aimClear’s coverage of SearchEngineStrategies San Jose has concluded for 2009.  A classic annual industry conclave, this year’s edition of #SESSJ exceeded all expectations.  In the teeth of a difficult global recession, the McEnery Convention Center halls were packed with somewhere around 5000 attendees from all over the world.  That’s huge.

Somehow this gathering was different, deeper in a particularly stimulating way. Perhaps it’s the rapidly maturing industry or influx of new professionals to our ranks.  Their energy was infectious. Maybe SES has undergone an inevitable evolution and found its post-Danny Sullivan identity and legs. Either way, I had a blast.

Some of the session topics were different, diverse, really colorful, even radical and the speakers well-vetted.  SES SJ took some chances in how tracks were sequenced this year, featuring edgy and advanced material to balance the obligatory basics for newbies and clinics.

I have a sense that I met cool new clients and made life-long friends this week. You know who you are tweople.  I got to know some folks better, who have been on my radar (literally) for years. Thanks to all our sliver and gold friends. I love you guys. Truly my passion for search is as much about our industry’s people as the vocation.

The aimClear / Clix Marketing SchmmozeFest San Jose: Tequila Edition was a smash(ed) success. Kudos to our friends at the SJ Hilton for hosting our party on the Affinity Patio. As always David Szetela and I are grateful for the opportunity to pamper our friends.  WebmasterRadio’s Searchbash was insane…one for the record book.

Congratulations to our Incisive Media friends (who work their asses off), including but not limited to Matt McGowan,  Anne Kennedy, Byron Gordon, Marilyn Crafts, Stuart Quealy, Kevin Newcomb, Jackie Ortez and a number of others.

On behalf of the entire aimClear family,  we extend  heartfelt thanks to Merry Morud, Derek Edmond, and Lisa Anderson who covered SES SJ for aimClear Blog. Ya’ll did a fabulous job and I’m proud to have handled editor-duties personally. It’s a pleasure to have such fine people on our side of the net. Thanks to Manny, Matt and Laura for holding the office down while we’re away.

aimClear Blog SES San Jose Coverage Posts Recap
Master Bloggers Share Inside Tips for Success
Does Black Hat Social Media Actually Work?
Twitter & Blog Etiquette: SES Experts Let it Rip
Make Every Click Count! Advanced PPC Tactics
SES Experts Site Clinic Advice: Sex Toys Site Too Stimulating
Brands & Social Media: Serve Customers, Surrender Control
7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Optimization (& Other Profitable Considerations)
Dear Sales Prospect, I Facebooked your Mom!
Explosive Viral Marketing: Killer Tactics & Tips
The Sweet Symmetry in Online Consumerism
A Practical Guide to Performance Based Pricing
No Conversion? Your Baby’s Ugly-Now What?
YouTube Revealed! Emerging SEO Tactics & Insight
As Search Behavior Evolves, So Must Search Strategy
The Future Of Search: What Do Experts Believe?
SES San Jose C-Suite Track #1: The Adaptive CMO
SES San Jose: Track Search at the Speed of Light

photo credit: idovermani

After an invigorating keynote speech from Charlene Li I hit the ground running. “SEO Through Blogs and Feeds” was moderated by Joshua Palau, of Razorfish and included a brilliant panel of  industry-blogger thought-leaders:

Amanda Watlington, Owner, Searching for Profit
Dixon Jones, Managing Director, Receptional LTD
Sally Falkow, President, PRESSfeed
Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board & CEO, TopRank Online Marketing
Jim Hedger, Lead Blogger, Webmaster Radio

Watlington took the podium first and gave a brief look back on SES conferences and the blogging sessions. The first blog session was five years ago in an unglamorous position. It was the last session on the last day. The panel didn’t think anyone would show up but they ended up with a full room.

Don’t blog just because everyone, even your competitors are doing it. Avoid the “me-too” blog. It’s essential to create unique and vital content for your business otherwise you will be lost in the shuffle. Focus on business content, not your personal life.

Watlington has noticed the impact the recession has blogging. Companies don’t feel they can keep up and stay focused with a limited budget but your blog must be an integral part of your marketing plan, not a pet project. Move the blog from the “experiment” mode to fast track implementation with a content strategy.

It’s All About the Content
Develop a long-term battle plan, peek into your company’s future and amp up what is interesting.

You absolutely must have analytics and assess them.
Build your keyword list and live by it- but revisit it regularly to discard stale keywords.

Address comments in a timely manner and encourage deeper reading, link to your friends.

Leverage Readers
Use social media to announce and expand your reach. Treat each post as a mini PR campaign.Track and analyze your success.

Blog Ranking Case Studies
Dixon Jones provided excellent case studies on how blogging gives you the ability to rank for popular keywords.

Post Secret started as a space for people who have a secret and want to share it but not with anyone they actually know. Seems kind of silly, but it’s immensely popular and now they have a wealth of backlinks and domain links. PostSecret now ranks for the intriguing singular keyword: “secret”.

David Naylor is #1 for “UK SEO” but how did he get there? He continually posts with provocative and interesting content. Because of this quality the number of links has steadily grown.

The anchor text related to his blogs are amazing but only 3 links say “UK SEO” verbatim. But he has 6 comic blogs saying Dave Naylor UK SEO.

Bloggers- spread the linklove! Linking to relevant and similar sites is essential when blogging. Bloggers love reciprocal links and other bloggers notice if you link or not. You have to spread the love to get love.

The Necessity and Importance of Feeds
Next, Falkow focused on feeds because there is useful content on your website which wouldn’t be appropriate on a blog but should still be broadcast and available.

The best way to socialize your content is with news feeds (RSS). Google’s definition of a blog: “a webpage with frequently updated content” and as Matt Cutts said: having a blog is important for ranking in Google SERPs. Do the math.

RSS feeds not only notify your subscribers and other bloggers to your content search engines love feeds and notice how active they are. Aggregators of feeds such as Technorati and Google Blog Search have a community which feed off this content who in turn post these links to their social web. All these people have their own audience creating a snowball effect.

Odden segued from discussing optimization and broadcasting to the tactics of achieving links:

8 Blog Link Tactics

• Quality out means quality in- high quality content is important know your audience
  
• Link Out- spread the love
• Make a big ass list.
  
• Get on “other” lists- tell them to consider yours on these list blog comments
• Make a killer tool that makes it easy to share and bookmark
• Write guest posts (link to lisa and derek here?) like associations and other promenent blog- let them know you’re availabl
• Power up ReTweets -ad that RT badge and make it EASY
• Network OFFLINE- Use socail media to connect with people online and augment it with LIVE networking

BONUS TIP: dynamically embed a hard link to the post in you RSS feed

Broadcasting Sound
WebmasterRadio’s Jim Hedger was last up and dove right into benefits of feeds for other formats besides text. “The fine arts of wide-casting to a narrow audience and narrow-casting to a wide one”

This panel is full of great bloggers, but they are all about text- Hedger is all about broadcasting sound. Being in this industry, it’s all about narrow-casting and knowing your audience is a big key to success.

Webmasterradio is a major voice in the SEO community. They’ve been around for 5 years and have compiled 10,000+ unique historic files. Each file has a unique topic, with its own page, imagine the SEO that goes into optimizing and maintaining this massive wealth of SEO data?! Wow. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

• In 2008 Webmasterradio recieved 2.1 million unique listeners: 53% from distributed podcasts like iTunes
• 32% on-demand directly from webmasterradio.fm
• 15% listen live
• Since 53% of their listeners are off site- distribution is everything.

The takeaways from this session in a nutshell: create unique and vital content, have a content strategy, link out to get links in, you must have a feed, know your audience and know where and how to distribute your content.

“Blogging’s going to be around for quite awhile so we better get good with it.” -Amanda Watlington

Today’s panel at SES San Jose had a lively round table discussion on the ethics of white hat vs. black hat practices in social media. The outstanding cast of speakers featured (the never ghoulish) Lee Odden CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, Beth Harte Principal of Harte Marketing, Chris Bennett president and founder of 97th Floor and the notorious Dave Snyder co-founder of Search & Social.

The bottom line is- don’t be stupid, consumer trust is sacred and they can smell BS from a mile away.

Moderator Dave Evans of Digital Voodoo gave an excellent overview of proper use of Social Media. There isn’t a divine law regarding social media and proper practices, he said, BUT consumer trust is sacred. If you misuse social media the collective will find you- they are smart and can spot an outsider.

The panel seemed in agreement that “Black Hat” is pretty much BS- it’s either smart marketing or it’s dumb. Odden stated the intention of black hat practices is to get better results faster but marketers also need to manage risk. And the risk involved with deceiving with social media may not be easy to quantify monetarily but consumers lose trust.

Snyder commented that the term black hat was used for spammers, there is a term of ethic when it comes to black hat so “let’s not give back handed slaps to real good black hats.” Cheers.

He went on to say, “It’s all about the community accepting it. There’s no way to “GAME” social media- the users will kick it out if it’s no good.” Breaking these ethics of the community would be spamming it for links. Tsk tsk.

Ghost Writers- Not Black Hat But Not Good
Harte raised an excellent point- ghost bloggers and tweeters are deceptive in her eyes, “I don’t want to talk to a mouth piece. You want to know who you’re engaging with.” Odden agreed with the sentiment- if you’re trying to create a relationship then yes, disclose and be honest but if your avatar is just pumping out corporate information which the community accepts then that’s ok. Ghost bloggers aren’t considered black hat though- so where’s the line?
Are SEOs and PR firms who provide this service for their clients screwed?

A counter argument brought up by Bennett. No. Each platform is different and you can’t leverage it unless you know it and this is where social marketers excell. Snyder explained that SEOs act as a bullhorn, “we’re not the voice, we’re just giving them the tools and teaching people how to utilize the platform to communicate.”

To overcome the ghost writer no-no Harte suggested brands create a voice within their company by assessing its employees. Find your gems that can write, are social and have personality. It’s best to start internally and work your way out.

Who’s To Blame?
The next heated discussion, raised by Snyder, circled around blaming the platforms for enabling the spammy evil doers. Twitter- if you want to make the media better stop spammers. “But are you going to blame the telephone for calling you at dinner?” asked Odden, no, that would be silly.

Should Twitter do something about spammers? Isn’t it their job? Snyder hypothesized that Twitter doesn’t want to kill spam bots because they want to be acquired and a social media platform gets acquired by having massive amounts of profiles so they let the spammers loose. It makes sense.

In the end, the panel was mostly agreed, some more robustly than others, that “black hat” should be dead. Yes, there are ethics when it comes to social media but who’s to say what’s right or wrong? The community decides what it wants or doesn’t want and generally it will police itself.

The first mal-practitioner of Twitter was @jonestshirts which sells blank t-shirts in bulk and uses twitter to drive traffic to their website jonestshirts.com and encourage repeat customers.

Evans- You have 150 followers and are only following 12- why not your followers? Create that relationship and don’t just use it as a RSS feed.

Lieb- When you acknowledge someone with links and pictures that person will RT as a “hey- look at me!”

Slegg- You need more info on your bio and customize your background. Using a customized background is SO important. Don’t just use as a promo feed- engage.

Evans- In terms of the blog: vary, include “funniest t-shirt” post. You may not be selling it or trying to promote it but it’s in the same category and may be of interst to your visitor. Also, add categories.

Slegg- If you’re having problems with spammers on your blog, Akismet- is awesome at stopping SPAM in Wordpress

Evans- You can also use CAPTCHA to make sure the commenter is a person.

The next brave volunteer was @WebGuild, which organizes information about stuff that happens in the webspace and writes a feed which goes to Twitter. @WebGuild uses Twitter to drive traffic to the website, they get about 10,000 unique visitors on a good day-12% coming from Twitter. Not bad.

Evans- Do you tweet yourself as YOU?

@WebGuild- No.

Evans- You need to.

Slegg- It looks just like an RSS feed threw up in Twitter. You need to re-write to create interest.

Evans- Follow these people back to see if they RT and thank them for it. When you start to put conversation in Twitter you’ll get better feedback.

Question: Corporate Tweeters- should they tweet under the company twitter profile or personal accounts and names?

Evans- It depends. For example, @Zappos- it’s Zappo and a name or initials, but it depends on the company.

The next account up for critique was@BCTravelGuide an account attempting to drive traffic to BCtravelguide.ca and its blog. Wait, where’s the blog? Unfortunately, Lieb had to squint and scroll and squint again to find the tiny blog link in the footer. But it didn’t end there- clicking on the footer link brought Lieb to a page which then had yet another step- three links within two sentences pointing to the same place with “Blog” “here” and “come on in” as anchor text. Not kidding. Ouch.

Slegg- Again, Twitter feed same RSS

Evans- It looks sporadic, but the Bio looks pretty good.

Slegg- This doesn’t look engaging at all.

Evans- It doesn’t look like you understand who your customers are and it looks like you just heard about SEO and just threw it at the wall to see what sticks.

On to the blog critique:

Slegg- The other blog (jonestshirts) didn’t have categories- you have WAY too many categories

Lieb- And organic food? Why is that there?

Evans- It looks like SEO “tricks” and looking at it- it looks like spam.

Lieb- Yeah, it looks like keyword stuffing (Yikes)

Audience Question:I know people are using a lot of automating (Panel groans) but I want to become a thought leader and get a qualified audience @MedicalMktg.

Evans- Get something like TweetDeck or Sessmic Desktop as a tool to manage conversation.

Look at hash tags and friend people who are talking about trending topics in your industry.

RT people’s stuff.

Find a good link on a blog? Tweet it.

Slegg- Follow thought leaders, they have a big audience and RT their stuff, they may follow you back.

Lieb- It could be visually more stunning and use hashtags, makes it easy to follow you.

Evans- Fix you bio.

Lieb- As an author, on Twitter I’m flattered when people recognize me. When you Tweet a good article look them up to see if they’re on Twitter.

Evans- Your company is Health Care Success but the account is @MedicalMktg change that to HCSucces. You need to brand your Twitter handle.

Slegg- Looking at this, I would be sure it’s a spam account.

The next patient at the clinic was @WyoTech, the official auto mechanic tech school of the NHRA with multiple campuses across the States. They are using Twitter to connect with students and hopefully attract new ones.

Evans- I see you do a lot of links. What exactly do you do?

@WyoTech- We’re a trade school.

Evans- You need to hold a real conversation.

Lieb- Your bio needs a little copy-editing, there’s random capitalization of words.

Evans- Go out and look at hashtags where your campus is at and tweet about the city too.

Social media is not easy it takes time to develop conversation and find valuable people to engage.

Lieb- Campuses and schools are really socially oriented, you may want to have different accounts for different campuses. Tell them where to find good pizza in your area or what’s going on in the area.

@WyoTech- We’re one of the official schools for NHRA

Evans- YOU SHOULD BE TALKING ABOUT THAT! Not about the drivers but about pit crew- “look at how fast the pit crew changed that tire!”

@WyoTech- Where do I find hashtags?

Lieb- People make them up.

Evans- There is an argument about not needing hashtags but if you want to follow them- they’re being used in Flickr and Facebook, so it’s a good idea.

An automation abuser @MarvinTowler is passionate about motivation and kickboxing as well as the personal assistant to Jack Canfield, author of the famous Chicken Soup books. He wasn’t actually present (good thing too…) but he asked his friend to have his account critiqued.

Evans- Hmm- from API… looks like spam. Get rid of that.

Slegg- And all these quotes? How is this applicable to your followers?

@MarvinTowler Rep- He replies in DM

Lieb- DMs don’t count as engagement

Lieb- What’s he getting out of this?

@MarvinTowler Rep- He’s about motivating people, passionate about kickboxing and personal assistant to Jack Canfield.

Slegg- But how can he follow 20,000+ people? This isn’t useful.

Lieb- It’s like getting a phone and wanting everyone in the phone book to call you.

Evans- Change his bio.

Slegg- Unfollow all these people and go out and find people that interest him.

Evans- Looks like he read a lot of SEO stuff and tried to implement all of it. There is no strategy.

Be real, tweet and engage.

Don’t be too discouraged in tweeters, the next three are on the right track.

@fairchildsemi from engineeringconnections.com

Evans- I do like your background, but I don’t see a lot of conversation

Slegg- You have a fair amount of followers and that’s good. Start engaging them.

Lieb- You’re not using a shortening service. That’s suicide on Twitter because it will cut off URLs that won’t fit.

Evans- You should be tracking how many clicks the tiny urls get- Bit.ly allows you to look at this
Stay away from URLs that put bars up and doesn’t change it back to regular URL

Cli.gs (in seesmic desktop) filters out the bots that click links (the first 25-50 clicks are bots)

On engineeringconnections.com:

Lieb- Last post was august 3rd- that was a little while ago.

But I do like you have other executives and employees blogging about things are more pertinent to your business.

Slegg- I did see you posted the B2B opportunity- you missed the opportunity to say “hey come visit us at…!”

@FairChildSemi- So we should tweet before and during not just after?

All- YES!

Slegg- You’re missing a great opportunity.

Evans- I would use more pictures on your blog.

Lieb- Blog entries with pictures get higher readership.

Slegg- Set up basic categories.

Evans- When you give people too many options to share- they don’t. Choose a few and choose the ones where you’re community is involved. Engineers aren’t sharing industry links on MySpace.

@WhitePages

Slegg- Looking at your Twitter feed- It looks like Bit.ly threw up on your page.

Evans- It’s about branding!

Look at your background in different screen resolutions so people aren’t missing out on information.

It looks like this is being typed, but every one has a link and that looks like promotion.

Lieb- The teasers can be a little more “teasey”

Slegg- You are engaging with your audience which is really good.

Lieb- You have a low number of followers and following how long have you been doing this?

@WhitePags- We just started a couple months ago.

Lieb- Well, slow and steady DOES win the race.

Evans- On your bio you have a bit.ly for the url, change that.

Slegg- Don’t just have it publish the headline, it’ll get cut off and it looks spammy.

@Savings and savings.com

Evans- I see you have the Facebook page and website- do you want them to go to your website or Facebook page?

Slegg- You’d be better off tweeting every once in awhile saying, “hey, we’re on Facebook, too!” But this is actually a really good Twitter feed.

Lieb- I’m liking the writing, it’s really engaging. I like the call to action, you’re asking users to submit deals.

Evans- The name could indicate spam, but if you look at the feed there IS real engagement.

On savings.com/blog/blog.html: (yes, the panel commented on the URL too)

Slegg- I like the use of photos.

Evans- Include “recent comments” it shows visitors that people engage.

Slegg- Have “blog” be one of the tabs.

Lieb- Don’t let the “tech guys” push you around.

Thomas Bindl, Founder & CEO of Refined Labs GmbH
Thomas’s presentation focused on detailed measurement necessary to achieve success in paid search.

• Search funnel: It’s important to understand that there are 3 types of searches (navigational, informational, transactional).
• Searchers will use multiple phrases related to the same keyword theme before and after the conversion, which indicate different types of intent (“buy HP notebook” is transactional versus “best notebooks” is informational versus “hp.com” being navigational)
• A quarter of all tracking data is wrong. 25% of conversions need 2+ clicks (based on internal research at Refined Labs).

Attribution Management

• Try to understand cross-channel effects
• The brand works better with generic terms ["brand" keyword]
• Define a value for all clicks leading to conversion [attribute multiple clicks]
• The longer the sales cycle, the more important
• In doubt credit the last click the most, but not everything [credit a larger percentage of the sale to the last click]

Optimize for your KPI’s
It’s important to measure all possible data, including keyword and ad copy performance, placement and landing page optimization. Other important KPI’s include revenue per impression/click and page impressions/click.

Make sure to use your analytic package’s filter functionality as much as possible.

Cutting the long tail short
Thomas showed example of how important it is to use exact match, phrase match and negative keywords

The Paris Hilton does not necessarily want their PPC ads to appear when search intent might lead to celebrity videos under the same keyword search

Bill Lan, Vice President of Account Development for Efficient Frontier

Utilizing search query reports

• Get direction in your keyword strategy. Start with general, core keywords and use search query reports to refine and expand the keyword list.
• Add exact match opportunities based on ROI and incorporate negative keywords when its clear the user intent does not match the advertising objective.

Mining the long tail

• Continue expanding the keyword set. Systematically expose under-explored keywords in order to obtain more insight and data on keyword effectiveness. The goal is to reduce revenue reliance on only a small percentage of keywords.
• Bid on long-tail keywords with confidence. Brainstorm and expand the keyword set using semantic relevance (cape cod “hotels” versus “resorts” versus “vacation properties”). [Bill used search engine API's to develop an internal tool for this discovery process.]

Using seasonal data

• Use historical data to assist with decisions on PPC visibility and bid management. This is incredibly important for seasonal sales cycles.

Andrew Goodman, on the SES Advisory Board & Principal at Page Zero Media and Editor of Traffick
Andrew stresses “greedy” [a sexy way of saying "optimal"] ad testing strategies. You want the best ad to stand out from the keyword competition. Use PPC performance reports to find this [Andrew acknowledges that it is not as easy as it sounds].

• Think about your objectives: While Google’s most important factor with quality score is CTR your business is [should be] most concerned with cost per acquisition.
• Find the double winner: the ad that has a high CTR without hurting ROI. You will test many variations of landing pages [Andrew points out that for one client they tested over 60 variations] as well as ad copy.

Ways that you can find the double winner

• Keep your ads “in play” so you have more data to analyze performance
• Don’t make mistakes with latency or date ranges
• Must use multivariate testing
• Consider attributes of winning ad creative “account wide”
• Seek to understand why some ads become “double winners”
• Evaluate and improve the call-to-action
• Refine and text ad copy for the most effective messaging

Sage Lewis, President of SageRock.com
Sage took us through a series of PPC headlines which could offer opportunities for search marketers [he may have just wanted session bloggers to type really fast].Sage Lewis, President of SageRock.com
Sage took us through a series of PPC headlines which could offer opportunities for search marketers [he may have just wanted session bloggers to type really fast].

Some of the important search advertiser-related headlines included:

• The rise of Hulu as a platform for video advertising [commands as much as TV, and 10% of online video ads]
• The rise of video advertising in general
• Search Ads are less helpful than TV or newspaper [37% said TV ads were most helpful, in comparison to 14% indicating search ads]
• Search plus display still the hottest online ad combo in Q1 2009 [119% revenue life in offline sales when used in combination]

[Author comment: While the slides were interesting, it would have been helpful if references were cited; particularly for those with access to the presentations for download]

Ari Levenfeld, Manager Client Services at Ask Sponsored Listings
Ari works for the “third largest search network” Ari cautions that many marketers fall into one of two categories when it relates to data: either too much data or limited/no access to data [both of these create problems].

The key takeaway from Ari’s presentation was simple: It’s important to set a target CPA and evaluate your historical CPA across all of your advertising channels.

Strike out the advertising channels that do not perform up to the expectations of your targeted CPA and increase the budgets for those channels and campaigns that drive revenue for your business.

Derek Edmond is a Managing Partner of KoMarketing Associates, specializing in B2B Internet Marketing for the technology, industrial and professional services industries

The reviewers didn’t pull any punches, “If you’re a spammer and are having your site reviewed in this clinic now’s the time to bail because we will call you out, you will get de-indexed and it will be funny.”

The heavy-hitter panel was comprised of Elisabeth Osmeloski, Director of Online Media, Adventures in Search, Tiffany Lane, Search Quality Team, Google, Greg Boser, President, WebGuerrilla LLC, Matt Cutts, Software Engineer Guru, Google Inc.,  and….The Site experts chose to review: MyPleasure.com – A sex toy retailer.

This expert-selected sex toys site is unique in that there’s no porn on the site and the founder is a sex therapist.  Here’s the expert advice:

• If you want to get over the hump to sales, help users understand the product and know who is behind the site
• There’s too much stimulation on the page-swear to God I’m not making this up
• Conversion rate is low
• Add phone number so Bing.com can index and direct to a call

Site: RVZen – Site is in development, not available for review

• Great job with directory
• Keyword research
• Create community
• Made titles name of companies so you can rank for brand

Site: Meijer.com

• Don’t waste time with brand name in front on title tag if you’re not a well-known brand
• Leave as little as possible up to Google
• Google doesn’t recognize underscores as separators in URLs
• Simplify site structure
• URL structure is obstacle for Google
• Good link profile
• Adding original content is a big value to your visitors
• Analyze site search and help visitors find what they’re looking for

Site: TeamQuest.com

• IT Service optimization site
• Make it clearer who you are and what you do
• Do thorough keyword search as well as asking a user to describe what you do to get to the industry vernacular
• optimize videos for search
• Make sure that your blog, videos, podcasts add value, don’t do it just for the sake of doing it
• Host video on your own domain
• Keep WordPress up to date so it doesn’t get hacked

Site: CheapAirportParking.org

• Maybe choose a domain that is more brandable
• Lift nofollow’s for relevant pages such as FAQ which should flow page rank

Not all attendees headed the initial warning and this site got called out for paid links. This site will be lucky not too de-indexed for the sheer number of paid back links.  Though the conversation went back and forth between the white and black hat benefits and potential downfalls, ultimately Google’s Matt Cutts got the last word.

“Buying links are bad,” said Cutts

The session started with sex toys and, appropriately ended with hookah

Site: Hookah-Shisha.com

• The site is doing a good job of social marketing and engages visitors with promo codes and incentives such as hookah points – again not making this up
• Great blog that talks about hookah etiquette and other community-minded issues
• Exceptional user reviews
• Drive traffic using plurals
• Drive traffic from the long-tail

Lisa Williams has been an online marketer for 12 years and search marketer for eight.  Williams is CEO of MEDIA forte marketing located in Hood River, oregon which specializes in pay-for- performance search marketing for ecommerce sites.

Crowds have gathered on street corners since the dawn of humanity to share information, love, indignation, politics and every other type of interaction. A lot of good and plenty of damage was done to brands below the radar.

Now the clout of  engaged social media users is affecting reputations on and offline. Three of four Americans are involved in social media, yet there are still a surprising number of CEOs who aren’t ready to allow their customers a corporate-hosted public voice.

The business community needs to learn they can’t control the conversation, but manage it.  This  was the goal for yesterday’s Search Engine Strategies San Jose Social Media Track session: Social Media: Managing Conversations and Reputations When the User Is In Control

Walmart Real-Time Reviews are a great example of encouraging consumers to participate in their brand and share their experience by sharing online reviews in their stores. Social marketing helps consumers get info to make purchase decisions by taking advantage of what  others have already learned.  People are influencing purchase decisions on and offline through social media.

Moderator Anna Maria Virzi, Executive Editor from ClickZ, a journalism major, shared that there is a parallel between managing info to share as journalists and online marketers managing the conversation when the user is control.

Dave Evans, VP Author and Digital Voodoo cautioned, don’t try to trick the audience.  Advertisers can influence  social media, but not manipulate.  Providing transparency creates trust.  Dell participates in their community online by being themselves and adding value to the community.

Liana Evans, Director of Social Media at Serengeti Communications notes the change from push marketing to consumer-generated content.  How do advertisers win when the marketing message isn’t important unless users care about product impressions and value?  Participation is key.  Establish buzz about your business before engaging them.  Click to purchase is rare from social media so other measurement is needed to establish value.

Understanding social capital and defining the little things that matter to your customers is the first step to truly listening. Understanding and sharing these messages are more powerful when addressing customer interest.

Home Depot executes on customers priorities by addressing that pricing is less important than associate product knowledge and depth of products for home projects.  Use social to listen to customers needs and address them on and offline.

Brian Kalma, Head of User Experience and Web Strategy of Zappos confirmed that bad reviews as well as good are a part of the consumer story and need to be respected and seen as an opportunity to provide better products and services.

Jet Blue provides info about the whole flyer experience beginning at the airport by creating an exceptional standard for delivering bags.  Positive conversation begins with positive customer experiences.

Listening before engaging in the conversation is an important method said,  Mike Volpe, VP of Inbound Marketing at HubSpot.

“Successful websites get about as much traffic, leads and sales from social media as they do from search engines.”

It is highly measurable and attributable.  Volpe recommends combo of content, engines and social.  Make content link worthy and share worthy and then make sharing as easy as possible for lead generation as well as  content and social also drives search.

Kalma stated that social is a great medium because customers engage when they want and how they want.  Zappos did an exceptional job of engaging their customers through listening, observing and interacting.   Zappos inspires 700,000 social media interactions per day on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, My Zappos and other sources. He  recommends that advertisers don’t over plan it, but nurture it “be smart, be real, talk.”  If customers say something negative, do something positive and respond and use it as an opportunity to improve.

Understand the types of social media in your space and speak directly to those personas.  There was a great deal of content published when Amazon acquisition was announced, yet Twitter was the #1 referring site for that content.  Consumers are talking about you whether or not you’re involved with social media, you can’t drive, but you can get in the car.

Lisa Williams has been an online marketer for 12 years and search marketer for eight.  Williams is CEO of MEDIA forte marketing located in Hood River, oregon which specializes in pay-for- performance search marketing for ecommerce sites.

Sage Lewis, President of SageRock provided a quick introduction [apparently Tim has a lot of groupies ] and then it was off to the presentation.

Tim Ash’s Presentation on Landing Page Testing and Tuning
[Author's Note: This review does to little justice to an excellent presentation. Tim used a significant number of really cool screenshots and visual examples to illustrate points as well as actively engaging the audience. I highly suggest attending his session at a future conference if landing page optimization is a priority.]

Tim’s two main goals of the presentation:

• Why you should care [MONEY! That was easy]
• Review the 7 deadly sins of landing page design

Landing pages are a weak link in PPC and marketers should invest more money in landing page optimization. Fixing landing pages lowers costs and creates efficiency [lower your cost per acquisition]

Question: Who should design your site [and landing pages]?
Answer: Website Visitors – they are the real conversion experts. Listen to your website visitors.

During the Q&A one of the first questions was “how to do this?” Tim suggested that the data marketers collect from testing landing page adjustments is the most effective way to receive customer feedback

Tim showed examples of landing page optimization success stories.

First example: subtle changes increased conversions by 40% and revenue by $3,285,000.

Four other examples provided further evidence that landing page optimization significantly increased conversion rates and revenue for the applicable organizations (one success story increased revenue by $48 million dollars).

7 deadly sins of landing page design

1. An unclear call-to-action [identify what your visitor is suppose to do!]
2. Too many choices
3. Asking for too much information [don't waste your visitors' time]
4. Too much text [audience laughs at the extreme examples but Tim's comment is sound, "it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye; go back and review your landing pages as well"] – less is more
5. Not keeping your promises [are you matching the visitors' intent?]
6. Visual distractions [Tim: "do not inflict your creativity on your employer" - hope I got that quote 100% correct ]
7. Lack of trust [Tim: "people need to know what you stand for" ilustrate why visitors should trust your products or services]

Multiple Sins Case Study – Credo Mobile
Tim wrapped up the presentation with a case study of an existing client.

The company came to Site Tuners with a landing page for an email campaign. While at first glance, the landing page seemed sufficient, it actually contained multiple landing page sins.

The core issues:

• An unclear call-to-action [debatable at first but explained shortly thereafter]
• Too much text
• Lack of trust

A heatmap showed that no one was looking at their primary call-to-action [a seemingly prominent green button in the center of the page!]

After redesign [into what some may consider a relatively boring, simple design] conversion rates increased by 84%.

Derek Edmond is a Managing Partner at KoMarketing Associates, providing B2B PPC, SEO and Social Media services to a wide range of companies and organizations across the US.</em

Today on the Social Media Track at Search Engine Strategies San Jose, I attended “Facebook Ads: Reaching Prospects Earlier In The Decision Cycle” with Sarah Smith (Manager of Online Sales Operations for Facebook). She helped guide advertisers through successful implementation of their ad model. 

Facebook is generating not just 3 billion searches and boasting 250 million users, but  its’ own full length feature film entitled, “The Social Network” It’s not just how you find your high school classmates, it’s a community of users that self-defines themselves through joining groups, becoming fans and establishing friends.

Sharing socially in a safe environment where users interact only with their “friends” has created a surge of 30-something users and has positioned Facebook for great growth and advertisers for great opportunity.

How can advertisers combine the right message and creative to reach the right audience? Smith guided advertisers through targeting potential customers earlier in the buying cycle.

Marketing
Engaging with Facebook users has added a very viable and profitable tool to the online marketers social toolbox.  Caveats apply here for novice users just as they do on Google, ad accounts are easy to create but need the right creative, message and analysis to be effective.

• Design ads that demand connection
• Build a fan base to connect with customers
• Be active with your fans, pay attention to the needs of your fan including frequency
• Read Facebook blog for ideas

Design
Sarah cited this as one of the best opportunities for ad success.  Experimenting with design and content and creating clear calls to action and matching ad to landing page provides exceptional lift.

• Match landing page creative with ad
• Change creative often and refresh image and content
• Adds decays within 1-2 weeks

Target
Though the limited targeting demographic-profiled users isn’t as rich as advertisers would like, Facebook continues to provide demographics that can compliment current campaigns and help improve reaching target markets across multiple channels.

• Target by job titles
• Target to specific audience, make ad product specific
• Target by demographics

Test

• Test ad creative
• Experiment and mix targeting
• Rotate creative, and landing pages with multiple ads
• optimize with Facebook Ad Manager
• Can’t control ad position

Analyze
A surprisingly low number of advertisers delve into Facebook reporting,  said  Though conversion tracking isn’t in place yet, advertisers can track campaigns through specific URL’s and promotional codes.

• Use Facebook reporting
• Responder profiles and use data for Facebook as well
• Reporing guide
• Tracking code in URL, no conversion tracking

Leveraging the Facebook Fan
What is a fan?  A fan doesn’t have to be a customer, it can also be an evangelist or a prospect.  Marketers can also use fans for CRM and feedback on new products.

Smith also recommends running promotions to drive user engagement, but cautions that they need to be run through 3rd party applications and also that advertisers can’t use becoming a fan as a part of the sweepstakes offer.  Best practices for managing this process include reading Facebook guidelines to create an exceptional user experience. Facebook.com/connect is a great resource for seeing successful case studies.

Though Facebook made some missteps in implementation that created a backlash from their guests, they grew  twice as fast as Twitter in July according today’s Washington Post article and their launch of improved site search and other user friendly functionality will likely further its’ meteoric rise to social media fame.

Smith noted that about 30% of Search Engine Strategy attendees are using Facebook ads and they hope to encourage participation by offering a $50 free ad for SES attendees by contacting advertise at facebook dot com or use promo code provided in SES conference packages.

Lisa Williams has been an online marketer for 12 years and search marketer for eight.  Williams is CEO of MEDIA forte marketing located in Hood River, oregon search engine optimization is their business focus. She serves on the SEMpdx Board of Directors as the Marketing/Membership chair.

photo credit: eyesplash Mikul

What online venues do your customers flock to when they’re not searching Google or visiting your website? They could be talking about your brand – good or bad – at this very moment, in an online venue seen by thousands or even millions of users.

While it’s no secret how prominent social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are, the ability to generate buzz and establish productive relationships with customers online is certainly not as clear.

Search Engine Strategies San Jose kicked off Day Two with the session: Igniting Viral Campaigns: Leveraging Consumer-Generated Content.

Moderated by Aaron Kahlow, Chairman & Founder of Online Marketing Summit this session looked to provide answers to some of these questions and insight into what enabled companies to stand out and be talked about.

Bill Leake, President and CEO of Apogee Search

• Bill believes that at a high level, there is a philosophical gap between spending money to drive people to content (via paid media) versus gaining audience via news, press and mentions (earned media).
• Search is great at dealing with “NEED” but there is a struggle to associate search with “TRUST”. The problem is that media that offers trust has difficulties associated that with the appropriate need.

Bill showed a case study on Office Depot. The company chose to add consumer generated reviews on the site. The results:

• Increased CTR 78%
• Revenue by 196.6%
• New Buyers by 183%

Credibility and trust for organizations are earned through positive reviews not marketing statements. You need to be out in the community seeding conversations and gaining visibility to build your presence.

Viral marketing takes a long time to take off, but when it does: it takes off very quickly.

Greg Finn, Director of Internet Marketing, 10e20 decided to show more tactical tips and tricks for his presentation [here's a recap of the key information from the presentation]

• Content must have a purpose
• Identify viral content – humor, educational resources, comprehensive lists, breaking information
• Tips:
  • Make sure there is proper formatting
  • Make sure content is easy to consume
  • Be visual
• Look for social tone (not too corporate or marketing style)
• Greg is a fan of social news – sites like Digg, Reddit and Propeller – used to generate links and traffic. The key is to be as non-corporate as possible and you need to [actively] participate before expecting results

Social bookmarking misconceptions

• Digg – it’s not just video games and gadgets, there are now categories such as travel, food, and even pets & animals
• StumbleUpon – available for any viral campaign. There are lots of categories to choose from but be careful choosing the most appropriate ones
• Reddit – now offer “subreddits” (sub-categories of the site) for the best visibility. Instead of competing with the the broader audience, subreddits offer a more specific niche with less competition for visibility

Social networking tips and advice:

• Corporate & brand promotion is not the only angle
• Helping the community is better than helping yourself
• Greg showed a Facebook fan page that inspire emotion instead of just company information (Laughing Fan Page)

Tips and advice for twitter

• Make it easy to tweet content
• Allow for easy retweets
• Promote information during peak hours
• Reach out to bloggers and online forums (entice others to ignite your campaigns)

Be careful and strategic with execution

• Stagger approaches for optimal visibility
• Provide alternative ways to share on social networks
• Cross promote to maximize exposure
• Leverage viral mentions to continue momentum (repeat underperforming campaigns with the coverage content)

Matthew Liu, Product Manager for YouTube Sponsored Videos offered a presentation specifically on viral video [with YouTube].

• Sometimes viral video “just happens” but it certainly is not the norm (Example: David After Dentist was probably not an intended to go viral)
• Use Guerrilla Marketing – subtle branding and stealth marketing and see to news sites, blogs, Twitter and Facebook to fan the flames
• Use Explicit Marketing – communicate directly to the YouTube community and engage in dialogue via comments, responses and subscriptions
• If all else fails, consider paid marketing – YouTube “Promoted Videos” and advertising services (GEICO and OfficeMax have used paid advertising campaigns to ignite viral success).

Video Optimization Best Practices

• Use an accurate and descriptive title
• Provide a detailed description with complete sentences
• Include descriptive keyword tags but avoid keyword stuffing
• Share videos with member of the community and experiment with annotations, video responses and thumbnails
• Embed videos on other websites
• Matt points out that YouTube looks at keyword stuffing and spam tactics (to artificially inflate views) and will penalize video content if it is found
• Matt points out that YouTube Insight offers analytics and reports on video, including hotspots (where in the video users are viewing most)
• Finally, there is a PPC program (Paid Discovery) for advertising and promoting video content

Barbara Coll, CEO of WebMama.com Inc.
Barbara provided two examples of user generated content. Her key question: “Did you ask for consumer engagement?” – you have to have content and be able to ask for engagement.

Example: Yosemite Rose Cottage B&B

• They gained Trip Advisor reviews and even though users might not read them, search engines will.
• Barbara cautions to be careful and monitor reviews for negativity. React quickly to address these issues because Google indexes reviews even faster than before.
• The B&B also posted videos on YouTube as well.

Barbara’s comment: You have to constantly feed the “search beasts“; ask the community (your community) to get involved.

Example: VMWare
VMWare provided the community with the opportunity to get engaged, spread the word and suggest an action.

• VMWare engaged users in various communities (branded and third party sites). The key was being very active and responding to users. Even though a thread may only get 2 or 3 replies, there might be thousands of views [that means that many others are curious about the issue or want to see VMWare's response]
• VMWare uses Twitter to engage the community. Product managers contribute to the feed and the Twitter profile points to the comprehensive list of VMWare blogs.
• For VMWare blogs: the organization not only showcases VMWare-specific blogs but also employee blogs outside of the organization. There were dozens of employee and organizational blogs
• Finally, WMWare mapped out all of their social media activities on one main landing page. While they are not active in every community, they’ve taken the time to establish presence in them regardless.

Brian Ellefritz, Senior Manager, Social Media Marketing at Cisco Systems
Brian showcases a viral marketing success story. One of the Cisco divisions would be at a major event (CES 2009) and had the desire to gain increased visibility. Unfortunately, all they had at the time was an [expensive] video and no plan.

The solution: with limited budget, they created a contest “Heaven or Hell” which enabled users to submit 3 minute videos offering a $10,000 prize for the two best submissions (one for Heaven and one for Hell).

The winners:

• Ryan – Rich guy from the US – 4 stars, 6,700 views and 100 comments [Heaven]
• Angpao – Poor guy from the Phillipines – 4 stars, 17,000 views and 1200 comments [Hell]

For Cisco, the entire campaign generated 50+ video submissions, 60,000+ views and over 15,000 comments. In Cisco’s mind, the real win was that they received lots of submissions [they were afraid they might not receive any]

Brian’s tips and best practices when creating a contest intended to go viral

• Don’t scrimp on incentives
• Consumers should share and promote their own videos to get views/rating
• Cisco used an integrated promotion including paid search, banners, email and blogger outreach to gain visibility
• Cisco also specifically reached out through YouTube contacting prior contest winners and video creators in hopes they would be interested in their contest

Derek Edmond is a Managing Partner at KoMarketing Associates, providing B2B search engine marketing for technology, industrial and professional services providers.