In case you haven’t noticed the SEO buzz kill, it’s practically Armageddon out there, at least  for some last gen marketers. For SEO practitioners who don’t know what they’re doing anymore 2013 SEO is brutal man, just brutal.  Google’s veritable Jihad against link spammers and outdated link building tactics is finally working to a greater extent. Search engines in general are building better bullsh*t detectors than ever before.

Search engine results pages mirror the real world more now and real brands have real advantages.  Marketers can complain all they want but the truth is that brand-advantage is not new. Before the Internet it was always hard for new brands to break through. We got spoiled for about a decade because early flawed search engine technology artificially leveled the playing field for clever would-be competitors. Now search engines reflect the physical world more accurately. Not happy? Get over it. *Sigh*

The good news is that for marketers adept in organic, paid and paid-organic distribution of awesome content the living is high baby!  Pitching for links only with email and phone calls is SO 2011! There’s plenty of good ol’ #SEO links to go around for authentic and talented content marketers who understand the current distribution paradigm.

Since so much of SEO is contingent on actual quality links and true social signals, there’s nothing to be afraid of for evolved content marketers. Great content properly distributed yields signals and links. We’ve seen this proven over and over.

To begin, the foundation of great content marketing is…well… tremendously useful content advised, tailored and tuned by the very audiences to which we expect will consume it.  All the classic caveats apply: How does the content serve users and why will they care?  How does the content demystify, serve, remove barriers to conversion and move users towards the purchase funnel in attributable steps?

This post is not about creating great content. We assume you already know how to create content that works. Content that “works” means to say that “If the right user sees the content then the user will value the content on some level and have a propensity to somehow act.”  Also “Good things will happen from content touches including users sharing, linking, and converting via content-as-the-living-landing-page. Rather, this post is all about how to get MORE, much more, out of your terrific content.

In this post-Penguin & Panda link building environment, many old methods don’t work anymore. As we link builders seek new age replacement methods, we’re after content and distribution programs that:

• Earn real links from sites with good domain authority
• Generate authentic social signals from real users of good authority
• Insulate our sites from harsh search engine algorithm updates
• Drive targeted & scalable social psychographic traffic to content that converts
• Amplify PR distribution to journalists, bloggers, and a myriad focused media-role users

Recently Forbes magazine caught up with aimClear’s social distribution tactical successes online, and highlighted one of our client’s case studies to readers. The article by Neal Rodriguez details our team’s integrated techniques to amplify on-site content marketing winners for conversion. The attention was gratifying since we see stellar results over and over with our clients and have been evangelizing these distribution tactics for years.

The Forbes article focused on paid-organic distribution for CPA KPI conversions using content as a vessel. Content marketing conversion amplified with paid-organic social distribution is cool enough in itself.

However conversion is only half the groovy story. Paid-organic content social content distribution also spawns transformational SEO benefits. Let’s explore the (most delightful) “other side” of the paid-organic content distribution story, SEO.  Yep, we’re talking about the social signals and links you need for SEO.

Starting With Facebook
Here’s how it works. Social media distribution in Facebook used to be mostly free. Content placed on your wall was seen by many people without marketers needing to pay. Now Facebook has learned to monetize the distribution of “organic” content, even to most users who liked your page. You have to pay to play using Page Post Ads and Sponsored Stories or a relatively small amount of FB users will see your content.

The good news is that it’s relatively inexpensive to “re-enable” organic features to dominate.  The Page Post Ads look organic. Some FB users are bothered but most don’t seem to care. If your content is good enough to earn conversion, then it can be amplified.  For the most part, if you’re not amplifying content on your social walls, few focused users will see the content, relative to available psychographic audiences.

The graph below shows the conversion effect. From September to December the content was marketed by organic (not paid) search and social methods.  Take note that the content did earn organic conversions.  In January and February we dialed in paid-organic distribution to occupational psychographics. You’ll see that conversion scaled right along with the traffic lift.

Anything great about content marketing can be amplified. If you’re not doing paid-organic social content distribution, no matter how strong the organic distribution (non paid), the content is wasted compared to the exposure it could receive for relatively small money. You’re leaving money on the table from traffic, buzz, links and conversion.

Modern Link Building That Google Loves & Nearly Always Works
Well-executed organic amplification of relevant content nearly always results in links. Marketers are already learning to ditch old style link building efforts in favor of paid-organic link building to earned psychographic audiences, bloggers and journalists. We tell our clients to spend their money building more effective content and distributing it to social psychographic segments.

Let’s think it through. The best way to earn links is to ensure that “backlink ready” audiences with an affinity for your business’s wares to consume your content. Paid organic amplification gets content in front of many more targeted users. Page post and feed ads in Facebook perform nearly as corresponding organic page units sometimes even better.

Also, well-targeted content traffic from a FB page post ad performs on your site much the same as “intent” search keywords. That means users spend copious time on site, page views per visit, bounce rate and (yes) conversion.  CONTENT is what has always earned links.

Not Just Facebook
Most mainstream social platforms are going this way by creating advertising products to pimp content. For instance new DIY targeting in Twitter is making radically focused paid-organic content amplification possible. Twitter is more aggressive and transparent than Facebook when it comes letting users know that promoted tweets are paid.  Still, users accept the ads just fine and promoted Tweets perform very well.

Twitter targeting methods are hot, which we’ll cover here in aimClear Blog in coming days.  One method is to target followers of users who follow other people.

Master Social PR For SEO
Content amplification to occupational media roles is a new staple of the modern distribution and link building.  aimClear was early in evangelizing the notion of paid-organic distribution of content to publications, bloggers, journalists, editors, morning show anchors and most every other media role. It works so very well, often resulting in interviews, links and media attention.

Savvy PR pros know that they can target media players at specific publications from USA Today and the Washington Post to Conde Nast. Think of it as inbound PR. Next time you want the media to consume your content. Make sure they see it! Similar targeting is easily deployed using paid Twitter and LinkedIn.

Worry Less About Google Algorithm Updates Trashing Content. Prepare your content strategy to sail through SEO updates with less stress. The techniques shared in this post will insulate you from future Google inquisitions. The social signals generated and links earned are real users consuming your content. That’s what Google wants, right?

 “Paid organic” social content distribution may be the most misunderstood and underused tactic in all of online marketing today. Distributing content that lives on your site by amplifying it to select psychographics via social walls is the greatest only-lightly contested marking opportunity since 2002, when Google AdWords was released.  Understanding and actualizing this tactic means to dominate with content marketing. Better yet, well-targeted traffic to content from social channels yields conversions, likes, follows and other good things.

Literally, SEO link building agencies that don’t use these tactics risk going out of business of losing their jobs.  Agencies that do not adapt to the new link-building paradigm may not survive. Sites bolstered by old link building methods wilted or tanked when Panda and Penguin hit. This reality has hurt many.

It should be noted that paid-organic social content distribution does not  replace good old-fashioned public relations and P2P outreach.  Human to human marketing will always work. That said, we believe the methodology outlined in this post is well on its way to becoming the defacto best practices model for most business that sell with content and a crucial element of success. For SEO most businesses need to sell with content. We believe PR companies will adopt these practices as standard fare in the future. Good ones already are.

You may be resistant to paying Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit and other channels today to distribute your content. You won’t feel that way very soon because paid-organic social content distribution is most marketers new job description. It takes care of so many pieces of the puzzle, from PR and link building to traffic, loyalty and conversion. Link building is dead. Long live the new link building!

Header image © Argus – Fotolia dot com

We all know that truly successful link building campaigns employ both online and offline relationship building and networking. Nowadays, bloggers and editors are so overly bombarded with pitches, guest blog post opportunities, and “truly groundbreaking” material – your e-mail is likely adding just one more number to their ever-growing inbox.

When it comes to the mysterious world of link building, there are a few things you can do to make yourself stand out from the gazillions of other would-be link donors. We’re going to take a slightly different approach in this post. Rather than preach tips and special-ops tactics for getting links, let’s explore some of the definite no-nos of link building. What you can do to ensure your efforts won’t result in a link? How can you be sure your link building campaign will flop? What are the step-by-step directions to Rejection-ville? Read on to find out. (And don’t worry – there’s light and good advice at the end of the tunnel!)

9 Surefire Ways To Not Get The Link You Want:

1. Pitch bad content. We know, we know. Everyone says to make sure your content is worthy of getting a link to. That’s because it’s true. The fact that your content relates to the publication or blogger you’re reaching out to isn’t a guarantee they will be interested. A good question to ask yourself is: “If I were XYZ editor/blogger, would I post this to my publication? Why or why not?” You may be surprised by how often you would veto the content.

This is why it’s so imperative to have a really creative content team. Think outside the box. There are so many types of content to choose from. In fact, it would be well-advised to design a piece of content with a specific publication in mind. Have you ever tried the ol’ PR outreach tactic of finding out if an editor is interested in a piece of content before creating it? This applies to link building as well. Don’t waste your time on content that won’t get placed.

2. Pitch to sites unrelated to your content. Right on the heels of the last tip, pitching good content to the wrong publications is essentially pitching bad content. You’re wasting hard work and worthy material on the wrong target. The backfires of this approach are three-fold (at least): (1) Pitching unrelated content could result in a slap from Google’s Penguin and (2) You’re just wasting everyone’s time. (3) You run the risk of appearing ignorant, sloppy, and irresponsible – don’t be surprised to receive a snarky email response asking if you even bothered to read their website.

If you spend the time and effort creating content that is truly mind blowing, do yourself a favor and reach out to publications that care about that content. If the publication cares, the readers will care, and they will be more likely share your content. If they don’t care, you’ll be missing out on exposure, social shares, and overall success.

3. Only reach out through one avenue. As you’re perusing that publication’s website in search of an editor’s contact information, ready to shoot over a quick email with your idea… bear in mind, email isn’t the only way to make contact. In fact, it’s not even always the best way. Really take the time to learn how the blogger/editor prefers to be reached. Oftentimes, they WILL list their preferred contact method. Use it.

If they don’t list it and you’re not having luck via e-mail, don’t hesitate to strike up a conversation via Facebook or Twitter. Do not, I repeat, do not lead with your pitch. Introduce yourself. Ask thoughtful questions about content on their site. Find out if there is specific content they’re looking for. Perhaps there is, and you can come up with something that will fit both of your needs.

4. Focus on one method of link building. It’s so easy to lose creativity and the wow factor when you focus too much energy on just one type of content. Therefore, the name of the game is diversification! Varying the type of content you’re creating is a great way to keep things fresh and conquer several link-building methods. Infographics, contests, videos, articles, live events, guest blog posts, and resource round-ups are just a starting point. Each type of content should have a tailored pitch to help make it as appealing as possible. Really play on each type’s strengths and features.

5. Disregard (or simply forget to follow) pitch instructions. A lot of bloggers and editors will automatically dismiss your content if they don’t receive it in the format they explicitly request, so follow their instructions to the tee.  You wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity just because your lazy self couldn’t be bothered to include “Submission: Culinary Digest” in the subject now, would you?

This also applies to the type of content and the method of outreach. If publications say they don’t want content related to beluga whales and your content is about beluga whale migratory patterns, don’t even bother wasting your time. If they explicitly ask for a Word document, you better make sure you didn’t paste your content into the body of the e-mail or it will likely end up in the trash.

6. Write an essay in your outreach. Keep it short! Anyone reading your initial pitch will stop reading it if it’s too long, too boring, not pertinent to their publication, or if they’re too busy. Get to the point quickly and explain why it will be beneficial for their publication and its readers.

7. Send the same pitch to everyone. If you send the same initial pitch to every common-themed publication, they will notice. And they won’t like it. It’s important to tailor your outreach so that it’s specific to whomever you’re reaching out to. Do your research. Find out as much as you can about the publication and frame your outreach in a way that packages your content into an irresistible gift. Ask yourself: “What does this editor/blogger want to hear? How can I make them pay attention to what I’m showing them?” The only way to achieve this is by researching exactly what a site is looking for or needs and making them want your content. Make them think they thought of it

8. Forget to follow up with your pitch. This is a big one! After you fire off that initial outreach, do not sit idly and wait for the publication to get back to you. When you feel enough time has passed for the publication to review your content, go ahead and reach out– see if you can provide any clarification, answer any questions… you may even want to straight-up ask if they’re interested in what you submitted. Busy bloggers sometimes need reminders, gentle prodding.

That said, don’t be too aggressive in your follow-up. Be careful with phrasing; don’t write as if your piece has already been accepted, alluding to its future publication date. Simply inquire, politely and coolly. Ask yourself, “What would be acceptable if the roles were reversed?”

9. Forget to build relationships. If a publication publishes your content, it’s important to maintain that relationship. Even if the publication doesn’t publish your content, it’s important to maintain that relationship because they might be interested next time. Maintaining contact can be achieved in so many ways including sharing their content on social, commenting with questions, perspectives or advice, or even e-mailing to find out if they’re in need of any specific type of content. Just don’t overdo it. Don’t be a pest. Interact with the blogger just as you would with a blogger you personally follow. Building relationships applies to the offline world as well. Making and maintaining friends who support your link building efforts is absolutely essential to continued success.

Summing up…
These are prime examples of mistakes newbies make when it comes to their link building outreach approach. While there are plenty of others, these highlight the biggest ones that will ensure your link building campaign will result in a surefire flop! What else would you add to the list?

© creative soul – Fotolia.com

Welcome back to aimClear’s coverage of #SESNY 2013!  Yesterday’s keynote with Mike Proloux set quite a fascinating tone for much of the content shared here at this year’s New York conference event, namely: the increased use of multiple devices and social media’s impact on the experience in a big-picture sense. This theme continued throughout Day 1 and into Day 2, with a super-informative session on Next Generation Site Architecture.

Moderator Chris Boggs, SES Advisory Board; CMO, Internet Marketing Ninjas led panelists Patrick Branigan, Art Director/ Lead Designer, Overit and Bryson Meunier, Director, Content Solutions, Resolution Media, as each took turns sharing a boatload of best practices, case studies, and insider advice for creating a comprehensive online experience for your users, no matter where they are or what device they’re using. Read on for the full write-up.

Chris welcomed the audience and introduced the speakers, revving us up for what was sure to be a session brimming with actionable tactics and sage advice. The goal? To help us make sure our sites are ready to deal with the added problems and benefits associated with multiple devices, social media, real-time, and user-generated content. Let’s jump into it.

Patrick was up first. “When we’re thinking about the next generation of site architecture,” he began, “it’s important to start by grasping what architecture exactly is.” Fair enough. Here’s three main definitions of “architecture,” each one different from the last:

Architecture is…

1. The art and science of designing and erecting physical structures
2. The activity of designing a system
3. An approach to planning, designing, and developing a website presence

This presence of course includes those valuable things like sitemaps, wireframes, prototypes, and so on – but the digital realm is so fast moving, it’s becoming an extension of our daily routine. It’s showing us what architecture is no longer going to be.

Site Architecture is NOT:

• A list of pages
• Static information
• Defined by one person
• Simply telling a story

So… what is it? What’s it all about? Let’s define the constant that threads between those three definitions above. Building houses, building systems, building websites… what’s the common theme? The constant is, in fact, people. Users. People are the most important aspect regarding next gen architecture.

Thinking About People
According to Patrick, next gen website architecture is an approach to creating an online ecosystem that can be driven and evolved by its users.

The three elements to consider (the three elements that drive engagement) are:

• Social Media
• Content
• Accessibility

Let’s unpack each of these elements.

1. Social Media
Social media is fueled by conversations as a whole. Driving factors include sharing and commenting- these functionalities are all about people and human engagement. People enjoy conversations because they’re instant, spontaneous, and ongoing.

Social Media, or the social aspect of sites, is traditionally represented by elements such as chicklets—or the social icons that reside at the side, top or bottom of a page. Chicklets are easy to recognize and universally known because they’re basically little mini boxes with logos of the social media channels they represent. People know exactly what action they will be performing when they click on one.

Brilliant, right? Hmmm. We’re not so sure. Patrick asks, “Are these elements actually prone for a human conversation? Are they seamlessly allowing for a conversation to happen? Or are they disconnecting the user from the conversation?”

Chicklets and similar social share buttons can be fabulously useful provided you take into consideration three essential components, which speak to aesthetic site architecture:

• Placement: Are you strategically placing social elements to enforce users to converse at the right time?
• Function: Is the functionality there? Are people having a conversation with one another? Or are they having a conversation with the system?
• Organization: Human tend to gravitate towards organized categories – is there a rhyme and a reason to your social aspect?

Overall, your focus should be on further naturalizing the conversation experience for your users.

Restructuring the Social Aspect: The New York Times
Patrick showed a screencap of a NYT article, with a “comment” button on the top left of the article, and share buttons along the left side of the page. These two social arenas aren’t talking to each other L What’s to be done?

Take the avenues and put them into one anchored piece of real estate on the view post!

A new screencap shows an organized mounted grouping of the comment and share buttons so that when users are engaging with the content, they have the ability to talk to one another and talk back to (engage with) the content, without having to be redirected to a different page. This new cluster is repositioned on the top of the view page, so there’s no need for scrolling to the bottom to comment on the content. It’s organized in a way so that the media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and whatnot are being converged into one universal motion – the share motion.

In real life, there’s a cycle of conversation, taking in information, and deciding if we want to tell other people. This restructuring is all de-cluttering the pathways and universal format to allow for instantaneous action—a crucial element consuming and conversing with content and with users.

Social Aspect Takeaways:

• Encourage users to interact and engage with your content via placement organization and function of elements.
• You’ll see an increase in:
• URL sharing
• User views and impulse views
• Higher probability of viral impact
• More sharing means better rankings and higher CTRs
• The architecture the user is going to engage in is as important as the actual linking and sharing. One encourages the other.

2. Content!
Without rich and highly engaging content, no one will really care.This is being made clear by Google through things such as author rank. Credibility is important – this also comes back to people, in this case, the people providing the content (it’s less about how the content is being shared and linked to different pages).

Authorship, Credibility, & Why It Rocks
Authorship is about connecting a website writer’s account with his or her Google+ account. This creates rich SERPs with an author’s avatar and even byline next to his or her articles– gorgeous increased piece of real estate!

Why is this so valuable? Authorship suggests credibility. People like other credible people. As a user, as a human, you trust that which has more human characteristics. The emphasis is not only what’s on the page, but who provided it. It’s about adding a personality to the result, allowing for a suggested higher CTR, higher ranking, implying there’s trust here.

To set up authorship: (1) Link your content to your Google profile and (2) Link from your Google profile to your content.

Relevance & Credibility
Markham Nolan gave a fascinating TED talk entitled: “How to Separate Fact and Fiction Online.” In it, he discussed the concept of pulling quality from quantity – the evolution from the pursuit of finding facts to the act of verifying them. Twitter is fast becoming a journalists’ best friend- why? The information delivered by Twitter is instant (and massive!), and if you’re following along with verified accounts, the assessment of credibility is pretty much instant as well. Et voila: pulling quality from quantity.

Google is realizing this significant concept. In order to increase engagement and prioritize content in SERPs, Mike noted search engines need to rely just as much on thought leadership as much as they do on their own algorithms.

Other Content Considerations

• Text. Text is obviously important, especially from a design perspective. If you don’t use webfonts you’re doing it wrong. Check out Google Webfonts to incorporate into your page. This way, all of your text can be crawled and it’s more engaging—a marriage of good looks and crawlability. Interesting fonts will, at the very least, gain a reaction from the user, which prompts engagement.
  • To add webfonts: Add stylesheet link to call on the desired font from Google’s library of webfonts and then style with CSS>.
• Images. People love images. Optimize your imagery with alt text, keyword-rich file names, and be sure your images are sized properly. Enormous images may still resonate well on a small screen (mobile phone), but it will impact page load time, which can directly impact bounce rate (negatively).
• Videos. People also love videos! Optimize your videos with KW-rich titles and descriptions. If you’re hosting videos, be mindful of the delivery and ease of sharing. Immediately focus on how you’re delivering it, (Flash, HTML5, Silverlight?) What is your demographic using? Are analytics showing devices they use don’t support the technology you’re using to supply your videos?

Biggest Content Takeaway

• Text is still king, but all content is continuously evolving. Providing impressive content encourages engagement!

3. Accessibility.
Patrick “jokes” about responsive web design (RWD) as being the #1 buzzword of 2012. He stressed that it’s not the easiest, only, or even best solution out there when it comes to multi-device usage and user experience.

Of course, there are benefits: Increased accessibility, single URL, no redirection, reduced load time, easier sharing experience, saving resources for the site and crawlers, and so on.

So… RWD isn’t for every site. How can you know if it’s the best solution for yours? Start by asking yourself these questions (and notice how they’re all about people, i.e. your audience!)

1. What % of our site traffic is mobile? Experts suggest if it’s 5% or more, consider RWD. Patrick suggests 4% or more.
2. Does your current mobile % translate well to other sites?  
3. How do your bounce rates compare? If they’re not relatively similar, consider RWD.
4. Are you forgetting your purpose? It’s about the people! People general want specific content depending upon their situation and device. “Cut down on the content!” isn’t a smart conclusion. Instead, focus on diminishing elements that don’t accentuate the ability for your user to achieve the goal you want your user to achieve.

20,000 Foot Sum-Up
The three components to site architecture:

1. Social Media – Conversations drive engagement.
2. Content – Build creative, personable content – people like credible, relevant content– if it’s credible and relevant, users will help you be found.
3. Accessibility – You must remember that the way in which you provide content is just as important as the content you’re providing.

Final thoughts: It’s about people as much as it’s about robots!

Bryson was up next, set to focus exclusively on RWD and other solutions for multiple devices.

Site Architecture, Then & Now
In the 90s,when a website wasn’t working or was being revamped in some way, we used to see those flashy “Under Construction!” signs plastered on pages. Back then, there was less emphasis on being optimized so much as being functional. As far as webmasters were concerned, there was only one type of user: a dude sitting at a desk.

Nowadays, site architecture is much more involved, namely because we have users accessing websites on all sorts of devices from all types of locations (on the go, at home, at the office, in a coffee shop, and so on). It’s hard to tell who your user is, so you have to prepare to accommodate as many types of users and devices as possible.

Multiscreen Usage & The Rise of Mobile
It’s coming! Google says it’s here. Today. Right now. Yep. Here are some fascinating stats:

• 90% of all media interaction has to do with a screen
• 38% of media interaction happens on smartphones (don’t design just for smartphones, design for feature phones, too)
• 90% of consumers move between multiple devices to accomplish their goals
• According to RKG, 25% of Google searches are mobile.
• Since 2008, mobile searches doubled every year to the point where it’s surpassing desktops in some locations (like India).
• Mobile search will be bigger than desktop in the near future! It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.

“Mobile search is definitely going to surpass desktop search. The lines will pass, and I think they’ll pass before anyone thought they would.” –Scott Huffman, 2011.

Kelsey Group suggests Mobile search will be bigger than desktop in 2015. That’s less than 2 years from now! They’re theorizing mobile usage will increase from roughly 25% to 50% in less than two years. Sheesh.

That’s the reason to make your site accessible to mobile users today.

Here’s how:

3 Options for Mobile Configuration (Per Google)

1. RWD: Same HTML and URLs, different layout.
2. Dynamic Serving: Same URLs, potentially different HTML through device detection.
3. Dedicated Mobile Sites (MDOT): Different URLs, different HTML.

Regarding popular wisdom about mobile configuration now… like Patrick, Bryson doesn’t agree that RWD is the best solution. “But Google says it’s the best!” RWD enthusiasts claim. Does it?

According to Google, RWD is preferred if and only if it’s the right solution for your users. If it’s not, they don’t prefer it (clearly). Overall, Google’s stance on mobile URLs and dynamic serving is that the power is in the hands of the webmaster, i.e. it’s not up to Google to decide what’s best you’re your users as far as mobile is concerned. It’s up to you.

So, is RWD best for your users? How can you decide? Also like Patrick, Bryson offered up some helpful questions you should ask yourself when making this decision:

1. Are mobile users well-served by the current information architecture (IA)?  To help illustrate this concept, Bryson categorized KWs for Starbucks’ site (which uses RWD) based on how they label them on their site – then he took the search volume for each category and assigned a priority based on mobile, desktop, and all users. He then looked at prominence for each category on the site (top left = 1, below fold = 20, for example). This was a useful exercise to show what users are looking for and whether or not that matches up to how visible that content is made on the site.

In this case, what Starbucks is presenting on its RWD site is not what people are looking for! Prominence of “find a store” – a high mobile query – was ranked at a 2, but it should be a 1. “Starbucks careers,” ranked at 21, but it should be 3. There are even categories totally missing – maybe for business reasons, but they’re absent from the navigation, such as: “holiday hours,” “prices,” and so on – things people are concerned about just aren’t there! If you have a site that has IA issues (doesn’t have the content people are looking for), RWD won’t make the categories magically appear. If you want to make your site better fort SEO, fix the IA… then worry about RWD.

2. Are mobile users using the same KWs as desktop users? Yes, your users on mobile are the same users on desktops, but they’re in a different context. Mobile users are more likely to use common, short-tail words – and often, their searches have more to do with location and an emphasis on “right here, right now,” than perhaps desktop searches. Bryson shared another thought-provoking example of Disney, which has a RWD site that was actually selected as among the top 25 best of 2012 by .Net magazine. One of the top KW queries for that mobile site, however, was something Disney wasn’t even offering: mobile games. Not offering what people want means Disney is missing out on a boatload of traffic and conversions. Owwie.

Here are some other top mobile KW queries for assorted industries… do you belong to one? Are you optimizing your mobile site for these mega KWs?

• Finance: 99% of volume for KW “ATM locations” comes from mobile devices. You better be optimizing for that!
• Food services. 97% of searches for “bars” comes from mobile, and 80% for “restaurants near me” come from mobile.
• Apps: 69% of “apps for andriod” come from mobile and 73% of “download ringtones” come from mobile.

These are all high intent KWs indicating the on-the-go user is ready to do something… right now!

3. Will mobile-only features also be helpful for others users? We can incorporate them into the mobile web through HTML 5, but can also get link equity as a result? People are engaged with apps a lot more than they are on the web. Bryson suggests making engaging content for the web so we can get more people spending time there, rather than in separate apps. We need to make mobile web experiences engaging. There’s a lot we can do thanks to HTML5, e.g. connect to camera, and other features native to the page, eliminating the need for an app.

Funnily enough, while Google recommends RWD, it develops for mobile, desktop, and tablet separately. In other words, consider creating content exclusively for certain kinds of devices, as it makes sense. Google’s app GoogleNow, for example, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense / offer a whole lot of value to desktop users, but is very useful for mobile users, thus it is designed for the smartphone. They’re providing a good by creating useful content for specific devices (even if they’re not following their own advice, namely: use RWD, i.e. map all of your desktop site content to mobile).

4. Does my audience primarily use smartphones? You may think the answer is, “Duh, everyone has a smartphone,” but consider the 158 million visitors and 98 billion pageviews from feature phone users in Opera (in the month of December, 2012 alone!). Are you really willing to say to 10% of the mobile population that you’re not interested in their traffic and you don’t care about their user experience?

5. Is speed important to conversions? An impressive 66% of users find mobile sites through a search engine… but if they don’t like what they find, 79% of mobile searchers say they are 5x more likely to abandon the task than desktop users.

“You can’t escape this fact. A responsive website turned to performed the best it can would not be as fast as a dedicated MDOT site tuned equally well. Or more realistically, an average responsive website would always be slower than an average MDOT site.” – Guy Podjarny

At the end of the day…
RWD is no silver bullet for SEO success. That’s the point of these 5 questions. Assess them in the context of your business and demographic audience and make the decision from there.

What About JavaScript?
There are three approaches to implementing JavaScript Bryson explained:

• JavaScript Adaptive: URL serves the same content (HTM, CSS, JavaScript as an image) to all devices
  • This is JavaScript’s favorite choice
  • Combined Detection: Different HTML, via served
  • Dynamically Served: Same HTML but JS is dynamically served with <script> based on user agent

Some final tips:

• Use vary HTTP header with dynamic serving –Google recommends it, some have found the user agent for vary is broken, so be aware of the dynamic serving. You may have problems.
• Use switchboard tags with mobile URLs
• Do NOT block Googlebot, mobile or otherwise! People think that because Google has basically three user agents for mobile and desktop (feature, smartphones, desktops), that you can block from the mobile bots your desktop content and vice versa. (With switchboard tags, this isn’t an issue.) Please, don’t do this. It can cause major search problems.
•  Check out Byron’s Mobile SEO best practices for more!

Big thanks to Partrick and Bryson for their awesome advice and tactics! Stick around aimClear blog for more coverage right here from #SESNY 2013!

photo credit:  julesmeijer on deviantart.com

Welcome back to aimClear’s coverage of #SMX West 2013! I’m gonna go out there and say it: for all intent and purpose, when you see him at a conference, Matt Cutts is the ubiquitous and powerful force known as…. [the] Google. And when you see Duane Forrester, strolling around the convention center, you’re likely to think, “… that’s Bing.” Of course, there are zillions of smart, hard-working people behind the scenes making both these search engine behemoths what they are, do what they do. But there’s something about Matt and Duane , man… just something about them.

So you can imagine the delight of #SMX West 2013 attendees to find these two dudes sitting together on a late afternoon panel, moderated by Danny Sullivan (trifecta), and, um, they’re all carrying guitars righteous!). What’s going on!? Turns out, Matt and Duane had come that day (from the future) with Danny (also from the future) to educate us dumbfounded yet eager audience members on what to do and NOT to do on our own excellent search adventure…

Okay, so we’re all caught up on the theme. Let’s proceed…

After a tubular introduction by Danny, Matt took the stage first. He was tasked with exploring some BOGUS examples of spam, in other words, what you SHOULD NOT do on your excellent search adventure.

Bogus Spam: What NOT To Do With Search Engines
As he got into his presentation, Matt actually asked, quite earnestly, that we not tweet the first few slides. They were some totally juicy top-secret albert-einstein-level spam sh*t, but for #SMX West attendees only. Sorry, readers.

Now – onto the bogus spam examples we were allowed to share:

• Cloaking. Cloaking isn’t always intended as black-hat or anything, but if you’re not careful and do it wrong, you could accidentally block yourself from the Google Bot (a.k.a. shoot yourself in the foot).
• Doorway Pages. Doorway pages = many pages generated to target one unique phrase. They’re populated with cookie cutter copy that’s basically duplicate content. Again, this is not always intentionally spammy, but be careful! Manual monitoring can go a long way. You never know what horrifying boo-boos you’ll catch. (Not catching them just makes you look like a stupid n00bzor.)
• Auto-generated Content. Bad. Auto-generated content featuring webspam team is dirt stupid. (Here, Matt showed an example of auto-generated content featuring Google’s Maile Ohye, Developer Programs Tech Lead at Google. Probably took Google about 0.024 seconds to find and destroy.)
• Keyword Stuffing. Just bad. Don’t do it.
•  Gibberish! Kinda like KW stuffing, but more about words that make don’t sense whatsoever (courtesy of a bad spammer? ).

“Gibberish is kinda like slam poetry, but really… it’s not. It’s bad.” -Matt Cutts

• Hacking. We’re not talking about those who do it. Those who do it (for evil) are evil. We’re talking about those it happens to, and it can happen to anyone! (Even the Smashing Pumpkins, as Matt’s screencapped exampled showed! Egads!) If you don’t monitor your web assets, beware – something could have been hacked and totally messed up without you even noticing it. Another bummer, once hackers get in, it’s not that easy to get them out.
  • Tip: Try out Fetch as Google to your content as Googlebot sees it. Is the spam still there? Euuush. Deal with it.
• Blog Comment Spam. Make sure you don’t waste time and embarrass yourself responding to comment spam .

Matt’s Bodacious Conclusions!

Do it right the first time. There are a billion resources out there loaded with tips on how to be a good site owner, an honorable SEO. Follow them, and you’ll be on the right path!

• How Search Works
• Webmaster Blog
• Webmaster Forums
• Webmaster Videos
• Webmaster Tools
• Webmaster Academy
• SEO Starter Guide
• Webmaster Office Hours
• HTML Documentation

“Be excellent to each other, and to search engines.”

Duane was up next. He was tasked with sharing totally righteous things you SHOULD do on your excellent search adventure.

Righteous Acts: What TO Do With Search Engines

• DO move from “query” to “session.” A query is a single action. A session is a collection of related actions over time. For example, query = dog. Session = searches on Monday for dog beds, dog accessories, dog toys, vet near my, dog friendly hotels… and on Tuesday, searches for dog sweaters, dog collars, dog leaches, puppy treats.
• DO mark up your content. Build the good stuff. Help search engines discover and understand what your content is. When search engines consume content, they disassemble the page, and reassemble as queries come in. As if you don’t already know, visit schema.org for help on marking up your content. You don’t know that? Come closer. *Smack*.
• DO prepare for mobile. Bing looks at the entire Internet in one shot. But people are finding new ways to search and interact with content. As a business, you need to be prepared for this. If you’re talking now about HTML5, you need to move within the next 12 months from having the conversation to taking actions. These things aren’t quick or sexy – but they do prepare you for the things coming.
• DO evolve as search evolves. New devices demand different search experiences other than links. The ability for these devices to feed in real time signals helps Bing handle intent better and therefore can provide a more tailored experience to users. It’s not just mobile phones or tables – not just text entry. Anything could be a search: voice, picture, gesture, sound, anything. Duane and his team are building the universal interface for search.
• DO avoid shortcuts, like syndicated content. Gross.
• DO pay attention to the details. crawlability, site structure, on-page, content, links, social – ALL of the technical basics. you must have these done. SEO is no longer the pinnacle work that happens with a website. it’s the baseline. you have to do it. and do it well.
• DO stay focused on the big picture. Content is #1, then social, then user experience, then link building, then SEO. Don’t try to extrapolate from this graph. Importance is relative. Use it as a guide. No item is unimportant. Ask yourself: Why do people search? They have a task in mind they want satisfied. If you nail content, social, and UX, link building comes to you. Let it happen naturally, because your product is amazing. You cannot skip SEO, but you have to know what you’re doing and why!
• DO target your optimization. Every area of your site has a value – whether that’s in dollars, page views, emails, etc. Determine what the value is. Assign value to every URL. Sort your site by value to see what really matters. Organize work around high-value area first! smart.
• DO encourage more sharing. Some tips: (1) Create lists – people love to consume content in list-form. They’re quick and easy. (2) Use hooks (humor, anger, contrarian, etc.) but be careful how you use them. When used well, they are highly effective. (3) Participate in communities. When you are valued member of a community, the community supports you. (4) Share others information. People love when what they share gets shared itself. Share from trusted sources. (5) Ask questions. Your followers will love the interaction and it will grow your following as others engage.
• DO build efficiencies. Look for ways to streamline your time. Identify a customer need and fill in the blanks. Look to identify patterns so you can leverage efficiency efforts. To churn out really cast link roundups, Duane brings in trusted feeds, filters them through Hootsuite, broadcasts them across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., then pushes them through If This Then That, feeds it into Evernote, scrapes that, slams it into a Newsletter form, does a little light editing to make it flow, and BAM. Has a gorgeous link roundup of things he’s shared on social the past week. Dude.
• DO  invest in new skills! SEO tactics, social tactics, paid search methodologies, budget management, negotiation, executive pitching, influence, psychology, marketing. Never stop learning.

Bitchin’.

Q&A
Some last-minute tasty insights were shared during the Q&A, among them…

• The Disavow Tool: This tool isn’t meant to be a dupe marketers into reporting themselves for spamtastic links on their site. Rather, it’s meant to help remove links the site-owners cannot. Earlier on Day 1 at #SMX, Rhea Drysdale warned against using this tool too casually, lest you accidentally ban an entire legit domain, despite some shady links from subpages. To that end, Matt noted: “If it’s clearly a bad domain, just disavow the entire domain.” Echoing Google’s sentiments, Duane pointed out that Bing’s Disavow tool was created to aide site-owners and marketers, to the extent that Bing will alert marketers if they unintentionally misuse the tool.
• Social, SEO, & Links: Google and Bing are in agreement — when it comes to ranking factors, links are more important than social influence. That said, looking forward, Matt implied that social metrics and similar factors (for example, identity, that is to say, authorship) will continue to grow in significance and impact SEO more and more as time goes on.
• Panda & Penguin! According to Matt, the next Panda update will roll out on or around Friday, March 16. (That’s this Friday!) He suggested that regarding Penguin, another major update will roll out sometime during 2013, and will be one of the “most talked-about algorithms” for the year.

Okay! That about does it. Did I mention this entire time Matt Cutts was wearing a backwards baseball cap? Thanks SO much to our dynamic duo, led by the great Danny Sullivan. This was one helluvan entertaining session, and for the record, I think I tallied your 80s slang references at 283. Not bad, not bad at all. Stick around aimClear Blog for more coverage straight from the convention center, and of course, follow along with yours truly @beebow for continued live tweets!

photo credit: niekel on flickr.com

In this day and age, marketers seeking a competitive edge need to get more creative. This tutorial will teach you to mine often lightly contested keywords, advised by a colorful mashup of shopping, YouTube, and search suggestions. Use these newly discovered KWs to:

• Leverage the “social tail” of search to expand your keyword bucket substantially. We’ll talk a lot more about this.
• Create optimized content for eCommerce, B2B, and B2C SEO.
• Generate an adorable array of inexpensive mid and long tail search PPC keywords for YouTube, Google, and Bing.
• Gain a deeper understanding of your customers, which comes as a result of mapping social to search.

At the end of this tutorial there is an outline of organization, value, and usages. We also offer a free download of sample output yielded from the technique. Sound interesting? Read on for a tail-tastic KW expansion jubilee!

Mining Suggestion Boxes

You’ve seen them thousands of times and work with them every day. Nearly every mainstream search engine has a suggest box. That’s the dropdown menu that offers search suggestions when a user starts typing a word.

The image on the right shows the YouTube suggestion box. The fact that engines suggest keywords results in more users selecting those words to search. The image below shows the suggestion boxes for Amazon, Google Product Search, and Shopping.com.

Search Suggest Boxes

For years at search marketing conferences, speakers have been telling attendees to “mine the search suggestion boxes.” The reasoning is that since the search engines are suggesting the KWs, some level of search frequency exists. Of course, that’s easier said than done.

Enter ScrapeBox, the much lauded though still relatively unknown Australian tool. It’s a locally installed Windows-only app that costs about $100. Though SB offers a host of other unholy functions (both gray and black hat), the keyword scraper module has a white hat soul. ScrapeBox’s keyword scraper is a multichannel suggest-box mining tool that easily transfers KW lists between the engines. The UI is brilliant in its simplicity. Other suggestion box tools exist but none are more profoundly useful.

The Importance Of “Social Tail” Of Keywords
For the sake of this tutorial, let’s assume that we are marketing a product that is highly desirable to snowboarders. We’re looking for KWs that are not literally searches for our product category, but clearly demonstrate a high level of snowboard interest. In other words, if a user is searching for these keywords, we have an excellent idea that they are interested in snowboards and snowboarding. Think of these searches as indicative of “interest,” the same way targeting a user with Facebook social graph ads indicate interest.

Here’s why social tail is a really important concept: Most search marketers will tell you that there are limits to high intent search volume. Classic “intent” search keywords are finite assets. Though new search permutations are queried every second, the volume of high intent words overall maxes out. The social tail of search takes its intent cues from how people seek associated KWs.

This concept is not new. What is new is our ability to easily mine KWs from social search channels, advised by product search. At the end of this tutorial, we’ll discuss the uses of KWs mined at each stage of the process. With each new results list, copy and paste them to a spreadsheet, as in the sample file linked above. Let’s have a go at it, mate!

Step One: Mine Shopping Searches For Stem KWs

• Once in the ScrapeBox Keyword Scraper, select Amazon, Google, Yahoo! and Shopping.com as the suggestion box sources.
• Enter your stem (root) KWs and click “Scrape”.
• ScrapeBox will loop through each of the stem KWs in each of the shopping engines.
• What you’re doing here is surveying the known product suggestion universe as it relates to the snowboards and snowboarding keywords.
• Remove any duplicate keywords using the “Remove Duplicate Keywords” button.

Step One: Shopping Searches for Stem KWs

Step Two: Run The Results Again
What’s special about SB is that you can easily transfer the harvested results (on the right) to the left and rerun them. Here’s the order:

• After running the initial stem KWs and removing duplicates (step one), clear the left hand box. You’ll see the “Clear” button just below the “Scrape” button. Now the left hand box is empty.
• Click “Transfer Results To Keyword List.” This function moves the results from the last suggest box-scraping pass and makes the round one results the source KWs.
• Run them again. Now you’re scraping the scraped results.
• Remove the duplicates.
• Clean the results by removing any irrelevant KWs. It’s important to clean the list at every step because, as the list expands it will get lengthier and therefore create more work each time. A clean list is a happy list.
• In upcoming steps, we’ll refer to the process laid out in these bullets as “rerunning the results.”

Step Three: Scrape YouTube Using Shopping Results
Now things are going to get exciting! So far, we’ve done a good job of mining the known product suggestion universe. Every keyword on our list is a product search, as evidenced by the fact that it was suggested by major shopping engines from our stems and reruns.

After removing about 50 duplicates, we’ve got something like 300 YouTube suggest keywords. The reason we’re not giving specific numbers is because suggestions in most engines are at least somewhat dynamic and change all the time. Your results for the same KWs will vary. Now, rerun the results in YouTube.

The KW list on the right is looking mighty colorful! We might not have thought of marketing to keywords like “1080 snowboarding music,” “epic snowboarding crashes,” “best snowboard games for iPhone,” and “how to install snowboard bindings.” Certainly these keywords indicate snowboards and snowboarding intent.

Run & Rerun the Shopping Results in YouTube

Step Four: Map The YouTube Suggestions To Google & Bing Search
Now this is going to get even more fun. Take the KWs from YouTube and run them in Google and Bing, classic search. Running them by hand would look like the image below.

Mapping YouTube Results To Google & Bing Suggestions

Rerun the results and remove duplicates. The first run yields about 2,000 keywords and the second yields more than 5,000.

Run & Rerun YouTube Results In Google & Bing

Organization, Value & Usages
Each step of the way, you’ll want to paste the list into a spreadsheet. The headings we use at aimClear are noted in the image below. In actuality, not every results set needs to be rerun. We always test rerunning to determine if there is value.

Social Tail Spreadsheet Layout

At any time, take any results set and run the list in Google AdWords Keyword tool and/or AdWords for YouTube. We want to measure search volume and PPC competition. Try sorting the output from AdWords Keyword Tool by competition and pivot on search frequency. It’s often easy to find juicy keywords that demonstrate social-semantic intent with little or no competition. Use these low cost inferred intent KWs as a way to expand search, which is otherwise finite.

Also, leverage SEOmoz tools to determine the competitiveness of the keywords organically. Sometimes, that correlates to PPC competitiveness and other times, not. The social tail often delivers colorful ideas for blog posts, videos, and other content.

As Creative As You Want To Be
This tutorial started with product search suggestions, looped the results through YouTube, and then classic search. There are many other creative uses of ScrapeBox! Start with YouTube and run it through products search. ScrapeBox also mines Ask.com, which has some interesting applications.

It’s not hard to build your own suggestion box mining tool to provide starter lists from foreign language search engines and other social sites that have search suggestion boxes. You can even grab lists by hand. For instance, starting with a list of interests from Facebook Ads Precise Interests offers amazing possibilities.

Most importantly, remember that it’s possible to infer intent from keywords, much like using Facebook interests to target social ads. Use your imagination and find ways to expand keyword lists on the social tail!

Header Image: © Andrey Bandurenko – Fotolia . com

Welcome back to aimClear’s coverage of #SESSF 2012! Day 2 started things off with a surprise visit from Google knowledge expert, Matt Cutts! Our breakfast keynote was fueled by truckloads of coffee and breakfast sandwiches to boot! An eager and packed session room welcomed Matt and moderator Mike Grehan, Global VP Content, SES to the stage, where they broke the ice by chatting about what’s new in search for Google, much of which was released in a press release last week.

New In Search for Google
Among the updates was a name change from Google Search Quality Team to (drum roll) Google Knowledge. Google wants to find out what YOU want to know about. Matt emphasized that Google’s focus is on satisfying its end user, meaning you and me. (Nothing new there.)

Next up, he discussed updates on Google’s Knowledge Graph. The Knowledge Graph not only understands the words you type into the search bar, but also it understands what you mean (creepy-cool!). Check out all of its cool features here. And as always, there’s the noble quest for defeating spam! Google has spam fighters all over the globe fighting for Internet justice.

Matt noted that Google’s also launching a limited field trial of Gmail in web search. Meaning when you search for a subject that you may have relevant information about in your inbox, it will show up in collapsed form in your search results. Cool, huh?

All of a sudden, Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Land was waiting in the back and jumped at the chance to join Matt on stage. As if that wasn’t enough, Brett Tabke, founder of Pubcon and WebmastersWorld, was invited up next!

The crowd ate up every second of this knowledge fest. Mmmmm, tasty!

The Battle Zone
Many electrically-charged Google-based questions were fired back and forth between panel members and the audience, which Matt Cutts handled like a champ. There was much talk about Google’s move towards continued transparency, involving their spam tracking and other practices. Matt noted, “Anything that attracts a certain amount of traffic will get spammed.”

Several months ago, Matt was infamously quoted saying, “Don’t do too much SEO.” He took a moment to go back and clarify that statement a little for us. What he meant by that was…

It’s not about doing too much SEO, just make sure you’re doing it well. If you go overboard and are doing things like back links and spamming, Google will take action.

Up next was talk about Google+ and how it affects search results. Matt told the room, “I wouldn’t put a lot of weight on +1s just yet.” We’re less likely to see Google+ show up in search results, but the trend might be the more +s content has, the better it’ll look in Google search results in the future.

Overall, it was a stunning session. This group of industry masterminds have never shared a stage until now, and may never again.

Up next, a bunch of us headed to our next session of the morning, How to Win with Google & Bing. Search back to back, baby!

A quick switch to moderator Jonathan Allen, Director, Search Engine Watch, and we were off. Jonathan introduced us to speakers John Gagnon, Bing Advertising Evangelist  and Ryan Gibson, head of Agency Development at Google.

John started things off by explaining to us why we should use Microsoft Ad Center. He shared some surprising new statistics:

• 5.6 Billion monthly searches
• 30% market share
• 154 Million unique searchers
• 47 Million that don’t use Google
• 6% is more likely to spend than Google

Next, John indulged us with new features available in Ad Center:

• 50 ads per ad group
• 2000 site exclusions
• Added broad match modified
• Consistent capitalization
• 71 characters in ad descriptions, and more

Sweet.

Ad rotation on steroids
John explained that the top ads are decided and consistently shown in Google in 2-3 days or less, whereas Bing is much slower. Sometimes it takes weeks to determine the top preforming ads in an ad group. This will help you get more leads and better performance.

Best Practices

• Update to negative-exact match
• Keyword union
• Negative keyword conflict report (pull to see if you have any negative conflicts)
• Pull publisher performance reports
• Search query reports (ad exact match keywords and negatives)
• Bidding rule of thumb, don’t bid lower than $0.35 per ad

Longtail Keywords
For any rookies reading along, longtail keywords are a type of keyword phrase that has at least three, and some times as many as five words in the phrase. They are used when a website wants to refine search terms to the web page, as well as when the searcher is looking for something specific. They can be less expensive and increase your number of clicks. However, only .18% of clicks come from keywords that have seven or more words in them.

Big Year for Microsoft!
Last but not least, John noted that Bing will be the default search engine on all Windows 8 devices. It will be released in the near future, adding users to Bing’s market share.

Next up on the docket: Ryan Gibson. He’s has been at working at Google for nearly a decade, and shared tons of tips on How to Win with Google. His presentation centered on these three key phrases:

1. Win the moments that matter!
2. Make better decisions!
3. Go bigger, faster!

Account Objectives:

Core search elements (Master the basics)

• Keywords and account structures (how are you controlling creative and user experience?)
• Using reports, using keywords or negative keywords
• Ad/campaign naming conventions using best practices
• How often are you testing creative?
• Are you taking advantage of ad extensions?

Testing and Planning (Do I have an approach?)

• Which landing pages are driving the most?
• Identify test results that you want to achieve
• Do you have an annual plan?
• Do you have a budget planned out?

• Is your site able to capture all data?
• Are you measuring engagement?

Cross Channel Integration

• The Holy Grail: Everyone needs to do better!
• How is you SEO affecting you SEM?

Ryan stressed the importance of sitelinks. Search 101: Sitelinks are hyperlinks to website subpages that appear under certain Google listings in order to help users navigate the site. The more sitelinks, the higher CTR your campaign will have. They give users an easier way to reach the page they’re looking for on your site. Mobile sitelinks are critical.

Some other Key Google Features include:

• Call Metrics and Bid Per Call: This lets you track phone calls (location length and time). There is automatic call forwarding, and you can find detailed reporting in analytics.
• Mobile Ads: They have expandable maps, include phone numbers, and display distances to your business.
• Google Shopping: Helps you reach more retail customers, where they can compare prices and rating all on one page.
• Google Trusted Stores: Gives you a badge on you online store… Google evaluates how you connect with customers. Can improve your ratings.
• Media and Events Ads: Direct your user directly to the page where they can get tickets or engage with you and your brand.
• NEW: Retargeting Tag! You can place a tag across all pages and on all sites. This allows you to follow your user and tailor your ads to their search.
• Zip Code Targeting
• Automated Rules: Automate changes to your bids or text, so you don’t have to do it manually.

Remember, Quality Score is very similar across the board (in Google, Bing, and Yahoo). Think of it as a deal between you, end users, and search engines.

Thanks to all of our excellent presenters today. Coverage of #SESSF will continue, so stay tuned to the aimClear blog. You don’t want to miss any of this action packed conference!

Post photo credit: Special on Flickr

The Zenith Social Media Marketing Conference elicited thrills and chills as attendees strolled through the Duluth skyways between the Holiday Inn & Suites and the aimClear office for an exciting day of all things social! We had a blast attending sessions, taking notes, introducing speakers, and just enjoying the company of all the like-minded marketers who ventured out on a drizzly, chilly day to hang with us in the Northern Midwest

Riling up the crowd first thing yesterday morning, our very own Marty Weintraub shared the floor with some cool folks including Stefan Heeke, Director Digital Communications of Siemens, Lisa Grimm, Senior Social Media Strategist at Imagination, Marc Grabanski, Leader at MJG Internatonal, Brian Kenny, Director of Luther Automotive Group, and Molly Solberg of Duluth Pack. Tackling business social media strategy and tactics head on, this rambunctious panel used real life examples to share their thoughts and expertise with us.

The Zenith agenda packed not only one, but TWO keynote presentations, and our heads are still swimming with all of the super cool concepts each beheld. Keep on reading for the full scoop!

Keynote Q & A: Picking Apart the Experts’ Brains
Attempting to glean every last bit of social media goodness from each of the panelist’s minds, Marty started the session with a few questions for the speakers.

Marty: If you had to choose one thing that you could have known when you first started in the industry that you know now, what would it be?

Lisa: To have a solid network of social media people surrounding me for networking and idea-sharing. Having the right community is key. Also, it’s important to be able to show businesses why they need social media and how to go about doing that.

Marty:  What’s the structure of your listening apparatus? How do you listen to social media chatter?

Stefan: It’s important to keep track of the chatter with tools and to actively listen to the active community members.

Marty: What’s the part of this industry that you absolutely HAVE to do?

Brian: You need to be on the social channels. Otherwise, you’re missing opportunities. Upset customers can become your best fans and loudest cheerleaders if you respond to them and make it right. The conversations are out there and they are happening every day. You need to be aware of them.

Molly: [Social media] It’s a great way to communicate with customers. It’s easily done for small businesses.

Marc: When it comes to social, you need to provide resources for the open source community. If you have it, share it.

Lisa: The single most important thing you need to know is how to sell. Know your business strategy so you can push it out across the social channels. According to the panel, the next “big thing” in the industry is:

• Listening
• Twitter
• Social as a search engine

When Marty asked if the panelists thought Facebook would start to fall off the radar any time soon, they responded with a unified and resounding “NO!” Facebook is here to stay… Haaaallelujah!

Keynote Round II: Rand Fishkin, Front and Center

Does he need an introduction? In case there are any social media newbies out there, Rand Fishkinis the CEO of SEOmoz and an all-around cool social media guy to know. Taking a broad look at social media and how to attack it strategically, Rand dissected the intricate way in which most marketers get started on the social channels:

“OMG! Facebook is huge. Twitter is big, ahhh, LinkedIn is growing so fast! Pinterest and Tumblr are taking over, OMG I need to check out Foursquare and Quora, there are so many channels!”

Blogs are the biggest social channel out there second only to Facebook, of course. The number of bloggers and blog readers out there amounts to half of the adult population in the United States. Reaaaally? Google+ is a huge advantage for the early adopters.Google wants you on Google+, so just think of the SERP incentives when considering whether you want your brand to be a part of this channel.

Jumping into an example about a family business trying to grow their Facebook community, Rand detailed how the business just couldn’t figure out why their community growth was stagnant. Why didn’t anyone want to “like” their page? Thinking that paying for Facebook ads would expose his page to more people and result in more likes, the business owner jumped head first into ads…to no avail. What’s a business owner to do in a case such as this?

Well… it’s time to start from scratch. Emphasizing the importance of creating a social media strategy, Rand noted this is where to start. You need to have a strategy before anything else. Sharing viral content won’t get you anywhere unless you have a goal in mind:

• What do you want for this content?
• How will you get those likes?

In this particular business owner’s case, he realized Google is where it’s at for his business. Since Google accounts for 92% of their visitors, why should he focus on another channel? Tactics are important to have, but they certainly do not determine success. Your tactics are merely a method for implementing your strategy.

What’s Next? Set Some Goals
When creating your marketing goal, you need to figure out a way to get customers and how to retain them. You need to have a scalable, repeatable model, something that will grow itself. People are having a tough time figuring out social media, which means it’s good for everyone else who gets it.

Google+, Facebook, Twitter and even SEO all have high ROI. If you can make a channel work, you are that much better off than the next guy because, again, not everybody gets it. When the time comes to measure your ROI, paid is always easiest to calculate. You know how much you spent and you know your results. Organic, on the other hand, is a whole other animal. It’s much trickier to measure because a lot of your investment is time and energy and your ROI gradually increases over time.

The vast majority of traffic doesn’t cost anything but sweat… err, time investment. Social media is a scalable, low cost, highly strategic investment that demands creativity, but does not demand dollars. In fact, it rewards people who can be creative without spending money.

If you do something great and share it across the social channels, all the other channels will help you! Great content that gets shared on Twitter will motivate people to share it on LinkedIn or through email, and it will impact search! Social is so powerful because one tweet can literally change the world.

First Thing’s First: Strategy
Start with your strategy before you post viral content. Strategy is the plan of action designed to accomplish your goals. So, how do you determine the best strategy for YOUR brand? Contrary to popular belief, social isn’t about acquiring customers directly. When you browse the web or are contemplating buying something, the process starts with an idea and ends with a recall of a past experience.

The last time you were in the market for a calculator, you most likely remembered something you heard a while back or recalled a previous experience. Rand described the process of acquiring customers directly as a funnel: the top of the funnel consists of people visiting your website for first time. Above even the top of that funnel lies social. Where did they hear your brand name the first time? You want your brand want to earn familiarity, likability, and trust.

If people are familiar with your brand, they are more likely to buy a product or share something socially. If people like your brand, they are more likely to buy a product or share something socially. If people TRUST your brand, they are more likely to buy a product or share something socially.

Social media is an integral part of building your likability, and in turn, trust. Before you jump your brand into any new channel, do the research! Rand suggests using Followerwonk for Twitter. You need to target the right people or else you’re wasting your time. Folloerwonk allows you to do a search for all the people and topics you’re interested in and see who the influencers in each category. How do they rank? Are the people you’re trying to reach actually on this channel? Find out! Do your research first before you just join. Know where to go.

Second Thing’s Second: Implementation
Once you know these things, you can put your faith into those channels. Word of mouth is powerful. When people start social campaigns, their exact target audience may not always be on there, so they may be uninterested in the channel, but this is A MISTAKE.

Is there anyone on that channel who influences or talks to those people you want to target? Think of that! If you’re targeting valve engineers and don’t find them on that channel, but you find related users who impact the valve engineers, target them! You have to start somewhere. A few questions to ask yourself before diving head first into that channel include:

• Can you reach the right people?
• Are you reaching the people you’re targeting or their connections?
• What are you going to do that will interest these people?
• Why will they care about you?
• How can you make yourself stand out above all that noise?
• What are you doing that will earn this interest?
• What incentive do they have to share?

You need the content to get noticed! Lastly, once you reach your target audience, ask yourself whether they will like and trust you more. Are you alienating them somehow? You need to have exceptional user experience when they land on your site. If you can answer all of the above questions, your roadmap and social strategy will become incredibly clear. The biggest takeaway from this session is that social needs to be more strategic.

That about does it for the keynote presentations. We had the opportunity to see lots of other great speakers at Zenith and had a blast sponsoring the event! Thank you to all the speakers who traveled from far and wide to be a part of this conference and to all the attendees for asking some really insightful questions and keeping things entertaining. Until next year!

Welcome back to aimClear’s coverage of #SESNY 2012! “A craftsman is only as good as his tools.” The same holds true today, no matter your craft. And dear friends, Search Engine Optimization is most definitely a craft, if not a fine art. Time has shown our industry that real SEO is more than a proverbial wining and dining of search engines– that if you and your company or client want to see real, sustainable results in the SERPs and beyond, you have to be savvy with top-shelf tactics and techniques, not to mention armed with the right set of tools to help execute and maintain your ultimate SEO strategy.

Tools help get tasks done. Crucial tasks of the deep SEO range from the obvious (ranking and on-page optimization) to the black-belt (competitive analysis and page/site level information). Toolmaster Thom Craver, Web and Database Specialist at Saunders College (RIT) was ready at the helm on the morning of Day 1 Search Engine Strategies New York to lead speakers Duane Forrester, Senior Program Manager at Bing, Todd Friesen, SEO Consultant, T.R. Harrington, Chief Operating Officer at Darwin Marketing, and Michael King, SEO Manager at Publicis Modem through a titillating session all about tools of the trade every SEO should have, or at least be aware of. aimClear live-tweeted this session via @beebow. Read on for the top takeaways.

Thom took the stage and welcomed the insanely packed room of attendees. This was surely the must-attend session of the morning. Hosted by such a handsome bunch of gentlemen, at that.

First up to speak was Michael King, who wasn’t modest about his warp-speed presenting style, nor shy about challenging an almighty live-tweeter.

(Seriously, though. Check out slidesha.re/toolspullrank. It contains “nearly every tool you’ll need – EVER,” as Michael put it.)

The Ultimate SEO Tool
If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Flying? Invisibility? Superhuman strength? Some folks like Matt Cutts, Michael, and actually, yours truly – agree that one of the coolest superpowers is the ability to code. Why? Because they you can build your own tools! Which you definitely should be doing.

There are oodles of tools out there, as Michael and other panelists most certainly detailed, but these tools weren’t designed with YOU or your objectives in mind – as such, they don’t satisfy your specific needs. The ultimate SEO tool is the one (or the ones) you build, tailored to your business objectives and goals, able to do anything and everything you want it to do.

Michael recommended checking out wicked cool services from sites like Codeacademy.com and Udacity.com — even YOU can learn to code like a rockstar.

If you don’t have the time or interest in building proprietary tools, leverage the oodles upon those made by others. Again, there’s oodles of them.

Here are some of Michael’s favorite tools for a variety of tasks (warning… no links, you gotta find them on your own):

On-page Analysis

• Screaming Frog: Crawl links, pages, the works
• Scraper for Chrome: Right-click, scrape anything from a page, export to Google Doc
• HTTPFox: Use to check codes for HTTP request: 301s, 302s, 404s
• Page Speed Plugin: Actionable insights about issues with page speed

Keyword Research Tools

• Keyword Eye: Visualizes keywords research and quickly identifies KWs from just inputting domain name
• Soolve: KW research using suggest on Google, Bing, Yahoo, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube, Answers.com
• Ubersuggest: KW research using google suggest with country and platform options
• Scrapebox: Whitehat KW research app for Scrapebox with Google/Bing/Yahoo susuggest recently come to light
• @SEOGadget AdWords API Excel Plugin

Content Ideas

• GoFish: Michael made this tool, it pulls real-time KW research from Twitter to help get content ideas for conversations happening NOW
• @SEOGadget Google Docs tool: Scrape various blogs and discussions to get hot ideas

Spreadsheet Magic

• SEOTools by Niels Bosma: Scrape pages, get links and social metrics, along with analytics right in Excel
• ImportXML for Google Docs: Scrape pages, use APIs, get analytics right in Google docs

Actionable Info on a Link profile

• Link Detective: Discover where your links are– in a sidebar, comment, directory list, blogroll?

Quick & Dirty Competitive Analysis

• Searchmetrics Essentials: The quickest way, Michael argues, to understand what competitors are doing as they track performing KWs, traffic and social.

Analytics

• It’s all about Keyword-Level Demographics
• Track social networks users are logged into with Google Analytics
• Google Analytics Debugger: Custom variables take long time to populate – use this to make sure you implement code properly

Identifying Target Audiences

• Facebook Ad Creator: It’s the audience version of the AdWords KW tool
• FB insights: If the site is on the open graph, you can get data on the audience from FB insights
• Double-click AdPlanner: Provides demographic insight per domain. Enter competitors if you’re not there.

Link Building Quick Hits

• SEER Method: Pull Twitter followers using SimplyMeasured, then pull your Link Profile. Contact users that follow but don’t link. (Be prepared for no one to care when you contact them… but something may come of it .)

Data for Infographics

• World government data
• Google public data

Data Visualizations

• Infogr.am
• Dipity: Creates interactive timelines from your data and images
• Storybird: Creates interactive books out of data

Link Data Sources

• Ahrefs.com
• Blekko (search “/seo”)
• Linkdiagnosis

Bookmarklets

• Open Graph Helper: Check if open graph data is of optimal length
• Wirily: Turn any site into wireframe so you can easily show your UX team where they went wrong

Rankings

• STAT: Michael argues there is no better rankings platform. Use the Codex to check for fluctuations when Google makes announcements.

Your Ultimate Link Building ToolKit

• Followeronk: Identify link prospects on twitter by searching KWs in their user profiles
• Knowem: Track link prospects across channels (by username)
• MentionMapp: Find link prospects you wouldn’t find through KW searches based on who talks to your influencers
• Ontolo: Automated link prospecting and organization / tracking link campaigns
• Iftt (If This, Then That): Set up automatictweets whenever an influencer in your space blogs or tweets
• Rapportive: See all users social profiles right from GMail as you write to them
• Boomerang: Schedule emails and automatic follow ups with Gmail plugin
• Buzzstream: Track link prospects, social progress all in one place
• Zemanta: Content network that integrates with free WP / Movable Type plugin suggest related articles and images to bloggers are they write

Blog Management

• ManageWP: Backup, update, install plugins, and themes for multiple WP blogs all from one place

The Most Important Tool Of All…
Your brain . “No matter how many tools you have, no one can teach you imagination,” Michael concludes. “Learn tools but understand how to make them work for you.”

Next up – T.R. Harrington, who kicked off with a simple poll on how we find SEO tools. Via webinar? Online reviews? Peer recommendations? Performing a search? Most people relied upon peer recommendations, followed closely by performing a search. A study performed by Skyrocket showed that 77% of participants turn to peer recommendation when looking for new SEO tools. Interesting. Ahhh, the power of social!‏

T.R.’s company is based in China, which – as you may know, is a no-Google zone. So how do you get a leg up on SEO in a non-Google, non-Bing world? Who are the players you should be optimizing for? In China, it’s all about Baidu, Yandex, and Naver.

“There’s a lot less to work with in terms of SEO tools overseas,” T.R. points out. But there are, like, 1,338,299,512 people in China. That’s a huge market – and one that needs to be taken into consideration.

So… how do you do keyword research without Google? Baidu Insights is a great start. It’s very similar to Google Insights tools.‏ Dig deep into related news, rising searches, related searches, search query by geo, age, career, education, etc. Very groovy demographic insights worth investigating. Social signals are impacting what type of KWs you should be focusing on overseas, too. T.R. encourages marketers perform research on microblogs, videos, search, etc.

‏Baidu also offers ranking monitoring by way of Advanced Web Ranking. Good stuff’s to be had. Check it out. There’s also some SERP Update Monitoring gems, served up by Update Analyzer from Yandex. Super Manager is another tool useful for basic monitoring.

When it comes to tools for link research, T.R recommends Open Site Explorer from SEOmoz. There’s a name I recognize . Yandex Webmaster Tools has a good link research tool, too – though T.R. points out it can take a while to receive the data. If you’re not in a hurry, it’s a nice alternative.

For link monitoring, T.R. suggests Master Ghost, which may or may not be the tenth member of the Wu Tang Clan.

T.R. wrapped up and handed the mic over to Duane Forrester, who would be discussing new features in Bing Webmaster Tools (BWMT). Ahhh, Bing. You didn’t forget about Bing, did you? Duane sure hasn’t. And he’s adamant about not letting you forget, either. Fun fact: 55 million people use Bing exclusively. That’s more than the population of Italy!‏

“You cannot be excluding us anymore,” Duane stated. Optimization for the Bing crowd is just as important as optimizing for Google.

New to Bing Webmaster Tools
Introducing the Bing Organic Keyword Research Tool. Launched earlier this month, this pulls organic KW research data straight from Bing. Repeat: ORGANIC.

• Data is historical – goes back 6 months
• Data is exportable
• Data is filterable by country / language
• Data can have selectable date range

Another new tool – the Markup Validator Tool. Checks to see if markup is correctly coded, shows markup when correct, shows errors, quick access to common language. Markup means rich SERPs which means higher click through rates! Duane argued that it’s crucial to start incorporating markup. If you fail to do so, you will be left behind as markup gains significance in search rankings.

Keep in mind though: CTR is not the only factor that determines your rank.

“CTR is important, but don’t hang all your chickens on that ledge.” -Duane Forrester

(Duane immediately followed this with, “Man, that was a stupid analogy.”)

Duane also strongly recommended submitting a sitemap to Bing– this helps all of your content be discovered, crawled and indexed – and it also helps Bing understand what your site is all about. Go the extra mile and submit your RSS feed to Bing along with the sitemap – this will help ensure Bing always sees the freshest versions of your content / website.

More Pro-Tips from Duane:

• Check traffic Bing sends: See what keywords you rank for, how well you rank, what words deliver traffic…
• See associated CPC data for each phrase, see at-a-glance arrows for trends, data that’s combined from both Bing & Yahoo
• Check the links to your site. BWMT lets you see which links point to your site, broken down by page and number of links‏
• Leverage BMWT Reports– they feature page crawl stats, crawl error stats, crawl details, index coverage, inbound external links, the works!‏

Long story short: Don’t JUST use Bing Webmaster Tools over Google Webmaster tools. Use BOTH.‏

Some More Cool BWMT Features:

• Control how and when the Bingbot crawls your site. This is important for balancing bandwidth – you can tell Bing to come crawl your site when traffic is typically low, and avoid your site when it’s high-traffic time.
• Manage email communications with BWMT. Tell Bing what email alerts you want, how often. Specify an alternative email address for Bing to copy, specify contact number, select alert notifications etc. The goal is to get all those real-time alerts BWMT sends you, the webmaster, when sh*ts going haywire on your site. Because when sh*ts going haywire on your site, you’re being excluded from the SERPs! Bing wants you to be able to take action right away!

“We want every shred of your content. We want every character, every space, every %20.” -Duane Forrester‏‏

Fair enough . Duane wrapped up, and a stylishly bearded Todd Friesen took the stage to close out the presentations.

What’s a tool? Todd began by flashing through slides depicting various tools – a hammer, a wrench, a drill, one of those lawn mowers you sit on, Justin Bieber… whaaat?

Todd’s Top 5 Tools

1. The Web Developer Tool Bar
2. His Eyeballs
3. His Brain
4. A Pen & Paper (best tools for amazing brainstorms!)
5. A Frosty Mug of Beer

Tools generate data- once you have the data, you need to organize it, compare it, trend it, store it, analyze it, connect it! What’s the best tool to do this?

Todd says – no contest: QlikView. It’s a business intelligence tool Todd says you can use for any industry to analyze any data. It’s free for personal use. Try it out. If you really like it, consider upgrading for your business. It’s one powerful baby.  QlikView allows you to pull in data via Excel, XML, flat file, whatever- as long as data chunks have common field, they can be automatically connected. (Note: Todd is NOT affiliated with this tool in any way. He just <3s it.)

Moral of the story: Tools are awesome. There’s a tool for everything – but it’s all about data collecting. It’s about what you DO with the data that matters. That’s what makes you an epic SEO.

And with that, the session wrapped up and attendees were unleashed out into the world for lunch! Thanks for the panelists for an awesome, insightful session. Stay tuned right here on aimClear blog for more coverage of #SESNY 2012.

Photo credit: MediaHosting

[aimClear Disclosure: SES is a client of Greg's firm, which does not diminish the charm of this guest post.] As many of us get ready to go to SES New York 2012, I can’t resist taking a look at how much the industry has changed in 10 years. Back in 2002, I attended my first SES event - Search Engine Strategies Spring, then held in Boston. The event featured speakers from various crawler-based search engines, including AltaVista, Ask Jeeves/Teoma, FAST/AllTheWeb, Google, and Inktomi. Wow! One of the new sessions at the two-day event was “Understanding Paid Inclusion.”  And a couple of other sessions were “Dealing with Directories” and “Cloaking & Doorways.” Times change.

Today, several of the search engines and most of the SEO tactics featured at Search Engine Strategies Spring 2002 are deader than the Norwegian Blue in Monty Python’s The Parrot Sketch. No one needs to understand paid inclusion anymore. There are far fewer directories left to deal with. And using cloaking and doorway pages may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive and removed from the Google index.

Early last month at SES Accelerator San Diego 2012, where Marty Weintraub spoke about “Optimizing Humans!  The Art of Data-Driven Social Marketing,” attendees were more interested in learning about Pinterest, which emerged as one of the top 10 websites within the Hitwise Social Networking & Forums category on Dec. 22, 2011, than in hearing about Google+, which was launched back on June 28, 2011.

Later that month at SES London 2012, where I spoke about “Developing a Video Optimization and Marketing Campaign,” attendees were more interested in learning about Google Search, plus Your World, which was announced on Jan. 10, 2012, than in hearing about Google Panda, which was first released back on Feb. 24, 2011.

Mike Grehan, the Global VP of Content at Incisive Media, totally absorbs all of the feedback he gets from every show like a sponge. That’s why he recently asked all the speakers to try and lean their content even further towards the advanced practitioner. Except for the intro-level Kick Start track, all of the content at SES New York 2012 will be essentially “brand new.” Heck, I won’t be giving the same presentation that I gave at SES San Francisco 2011, which was held just seven months ago. Too much has changed since then.

What does this mean for experienced marketing and advertising professionals who have been in the industry for 3 to 5 years?  I think this means you will learn more tactics and best practices sooner by attending not one, but at least two SES events in 2012.

We are not working in my father’s auto industry, which introduced new Oldsmobiles once a year. We are working in an industry that has morphed from “search engine marketing and optimization” into “search and social marketing.” And that means we need to get our arms around more than the latest changes at Google, Yahoo! Search, Bing, Ask, and AOL Search. We need to embrace the social side o things. We need to get up to speed on the new developments at Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest.com, and Yahoo! Answers.

Avinash Kaushik, who keynoted at SES London and will also keynote at SES New York, has also spotted this trend. As he told me in a recent video interview:

“You can no longer be good at just one thing, or two. It is a 10-thing world now (and maybe a 20-thing world soon).”

This is a big challenge. But times change. Many of the best practices from 10 years ago are now obsolete. Even some of the ones from six months ago are past their use-by date. That’s why we need to double our efforts to keep pace with the changes in search and social marketing. That’s why we should go to two SES Conference & Expo events a year. And maybe more.

Greg Jarboe is President and co-founder of SEO-PR.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily those of aimClear LLC or aimClear Blog.

Businesses: Raise your hand if you barely cared about Google+ until your SEO consultant called to say now you just have to. While the disproportionate weight Google is placing on + driven results may be unhealthy for SERPs in the short term, opening a relatively easy + door to bomb Google SERPs serves the function of enlisting SEOs to goad businesses into participating in Google’s fledgling social community.

Google’s strategy is brilliant, sort of like a sardonic dominatrix forcing her ambivalent quarry to capitulate with promises of immediate pleasure, ultimately resulting in long-term frustration for the poor S.O.B. that surrendered. Trust me, it won’t stay this easy to participate your way into SERPs via + as businesses flock to grab their share and mega authority profiles are grown by brand gorillas. Long term, true socialization will likely benefit SERPs. For now, one thing is sure: The SEO world is changing in radical ways. While (of course) we’d love you to hire a specialized consultant to counsel you on what to do next, here’s an awesome start without having to fork over mucho-sheckels. Read on as SEO industry pundits weigh in with gobs of actionable insights and tactics.

Google has tried to go social before. From the ill-conceived “Wave” to the “Buzz” debacle, they’ve failed  and gloriously to impel its throngs of users to take the leap to socialization in a Google environment. Conventional wisdom is that Google users don’t traffic Google to be social. At first, + was interesting but looked like it could be another ho-hum. That’s all changed now. SEOs like you and I are giddy lemmings, flocking and falling all over our feet, telling businesses that they too should participate in the land rush. Sadly, it’s true! “Calling all businesses! For the next 15 minutes Google organic prominence is easier than usual!”

Here are 32 totally free Google Plus Your World SEO Resources. From the greatest minds in the industry to niche trade pubs, have a gander:

• Google’s Results Get More Personal With “Search Plus Your World”, Danny Sullivan, SearchEngineLand
• Why Every Marketer Now Needs a Google+ Strategy, Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz
• Rank for Anything You Want on Google Search Plus Your World, Miranda Miller, Search Engine Watch
• When Search & Social Act Like Children, Users Lose, Lisa Barone, Outspoken Media
• Webmaster Reaction Towards Google Search, Plus Your World, Barry Schwartz, SearchEngineRoundTable
• Google Introduces ‘Search, Plus Your World’: Is Your Business Ready to Get Personal?, Jessica Bates, MasterGoogle
• How Google Search+ Your World Influences SEO Laurie Sullivan, MediaPost
• Real-Life Examples Of How Google’s “Search Plus” Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy, Danny Sullivan, SearchEngineLand
• What does Google’s social search mean for SEO? We ask the experts,  Nancy Messieh TNW Blog
• Twitter: Google+ Integration In Google Search Is “Bad” For Everyone, Matt McGee, Marketing Land
• Google+ for Business: 5 Things Marketing Professionals Should Know About Google+,  Ashley Zeckman TopRank, Online Marketing Blog
• What Google Personalized Search plus Your World Means for Marketing – SEO Tips, Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing Blog
• How Google Search Plus Your World Affects SEO, Sean, SEOHacker
• 5 Ways Google Search Plus Your World Impacts SEO, Jacob Stoops, Agent
• SEOGoogle’s “Search Plus Your World” Gets Personal, SEOHaus
• Google+ SEO AJ Kohn, Blind Five Year Old
• How Google Search Plus Your World Will Impact SEO, Marcus Taylor, SEOOptimise
• How Does Google’s Search Plus Your World Impact Adwords and Other Forms of Online Marketing?, Joe Mangum, SEOmoz
• How To Rank On Page One Of Google’s Personalized Search, SEO Philosophy5
• §  Harsh Truths About Google’s ‘Search Plus Your World’ Update, Obaidul Haque, SearchEngine Marketing Group
• Google Search, Plus Your World: Where Google Plus and SEO Converge, Jannette Pazer, Dragon Search
• Search Plus Your World: Google’s SEO Game Changer, Stephanie Cain, The Right Click
• ‘Google Search, Plus Your World’ – An SEO’s Perspective, Mike, Digital Marketing Blog
• Google+ for SEO? Don’t Focus on Your Brand Page!, Eric Wittlake, B2C
• Building Authority and Influence in Google, Kaiserthesage
• Three Reasons Google Search Plus Your World Will Change Your World, Vocus Blog
• Google Rocks SEO With Search Plus Your World, OptimizeThis
• Get Yourself Featured in New Google Search Plus Your World Personalized Search, Mark Traphagen, Virante Orange Juice
• Google ‘Search Plus Your World’ Brings Google+ Into Search Results, Michael Liedtke, HuffingtonPost

Additional Resources, Added “Post” Humously

• 30 Hands On Google Search Plus SEO Techniques for Getting Personal, Tadeusz Szewczyk, OnReact
• eBook from our friends at SearchInfluence, Using Google Plus For Business