provide widgets for letting users embed your audio in their site or facebook page

5 Tips for SEO success for your audio

1. Develop long-range strategy for how the audio fits with your marketing and search effots
2. Optimize all audio files
3. Build and SEO landing pages for the show and each episode
4. Build accurate, effective RSS files
5. Submit and promote broadly to grow audience in those multiple marketing channels (use as many as you can!)

Questions from Amanda at the end!

Babin has had a colorful media history. He started working on Christian TV for eight years, then moved to NBC for five. Had done some live interviews and programming, and thought there needed to be some mechanisms to enjoy this stuff on demand. Now on Webmaster Radio, he does both live and on demand broadcasting, which gives him the ability to go into production on myriad topics.

Ping, publish, podcast in one step?

Daron’s got a pretty sweet site setup. He talked about how one can simplify the process of distributing content and he revealed the machine behind the curtain of Webmaster Radio. It’s totally designed in Cold Fusion (although URLs are static for search engines). It’s completely dynamic. By pushing a single “button,” content is drawn inside of the website (including content in embedded players!), URLs are published straight into the robots.txt file, then published into site map (which is fed straight into search engines). This is all infrastructure, and he stressed it didn’t happen overnight. Daron: “If you’ve not done the job on the page can tweak visibility issue by publishing RSS feeds through FeedBurner (few bucks a month), then you have analytics for feeds, but can optimize RSS feeds themselves. If you’re not adept at tweaking XML, FeedBurner is the way to go.”

Transcripts: Free Keyword Boosting
Daron’s next big push was all about getting your podcasts transcribed. They are extremely valuable! If you’ve got a good host and a good guest, content is built by the host by talking. You’re SEOing while you’re talking. If you’ve got good content, you can use it for SEO value.

Daron’s stats: each show is 30 minutes to an hour. He produces 20 hours a week. He has 3.5 years of content. Every ounce of it gets transcribed. Transcriptions are NOT cheap, but hey says you will make up for it with the keyword boost. Daron outsources his transcription it to Manilla.

What do you do with the transcripts?

• Shove it into the ID3 tags (depending on the tag editor, it can go in the lyrics field, or the summary field) – you usually have 256MB of space to play wth!
• Put an abstract on the page, or transcript below the embedded player
• OR, when a user subscribes, they can see the whole transcript

Bandwidth Requirements

Daron talked a lot about bandwidth requirements, and how CRUCIAL it is to do work on forecasting your bandwidth needs up front, and discussing them with your hosting provider. The more listeners you get, the more bandwidth you’ll need. NEGOTIATE UP FRONT FOR CHEAP BANDWIDTH! If you have to move everything to a new host if your bandwidth gets out of hand, you will likely lose listeners in the move (let alone the HUGE headache this would be!)

Daron’s podcasting tips

• Brand the show name instead of a person. If you brand the show around a person and they get sick of it, you’re screwed.
• If you’re creating singular podcast and use Wordpress, use PodPress to tag it up as a feed
• Be prepared for an advertiser to ask you, “How many listeners do you have?”(is there a minimum?)
• Only ping podcast directories when you update, or you could get banned
• Find keywords you want to rank for
• Get transcripts made of all your audio content
• Podcast EVERY WEEK. Be religious about, and you WILL get more listeners.
• Don’t change the name of your show unless you are prepared to lose listeners. Jeremy Shoemaker changed his show from “Net income”to “Shoemoney Show.”250,000 RSS subscribers were abandoned when he changed the name!

******Panel Q & A******

Question: How do I know whether a podcast topic is something people would want to listen to?

Amanda: Is the topic specialized? “Narrowcasting” makes advertising much more valuable, and audience more potent. Imagine Iron Chef. Did we imagine Iron Chef would have lots of viewers?

Question: What is ideal podcast show size?

Amanda: Start short (15 minutes) and go longer. Short shows are going to be more focused, and less likely to get into the “blither factor.” For example, you could get an expert on the line with you and ask “what are your top two tips for XX.” It’s easier to start shorter and go longer than vice versa.

Amanda told a story about Matt Cutts (Google blogger) listening to dailysearchcast.com in his car, and getting annoyed with it was too short and didn’t consume all his drivetime in the bay area!

Question: What webhost do you (Daron) use?

Daron: “Akami sucks!!! They suck! Not only are they expensive but they don’t care about your business like you do!”

When pressed Dorin admitted he runs everything off his own servers (seven servers load balanced in a cluster). He said, “get dependable, reliable host with fat pipes.”

I’ve ended up pushing out some childhood memories to make room, but hopefully they were of grade school multiplication drills or something like that. I’ve compiled a little list of what I’ve learned, what was good and what sucked!

Thumbs Up search folks are super friendly! speakers are usually very cool folks and LIKE IT if you want to interview them after sessions!

• Usability is not a dead art!
• listening to Avinash Kaushik present – he peppers everything with “kicks ass” and “sucks hard!”
• 80s New Wave music played between sessions!
• Schwag schwag schwag!

Thumbs Down

• most overused metaphor: “where the rubber meets the road.”
• few plugs in conference rooms. Daily fisticuffs ensued to snag one
• people who made complained about the typing noises as I live-blogged in seminars!

Conference blogging lessons:

• Don’t book yourself solid with seminars. Your brain will be so full that the ones near the end of the day will not be retained. Leave some breathing room.
• Don’t get too invested in what you hear in one seminar, the next one you attend will refute it.
• Landing pages are dead.
• Long live landing pages (as long as they are built by segmentation!)
• Be sure to attend at least one seminar outside of what your “usual” interest area is – what you learn usually gives you a new perspective on what you already know!
• Make more appointments for interviewers with speakers and other luminaries (I didn’t figure out until the last day how accessible most people were!)

I had an amazing time SES! See you next time!

Such were the words of wisdom of Matthew Bailey, President of SiteLogic, and Jennifer Laycock, Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Guide in the Site Clinic, the last seminar of Search Engine Strategies New York. Although Jennifer’s voice was recovering from a cold, Matt Bailey was remarkably perky for the end of the session (he later told me he’d had Wednesday off!)

Instead of showing each site and telling what they did (which might be another post altogether), I’ve compiled all the tips they gave to improve sites.

Color, Design, and Graphics

• DO use large buttons, and large graphics.
• DO use pictures on your site. For one, to break up large expanses of text, but also, people respond when they see pictures of people. For example, one site had a “mechanic” section – should have a picture of a woman gettin’ greasy with her car.
• DO use pictures of the product.
• DON’T use gradients in navigation bars. Any text you put in there won’t be easily seen and contrast suffers.
• DO use high contrast. One site was a lot of brown, maroon, and pink. Very little contrast and was hard to read.
• DO use visual cues to tell users where they are at in the navigation. Make it OBVIOUS.
• If you use a Google searchbox, DO make it blend into the site.
• DO make your website simple, especially when designing for an older audience. (One site was for the elderly, and Matt said that “elderly women look at the web with fear.”)
• DO provide a provide comfortable, inviting environment. Whenever you don’t provide a next step, if you don’t invite them to click somewhere, they get confused. What should I do?
• DON’T put crucial site text inside a graphic.

Navigation and Information Architecture

• DO make your links look like links (some didn’t show the underline until the hover, some looked like regular text).
• DO make liberal use of headings, subheads, and bullet points (80% of people scan pages, thinking, “does this answer my question?”) When we say “yes,” we read.
• DO use visual cues to tell the user where you are in the navigation.
• If your goal is page views, DON’T have a “back to previous page,” you never want to send a user back.

SEO

• DO put good information in your page titles! Matt says, “Page titles are beachfront property of your website – first thing that show sup in search results.” Make page titles unique, and in full sentences whenever possible.
• DON’T dilute your brand by splittng off domains (for example, the site in question was www.summerinterships.com, but if someone looked at barcelona, they would be taken to www.barcelonainternships.com.) If you do this you’re competing against yourself and end up having to do multiple linking campaigns. Focus on one domain.
  In the preceding example, should have gone to “www.summerinternships.com/barcelona”
• DON’T put critical content in any Flash! If you HAVE to use flash, put a sniffer on the page, to find if user has flash installed, if not, feed HTML.
• DO have an SEO copywriter condense and “chunk” your text, make sure it’s keyword heavy.
• DON’T let page titles be autopopulated from breadcrumbs.
• DON’T use too many links. Google has said they they’ll only read 100 links (if you have more, then that’s a sign that you should break up the page into multiple pages).
• DON’T use a redirect on the front page. IF traffic is going to www.mycoolsite.com the redirect shouldn’t be going to www.mycoolsite.com/innerpages.html

Content

• DO use testimonials!! Testimonials are your best selling point! Create a right column and fill it with testimonials!
• If you have a lot of content, DON’T make people have to scroll a lot:
  • Break things up by graphics.
  • Have links to “jump down.”
  • Break it into several pages. This also helps get more pages into search results, and gets good deep links.
  • Insert something like, “I’ve read enough, take me to purchase.”
• DO have a google search box, make sure it searches your site by default
• DO make sure to have lots of internal links if you have deep content. For example, if you are mentioning a paper written by your company that exists on the website, then for pete’s sake add the link to it!
• If you are a resource type of site, DO have an RSS feed for each category.

Social Media Marketing

• DO join relevant Facebook groups! For example, one site was an internship site, and they could have gotten onto Facebook groups in different cities, and in different industries.
• DO use Facebook PPC.
• DO have a blog! Create a personality that can go to the rest of the web, and can leave comments and contributions that can lead people back to this site.

Bashing Cocky IT Guys

• DON’T let IT guys tell you you can’t edit the page title field.
• DON’T try to tell the IT guy what to do: you have to feed their ego – tell them they are smart and capable and awesome.
• DO contact Jennifer and Matt if you get IT pushback (oh we can’t do that) – they will speak to them for you!

People throughout the world are increasingly relying on cell phones and mobile devices to keep them plugged in. Obviously, search will play an ever increasing role in the evolution of mobile. When will mobile search surpass desktop search? We’ve been expecting better search capabilities from mobile devices for some time, and know that Asia is far ahead of North America in this respect at the current time. Today @ SearchEngineStrategies, experts discuss their views about the evolution of search in North America.

Speakers:
Farhan Memon, Senior Product Manager, AOL Search

Rachel Pasqua, Director of Mobile Marketing, iCrossing

Cindy Krum, Senior SEO Analyst, Blue Moon Works, Inc
.
Matt Tengler, Senior Product Manager, JumpTap

Presentations:
Krum:

To to improve mobile listings and gain market share in advance of full adoption:

3 phases … roughly 10 years apart

phase 1: (late 90’s to 2007)
- hard to use
- mostly text
- not much search
- lots of browsers

phase 2: (we’re here now) 2008-2013
- images with text, though not rich yet
- billing changes … packages
- some browser standards

phase 3: (2014-2018ish)
- access to web at large
- browsing via broadband
- flat rate billing
- rich experience

Why should we care about mobile listings? Most targeted marketing venue ever:
eg. we will know
- credit report
- location
- address book
- purchases
- email and web browsing

Why get started now rather than later?
- master the medium early before competitors
- lots of market share
- cost of failure is low … make mistakes now
- The iphone set the bar
- mobile search indicates desire for immediate action

So, what can we do today?
- Google and Google Mobile
- Yahoo OneSearch
- MSN Live
* mobile engines have different crawlers.

The experience of mobile search is much more like results of universal search. Very few results above the fold. Live and Google offer ratings and reviews in results.

So, how do we leverage this?
- test existing site on mobile devices
- optimize your existing site for mobile (don’t need a separate site)
- write compelling optimized meta data
- submit mobile site map
- submit your website
- mobile your mobile search engine listings
- no need for click through
- optimize foe porta/universal results
- get rating and reviews by review sites
- include action oriented stuff:
- address
- links to maps
- phone number
- pictures of location
- more

Tengler:

Usability of Mobile Search:

Words per query:
- one 45%
- two 29%
- three 15%

His findings show people are not necessarily finding what they are looking for via mobile search.

Do you need to build a mobile experience?
- yes … even on iphone
- page size still impacts experience

Mobile specific (off portal sites) sites are growing in numbers.

WAP vs Client Experience:

WAP:
- accessible by any user
- updates are immedately utilized
- limited interactions/displays

Client:
- much richer and faster experience
- over 60% more searches per use
- must be pre-installed or downloaded

Getting to a search box is still a challenge for most. Its still 3-5 steps away on most phones. The search box will eventually be 0-1 steps away. Some are now permitting special keystrokes (quick launch keys) to bring up a search box.

Creating a compelling mobile experience:
1. prepopulate location services (ie. in home area or away from … and how far away)
2. audio and video inputs (multi-modal inputs)
3. on demand networks … create secure connections for pos transactions
4. personalization
5. SMS and MMS

In summary, mobile is poised for tremendous growth this year for many many reasons. There are already 3.3 billion mobile phones out there. Get prepared in advance!

Pasqua:

Mobile search is about searching and finding! 46 million wireless subscribers used mobile search in 2007. The majority of these people bypassed the browser and used things like SMS.

How do we define search?

WAP

pros:
- traditional keyword based search gone mobile – familiar for users

Con:
- uptake hampered by excessive data costs and usability issues

Who to watch? Boopsie, Slifter, Yahoo, Google

Voice:
Pro:
- far easier that keying in an url or text message
- no data connection necessary

Cons:
- user awareness

Bluecasting:
Pro:
- excellent for broadcasting data across short distances
- runs on an unlicensed radio frequnecy

RFID:
Pro:
- enables one t o one distribution of personalized data
- can be embedded in mobile devices and lots else

Cons:
- privacy
- considered a supply chain technology

Image Recognition:
Pro:
-ability to tag physical spaces and products

Con:
- 2d barcode scanners are not widely deployed in US

Memon:

While AOL uses base Google data, it differentiates its listings by adding information, while it also brings in information from some of its other entities.

One goal is to optimize on multiple platforms and devices to reach users in their preferred way.

AOL is releasing an iPhone UI version of its search. Will do so for Blackberry and others too. ANNOUNCED FIRST HERE!

What mobile searchers look for?
- maps directions 69%
- weather 65%
- local information 62%
- news 51%
- entertainment 43%
But AOL has found reality does not meet expectations. They found that less than 2% of people are looking for local information. There are looking for navigation (ie. facebook, google, myspace), celebrity information, weather, directions, and much more.

Interesting note … the head and long tail patterns of queries online or via mobile are identical.

The time of day when mobile is used though is different. Mobile queries grow over the course of the day and continue to grow throughout the evening, where desktop searches decline in the evening.

queries via desktops decrease in the evening.

Monetization of Mobile:
- Sponsored links (cpc)
- Advertorial (cpm)
- Display ads (cpm and testing pay per call)

Optimization challenges for mobile:
- devise
- query
- advertiser
- business model

Distribution:
- link from AOL honepage
- serve up mobile bookmark when people search for blackberry

Jeff Quipp is President of Search Engine People Inc., a Toronto SEO, SEM, SMM firm.

The days of reciprocal linking (as a primary means of link building) and link farms to secure better rankings are long gone. Google has evolved. So too have the strategies of reputable search firms.

Terms like ‘link exchange’ and ‘reciprocal’ are today replaced by terms like ‘authority‘ , ‘linkbait’ and the like. There’s also an inherent understanding today that the quality of the link matters more than quantity, and reaching key influencers with the right content is the holy grail of search.

This new ‘understanding’ begs the question though … how to get these coveted authoritative online mentions? Today’s panel of experts are amongst the very best in the industry today at doing just that … getting authoritative mentions. Here are their thoughts and ideas.

Presentations:

Sally Falkow, President, Expansion Plus Inc.
Why do you need authoritative links? Matt Cutts said, authoritative links carry more weight. But we also know they consider where it is.

What is an authoritative site?
- strongly themed content about one topic that is frequently updated
- a larger site with many pages

One way to get good links … go to media sites. These sites are looking for news stories. There is a news story in every business … its all a matter of perspective.

Case Study (HerRoom.com):
They market lagerie and sports bras. This company began testing the ‘bounciblity’ of various sports bras, and put the videos online for women to watch. She then came to Falkow with the problem … it was attracting guys and not girls. So Falkow found a scientist in Europe who focused on bouncing and problems with women’s health. She then did an interview with the scientist (podcast), and suddenly all kinds of media people were interested. Its become a serious women’s issue, with mentions in USATday, MSNBC, and many other places. Search results for related terms have obviously improved exponentially, as has the quality of traffic.

Conclusion … find the news angle, get links from very authoritative sites, and enjoy the benefits. It takes looking at things from a different perspective though!

Chris Boggs, Manager, Search Engine Optimization, eMergent Marketing/BRULANT, Inc.

Why go beyond linkbait?
- the long term value of social media links is still in question
- a lot of link bait becomes stale quickly … value of link declines
- can become confusing to clients
- a holistic approach is natural and effective .. this is what engines want!

Back to the Old School
- monitoring inbound links
- reciprocal linking (everything in moderation)
- building directory links

Good directories = good deep links! Directories still have a role, especially good quality ones. Its a great way in some cases to secure deep links to specific pages and products. Best of the Web was an example, as was Yahoo Directory!

Offsite linkbait:
- using YouTube and other channels to drive links from the “linkerati”
- no more ‘top 10s’ … they are overdone.
- be creative and not salesy

Advanced link development services:
- link remediation
- link requests and relevant content sites
- directory submissions
- many many more!

Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing

Media and Blogger Relations:
Push – Pull Strategy

Push PR strategies are outreach type programs, such as wire services, networking, pitching, and RSS.

Pull PR has to do with optimizing news content to help journaists find your content, such as press releases, social media, media coverage.

PR needs to be news, relevant. You need to build relationships with those who can extend your message.

Here are some guidelines:

DO:
- do your homework and be relevant
Medias biggest compaint: irrelvant pitches
Research target market – articles, blog posts
Use tools: MyEdcals, Cision
Technorati, blogrolls, social media monitoring
Journalists’ need relaible sources
Bloggers need compelling content

DO:
- understand the difference between journalists and bloggers.
journalists will hang up
bloggers will embarass you

DO:
- make it easay!
for journalists, make sure the pitch is meaningful for their needs and audience
provide high res images, video
provide extra resources
for bloggers, write a summary of the item you’re pitching

DO:
publicize your publicity
blog about your MSM coverage
archive media coverage
offer RSS feeds
invite social bookmarks

DONT:
- be sloppy or spammy
avoid broadcast email pitches w/o qualifying list
avoid impersonal irrelvant pitches
be sure to QA a broadcaster email pitch
QA efforts to personalize pitches

DONT:
- be a one trick pony
once you get coverage, keep coming back.
Develop a relationship!
be a trusted consistent resource

DONT:
- be arrogant
never assume they have to write about your company
don’t treat bloggers a second rate
don’t skip lesser know blogs or pubs
many journalists are also bloggers

DONT:
- ignore multiple promotion channels
such as Business Wire, Flickr, YouTube, Reddit, Digg

DONT:
- forget to say thank you
journalists and bloggers are people too
a little appreciation goes a long way

Taekaways:
- do your homework
- be personal
- be relevant
- make it easy
- develop a relationship

Jeff Quipp is President of Search Engine People Inc., aToronto SEO, SEM, SMM firm .

Are you afraid of bloggers? Sleep with the light on? You’ll find reasons to sleep above the covers after you read the next installment of Social Media: What Is It and What Is It Good For? from Search Engine Strategies New York. (Read part One).

Jory Des Jardins, Co-Founder & President of Strategic Alliances at BlogHer, teaches companies how to get bloggers to talk about their brands. Her refreshing angle was to talk about some of the boogeyman fears companies have about social media.

“what if they say something negative about my product?”

“what if all hell breaks loose – it’s brandicide!!! and

“what if the zombies eat my face???”

Oh sorry I wandered over to Facebook for a minute…

Ok seriously, while some companies heartily embrace and love the blogger, others fear them. They think, like the wierd smell in the back of the fridge, if they ignore it, it will go away.

Avoidance is not a strategy

Yes, there’s a chance that a blogger will say something negative about your product. But you might as well involve the bloggers with your company and products because they’re going to talk about you anyway.

So, this post is about the reasons why you should engage bloggers (in case you didn’t know already).

Blogs Show Up First!

Since blogs are updated more frequently, search engines like them better, and they show up earlier in SERPs. On a related note…

Blogs can trump brands!

Jory’s friend Alicia runs a site called “Simply Recipes.” On it she has a turkey recipe. It ranks high in the SERPs, even above Butterball!

Blog Results Last!

A few years ago Jory & co. ran a campaign for Kenneth Cole in which they asked bloggers, “What do you think of when you hear Kenneth Cole kids?” Some of those blog posts still show up in top 5 in search engine results.

Blog results last, even when you don’t want them to…

Jory used to write about products that were upsettting her on her blog. She was once the victm of identify theft and Chase Visa was pretty much asinine about it to her. So she blogged about her experienced entitled, “Chase Visa: quit harassing me!” She got the blogger’s best revenge. If someone searches for “chase visa” that blog post shows up #25 – even after two and a half years!

You get credit for trying to connect

You might worry that bloggers might be snotty about you and your company but the fact is, most bloggers won’t rip apart products put in front of them. Even if you do misstep, you get credit for trying.

Story: GM came to her and said, “we want to WOW women. We want better female perception of our brand. Here’s what we want to do: we’ll bring a car expert to the BlogHer conference and we’ll train women bloggers how to write about cars.”

(the big raspberry noise here)

a) you do NOT tell bloggers what to write

b)  you don’t tell women to write about cars

The compromise: bring the cars, and give women the keys.

Result: They brought roadsters and a hybrid. Bloggers had a blast! They took pictures of themselves in the cars, made videos of themselves (and uploaded everything)! They wrote testimonials (one woman on FIZZ wrote “why I might buy a Saturn.”)

Soon GM had skyrocketed in the search engines – all positive! Just for showing up with vehicles!

When in doubt, engage

A client ran a campaign on BlogHer, and someone posted a comment saying, “I’m still wondering if XX is safe.” Now a frightened client might have thought that one slightly negative comment was going to lead to brandicide, but that was actually the best thing that could have happened. Why? Because the customer has opened a dialogue, and YOU CAN RESPOND!

And that’s just what the client did. He responded on the blog with facts, not defensiveness.

I’m still scared, now what?

If you still can’t stomach the blogosphere, then just play defense, and read what’s out there about your company.

Moderator Pauline Ores, SES Advisory Board and Senior Marketing Manager, Social Media Engagement, General Business, IBM, began the seminar by stating that the Social Media Track was new to Search Engine Strategies conferences. She introduced the powerhouse panel:

NOTE: Due to massive awesome content, this seminar is split across two posts (link provided at end to part two).

Social media/the web is NOT a better version of print or TV. It doesn’t behave like other media. Social media is first and foremost about people. The “killer app” of the web is other people. You need people to connect.

What is future of marketing? What will it look like in 5 years?

We’ve moved from mass media broadcasting (one pushed to the many) to the “we” media (sharing and interactivity).

Marketing today is creating social dialogue. Brands and companies are part of the cultural fabric.

What is social media?

• media made by and for users in communities (posts, reviews, videos, etc.)
• a business model in which our customers are our suppliers (digg ranks news stories)
• customers participate in supply chain
• an advertising system in which people articulate their interests nad passions and share marketing mesages wth each other (Facebook status shows you what groups your friends join)
• new approach to solving hard problems in networked information systems (Library of Congress is working with Flickr users to tag Library of Congress photos)
• platforms, systems and apps that connect media, technology and peopole together into a process and value-creation network

The myth of “Influencers”

The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell talks about the concept of the “influencer,” a magical being (only 15% of the population) whose favor causes ideas/products/concepts to catch fire. Duncan Watts is a Tipping-point skeptic (and Yahoo! research scientist) who believes there’s no difference between an “influencer” and a regular person when it comes to knowing whether something will generate buzz. The factor he says is the condition of the network.
How to play nicely in social space

• holistic approach: must be part of all marketing efforts
• FIRST: listen to what they’re already saying about you and your brand
• become part of a story: the dove campaign tapped into cultural truth about women and beauty
• always bring some wine: act like you’re coming to a dinner party. Don’t just appear in social space and demand things. You must also cooperate and provide value.
• be good to your mother: you can no longer trick consumers into buying your stuff. They are too savvy for you.
• Don’t forget! Social media is here to stay!

Goodies to check out!!

• MOMA exhibition: Design and the Elastic Mind – has a Digg arc visualization see online exhibition
• Ogilvy & Mather has created a glossary of social media terms that is supposed to be on the SES site but since SES site has no search capabilities (!!!) I can’t find it right now. Will post link soon.

• blogs
• online games
• social networks
• virtual worlds
• widgets and wikis

Among sites using this technology (reviews, comments on experience, etc.), site traffic and conversion rates are going up!

Today’s plan for an integrated marketing campaign

• current
• direct mail/media
• e-mail
• landing page design
• content syndication: white paper, video

Tomorrow’s plan with social marketing

• listening post (start listening to users, search content syndication)
• influencer engagement
• advocacy activation
• direct mail/media
• e-mail
• dynamic landing page
• earned media
• other emerging channels
• listening post review

Ways to use social media marketing for your brand

• Listen to your customer: not just passively (reading blog discussions, forums, word on the street, etc.) but also actively listening and engaging in the discussion in a transparent manner.

Example: Starwood Hotels is a client, and they have a person who frequents the flyertalk forums and talks to customers about their experiences in Starwood hotels. He’s online as starwoodlurker and he’s been very well received!

• Find passionate users and give them a platform to evangelize: Once you are established in communities relevant to your brand, you should be able to identify passionate users who could provide good word of mouth for you. Don’t be afraid to give them content/products/information for review. For example, the producers of Lost showed the program to teenagers in their demographic months before the program was to air, and let them blog the hell out of it!

Example: Cisco started their “human network” campaign by engaging 14 influential bloggers and asked them to help define the “human network.” This generated a great deal of buzz and soon Cisco dominated in organic search rankings. Someone even put up a wikipedia entry on it (soon got removed for being too markety).

• Use existing user-generated content on your brand’s website: there are thousands of users who evangelize products in their spare time, writing reviews, making videos or podcasts.

Example: Someone needs a new cell phone. They pick a model from Verizon, and do their due diligence Googling to find information on the phone model. They don’t find much personal information so they visit Technorati. Luck! Found someone that had posted a video review of the desired phone. Verizon could have leveraged that content on their website to help customer make buying decisions faster.

Jump to Part 2…

One of the really interesting aspects to search, is its potential. It seems virtually limitless. At the current time however, companies seems to be very tentative when considering investing in search marketing strategies.

Consider for example that while 80% of web browsing starts with Search, and consumers are spending up to 50% of their media time online … then why are many major brand companies spending on average only 2.5% of their media budgets online? Isn’t search a prime opportunity in the battle for mindshare?

In todays’ session, we’ll hear from a big brand company, and its search agency, about some of their thoughts, ideas, and strategies.

Carol Kruse, Vice President of Global Interactive Marketing, The Coca Cola Company.

How many people remember Coke C2? It was launched with a tremendous campaigns both online and offline, but was not supported in search. The result … obscurity for C2!

Fast forward to today … My Coke Rewards includes a largely digital promotion plan, and is very heavily invested in search. Coke has learned!

Searchers are now more engaged by search. Most people now search using two or more keywords in the search phrase. People are also using search more frequently.

So, how do you turn awareness into business value or sales?
Coke has found that search drives more teens (Coke’s target market) to purchase the product than does word of mouth. Very interesting.

Industry Data + Coca Cola Data = Proof of Business Value
2 techniques used by Coca Cola to justify online value:
a. Coke engages dynamic studies … to measure the brand health increase for online vs offlines. It also measures purchase intent.
b. The other technique to cost justify increased online marketing budgets is incremental sales volumes. Employ a study group.
Both were shown to generate dramatic improvements, and corporate buy-in for further online ad budgets.

How is Coke using search? They’re using it to bridge the gap. TV is still prime media. But TV (and other media) drive search queries, so search is used to support all other marketing efforts. Once there, they’ll try to get them to experience the product.

So, where does Coke have to be?
67% on organic … so they need to be in organic for relevant keywords!
33% on paid … to control their ‘digital self’ and respond quickly when needed

Barriers to using search?
a. it isn’t sexy
b. how much can you do with 95 characters? This isn’t creative!
c. isn’t it for direct marketing only?
d. insufficient capabilities to handle search internally
e. brand risk
making it a tough sell realistically.

Reasons to include search in your marketing mix:
a. cooking with gas – start to control messaging/dialogue with consumers using paid search, especially when the company makes the news
b. search is the bridge – tv, radio, newspapers all drive searches online. Ensure listing are secured in search to support the offline effort.
c. engaging the hand raisers – users self-qualify themselves as being interested … they’re serious!

This is how Carol brought search into Coke, justified its value, sold it to management, and is using it to strengthen both the brand and product sales. Congrats Carol!

Eduardo Llach, Chief Marketing Officer & Co-Founder, SearchRev

SearchRev increased MyCoke Rewards results by 5 times. Some of this was due to offline efforts such as promoting it in every other form of advertising … online and offline.

How did they do it?
a. control the traffic
b. mirror online and offline campaigns
c. search for short term campagins
d. optimize branded keywords

Control the Traffic:
- ensure site appears in the organic results … and use landing pages when possible. This alone tripled Coke’s MyCoke Rewards results

Mirror Online and Offline Campaigns
- whatever they promoted offline, related keywords were purchased online, and optimized for using seo.

Short Term Campaigns:
- used paid search to support the messages and primary keywords from short term campaigns

Optimized Branded Keywords:
- when they took over campaign … 86% of traffic was coming from branded keywords
- they implemented Multi-variable optimization
- resulted in a 52% increase in efficiencies

How?
a. targeted and tracked by geography
- different bid rates for each region
- different descriptions and titles for each region
b. targeted and tracked by day or week
c. target and tracked by network distribution (eg. AOL and other networks)
This led to a 5 time increase in results. This data then shows things like best time of day for Coke is Saturday am’s at 7 am (eg. only), second best is …. all in all, this can be fed back into the marketing group to help them
further define when they should run television campaigns in various cities, what phrases do various cities best respond to, and the like.

Jeff Quipp is President of Search Engine People Inc. a Toronto SEO, SEM, SMM firm.

Optimizing B2B sites is often considered to be somewhat more challenging than optimizing B2C type sites, or at the very least different strategies are needed. Linking and content strategies beyond the basics require very very different approaches. Fortunately, some companies and individuals have developed special insights in this realm, and are willing to share some of their thoughts and ideas.

Patricia Hursh, President and Founder, SmartSearch Marketing

B2B Advertising:
8 elements to better understand b2b ppc advertising:
1. research prospects early in the buying cycle
2. focus and align ad copy with stage of buying cycle
3. pre-qualify clickers (repel those not of minimum quality)
4. create landing pages and microsites (to simplify)
5. test pages continuously
6. offer multiple action options
7. simplify registration forms
8. implement a lead nurturing process

Here are more details on each:

1, Research Prospects early in Buying Cycle:
Tremendous opportunity to reach people early in the process. Those targeting only people at end of process are missing huge opportunity. So how to target those early in process?

2. Align Ad Copy with Search Query:
The earlier in the buying process, the more generic the search term. Capture potential clients earliers in process with generic terms. Then, change PPC ad text and copy as people migrate through the cycle.
eg.
a. laptop computer (first stages of research)
b. laptop information (intermediate research)
c. laptop user reviews (intermediate)
d. ibm laptop models (late in process)
e. ibm thinkpad T61 (ready to buy)

3. Prequalifying Clickers:
Specify who should and shouldn’t click. Most companies don’t want unqualified leads … they often clog the process. So, eliminate them from the outset where possible.
Be very specific, in terms of types of clients (eg. fortune 1000), regions (southern California). Must be careful because this negatively impacts click through rates, and therefore prices per click. Need to find balance.

4. Create Streamlined Focused Microsites:
Seperate from corporate websites, typically 3-10 pages. Targets specific segments …. very focused so people don’t get lost or confused. Done well, also increases quality scores for PPC.

5. Testing Page Elements:
Run A/B or multivariant tests with pages … including forms on specific pages, complexity of forms, layout, images, benefit statements, action triggers (calls to action), names and descriptions of downloadable assets, etc. Case study showed, if she hit visitors with form on main landing page, conversions fell by half. Good example!

6. Offer Action Options
Give people alternative options to outright purchase. Sometimes visitors are further looking to reduce risk before buying, and options help with this.

7. Simplify Registration Forms:
Complex registration forms with many fields often reduce conversions substantially. Keep it as simple as possible. Sometimes, start slow with initial form, then follow up with email or telemarketing.

8. Implement Lead Qualifiecation Process:
Progressively weed out leads that are obviously bogus or unqualified. Automate where possible, and consider only those quality leads in evaluating effectiveness of the media.

Barbara C. Coll, CEO, WebMama.com Inc.

Enterprise Sales Force:
Marketing goal … fill the pipeline with qualified, high quality leads. Segment the leads; A leads, B leads, etc.

What does marketing think people want?
a. free trial
b. view demo
c. screenshots
d. etc.

What is the priority order of trust?
a. download something – If you can get someone to download something, and interact with it … then they become qualified. Should only then goto a sale rep as an A lead
b. demo – many different versions, but typically leads to more qualified leads.

As a result of these leads, sales reps can cherry pick leads. As search marketers, how can we make sure we send nice ripe red cherries to sales?
a. optimize for more than home page and product category pages … specific product pages!!!
b. point paid search clicks at aggressive lead generation pages.

Goal of search firm? Make search visitors an Alead. How?
a. force it into Alead bucket if it is a high converting paid search word
b. can’t treat all traffic the same
c. educate the reps by showing them the paid search numbers
d. check to see what the reps are following up on when search leads come in (sit quietly in a booth next to them when they’re on a call to find more keywords)
e. give them more of the search leads they’re following up on

Review Sales Success Measures:
a. close rate
b. time to close
c. average selling price
d. quarterly quota

Adam Goldberg, Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer, ClearSaleing

Tracking … when sales are not made online.

Advertising Ecosystem … means for tracking sales and assists through the system:
Advertising Services (Media or keyword) > Capture Advertising Analytics … meaning either
a. No Sale
b. Phone Call
c. Lead Form Submitted
d. Purchase

b and c above lead into CRM software, which again either results in:
a. sale
b. no sale
both of which can be detected by a good analytics solution

In the end, really good quality tracking is possible and available. Not just for search, but for all media.

Currently, most companies evaluate media or keyword effectiveness based on CPL or cost per lead. Adam argues CPL does not matter, but in fact ROI. So … find ways to measure ROI. Ultimately it costs more, but is well worthwhile.

Other metrics cause concern too … eg. click through %. Again, that can be misleading too. In the end, its still about ROI … which keyword or ad text is the best.

Be a careful though to consider Assists (on a personal note … this is a great piece of advice). Advertising is about more than measuring only sales results, much as basketball players cannot be measured merely on points they get. Some players are role players … with a primary role of setting up goals. Same in marketing eg.
3 Roles in advertising:
a. introducers – eg. banner, email … typically broad phrase math on general terms
b. influencers – eg. often search and using terms such as manufacturer names
c. closers – eg. often search using very specific keywords such as specific product names or model numbers

Leads to an understanding or “common purchase paths”, and the progression of terms people used to come to an ultimate purchase decision. Ultimately, you have to be very careful when relying too much oon ROI, and understand the role of each keyword or media in the ecosystem.
If you remove the introducers or influencers, then closers aren’t necesarily set up to make the sale. THe analogy used was that of a basketball coach considering which players to sit. Should he sit someone who doesn’t have many points, though is an assist leader. No … because then the scorer isn’t set-up to work to his strengths.

Karen Breen Vogel, President and CEO, ClearGauge

1. B2B … What’s different than B2C
- B2B is a considered purchase.
a. Goals – start or develop relationships
b. Engines – major search and business/vertical-specific engines
c. keyword – buying cycle and role based
d. Messages – Value prop/offer aligned to buying cycle and role
e. Landing PAges – Options doe Interactions/content/next date
f. Tracking ROI – show ROI pipeline present value, cost/behaviour

2. Case for SEO in B2B
Interesting stat; 64% of search engine users are searching for business information.

Pros:
a. ppc costs increasing
b. higher click-thru rates on organic
c. credibility and branding from organic
d. paid and organic reinforce
e. wider buying cycle coverage
f. cost is mostly upfront and not ongoing
g. more appropriate if sales are not measureable or level of lead quality is suspect

Cons:
a. lack of control in ranking algorithms
b. competition
c. immediacy of results

Conclusion:
a. make seo a priority – add ppc as needed
b. exceptions exist but typically is fruitful for most B2B companies.

3. Key Challenges and Solutions
a. keyword selection
b. low sample sizes – small numbers make multivariant testing difficult. Solution; vary only a very few variables (2-4) at a time.
c. get vertical … the more targeted the vertical search engine the better
d. qualified leads per cycle
e. try to determine the value of people taking different actions (ie. the value of someone downloading, taking an online seminar, etc.)
f. make a quick KPI (key performance indicator) dashboard for the executives so they can see the wins and buy in.

Jeff Quipp is President of Search Engine People Inc. A Toronto SEO, SEM, PPC Firm

Image courtesy BMWBlog.com

How can search marketers maximize the local presence of their clients? There are a myriad of ways to do so, using many different properties and approaches. Some such approaches include online/internet Yellow Pages, local search engines, maps and mapping functions, local directories, and much more. In today’s ’s session, we heard from experts in the trenches, regarding the strategies and tactics most commonly utilized.

Speakers:
Gregg Stewart, Senior Vice President, Interactive, TMP Directional Marketing

Steve Espinosa, Director of Product Development and Management, eLocal Listing, LLC

Session:
This session approaches local from 2 completely different directions. One is grass roots, from increasing the presence of small to medium sized busineses. The other is giving large corporations a dramatically increased local presence. Very different perspectives!

The presenters obviously did a lot of pre-planning, and employed a tag team effort.

Stewart – On the Potential of Local:

For those unfamiliar with Stewart, he wrote a great piece aptly titled 10 Winning Ways to Optimize Local Search

In 2008, 4.6 billion will be spent in local online advertising, a 58% increase over 2007. However, this only represents roughly 15% of the overall internet pie. That said, there still is a very large gap; only 4% of local media advertising is currently being spent online. The gap will continue to decrease fortunately.

Espinosa – Local Search Marketing Tactics:

Local search marketing tactics suggestions:
a. create a specific page for each location
b. anchor text link from index page to location page
c. press releases
d. b2b, city sites, category specific sites
e. Use hcard … code to embed in site that tells Google necessary information for some local content.

Webpage optimization:
Video:
a. place embed code of video on home page and location page
b. link to video page from index page
c. video sitemap
d. utilize “ref=nofollow” to push more link juice to pages that need it

Forms
a. request only necessary information … keep length to a minimum
b. put forms only on appropriate pages

Sponsored Result Tactics for both Google and Yahoo:
a. utilize local business ads
b. employ geo-targeting
c. landing page … send people to the specific town/city page, not to the home page
d. use social media – submissions to Digg, MySpace will appear in the search results themselves very quickly. Good opportunity to rank for local terms.

Local Search Verticals:
- include your business in as many RELEVANT categories as possible
- secure positive reviews

Video is a tremendous opportunity to appear in the universal search results of various engines. Using these tactics can get you into numerous sections of the first search results page … both organic and paid search results.

Stewart – Directories:
Who are the big players:
a. superpages.com 44%
b. Yellowpages.com 31%
c. Citysearch 10%
d. Yellowbook.com 8%
e. DexKnows 3%

Top Online New Sites:
NYTimes
USAToday
WashingtonPost
WallStreetJournal Online

Top Online Vertical Categories:
Automotive, Legal, Health Care, Restaurants, Home Improvement, Real Estate … but the behavior within each is substantially different. Restaurants for example will drive many page views, but few calls. People are more likely to visit in person.

Internet Yellow Pages and Local Guides – Advertising Opportunities:
CPM or, Pay for Performance, Fixed Fee/Sponsorship, Organic /Natural listings

Newspaper and Vertical Sites – Advertising Opportunities:
CPM, Fixed fee, organic/natural listings

Local Listing Data Feeds
Data for some major local directory/information comes from data aggregators. This is really important because relatively recently, Google has started showing many local results not just the 3 shown previously.
… so ensure you get as much information as possible into these aggregators.

Espinosa – Video:
Produce video … because not only can you get placement in the new universal results, but it knocks your competitors out of that space too. Its a real opportunity at the moment, since not many have video. Here are some tips for video for local:
a. keep it short and sweet (15-30 seconds)
b. no need for HD quality footage
c. include phone number and address
d. have a company do it for you (elocal, TurnHere, Mixpo)

Create a page on your site to host this video:
a. use appropriate title tags
b. include relevant keywords in file name
c. remember to use appropriate anchor text links when linking to that page

Video sitemap
a. allow embed
b. create thumb nails with bus name and phone number

Make sure your video is TV Ready (if possible):
a. allows you to create and merge offline and online marketing
b. thousands of affordable impressions

Stewart – Reviews and Ratings:
User Reviews & Ratings
1 out of 4 consumers now consults online ratings and reviews prior to making local purchasing decisions. Sites with reviews get twice the response of sites without.

What are Online Rating and Reviews?
Online applications that allow consumers to easily express their opinions as well as read opinions left by others.

Interesting … more than 70% of local search sites offer user reviews and ratings.

Develop a process for dealing with consumer input and both positive and negative comments … you cannot prevent it. However, reward those that provide a positive review for you. A strategy for encouraging is is to give them a 3×5 cards describing exactly how to give a positive review.

Espinosa – Tips for Reviews:
If you do receive a negative review … do not rebut too frequently. End it relatively quickly. Quick resolution is always the goal.

Tips for Reviews:
- encourage customers to write reviews with your key phrases in it
- key phrases in reviews may help rank for long tail key phrases
- research where Google is scraping the reviews from for your industry, and get reviews on those sites too.

Stewart – Tracking Online and Offline Conversions:
Although most people research local business information online, 80% still purchase offline via an in-store visit or a phone call. Need to track and quantify this to determine what works and what doesn’t. Opportunities for tracking:

Online Tracking:
- tracking URL
- post click tracking
- online lead generation forms

Offline Tracking:
- Call tracking … through special dedicated phone numbers
- consumer call back surveys
- coupons or discount codes

Also of interest:
eLocal Listing Offers Online Small Business Video Marketing Product in Jan 2008

Jeff Quipp is President of Search Engine People Inc. a Toronto SEO / SEM / SMM firm .