We all know SEO has changed dramatically over the years and will continue to change. The way we market, sell, deliver and report on SEO services has not kept pace and needs to catch up. If you ask marketers today what SEO is about they will likely still say things like, "ranking #1 in Google" and unfortunately this is what they are looking for in the SEO sales and service delivery process. (Read: SEO Buying & Selling Tricks that Create Unachievable SEO Results & Expectations)

We know SEO is an on-going, long-term process. More specifically, it is the process of continually discovering highly converting, non-branded keywords that are driving organic search traffic and conversions. It’s about understanding search intent and how keywords used to describe your products and services evolve as a prospect progresses through the buying cycle. It is then about having insight into great data and taking action by including those optimized keywords in your content marketing plan.

This SEO process cannot begin and end in a particular project phase or be completed after just one month of keyword research. It is now a four-step process that requires an SEO culture change, which includes:

• Selling the concept of discovering and optimizing for highly converting keywords
• Discovering non-branded keywords driving traffic and conversions
• Delivering additional SEO services to capitalize on highly converting keywords
• Reporting on the evolution of highly converting keywords and content

Step #1: Sell the Concept

The first place to introduce the concept of discovering and optimizing for highly converting keywords is in your marketing and sales conversations. Many SEO prospects and clients still want to buy the promise of a #1 search position for their keywords. This goal is difficult to obtain and maintain and sets unachievable expectations for you and your client.

Instead, avoid the urge to agree upon a list of keywords with your client that your team is going to "optimize for" - that list of 10, 20, or 30 keywords that your team will go away and "do SEO for." We call this list of keywords the Keyword Gap. Every client will have a list of keywords they think they want to rank for when in reality there’s a more highly converting keyword list that will perform better. That’s what the second step, Discovery, is all about.

You can do some initial keyword discovery in the sales process to demonstrate the Keyword Gap. Show the prospect some data for two keywords, for example:

Which one is the better performing keyword:

• Keyword #1 (condominiums for sale in Richmond) in Position #4 for a particular page with 20 visits and 10 conversions?
• Keyword #2 (condos in Richmond) in Position #3 for a different page with 3 visits and 1 conversion?

Based on the topic of this article, the quick answer is, Keyword #1 in Position #4 (condominiums for sale in Richmond) is a better performing keyword. An alternative answer is: more keyword discovery is required to understand if there are opportunities to optimize the web page that Keyword #2 is positioned for. Or maybe Keyword #1 is one of those highly converting keywords that should be included in all content marketing efforts.

Take away: Build time into your sales proposal and SEO program for on-going discovery to uncover those highly converting keywords prospects are using at different stages of the buying cycle. Base decisions on great SEO data from a variety of sources including SERPs, organic traffic, and conversion data. Always be on the lookout for new opportunities to optimize.

Step #2: The Discovery Process

The discovery process for new non-branded keywords should be practiced as frequently as possible. Uncover the new, non-branded keywords that are driving organic search traffic and conversions and determine whether there is an opportunity to further optimize the web presence for these keywords. The success of this process depends on setting up goals and conversions in your analytics system. One of my favorite sayings about SEO is, "don’t bother even starting the SEO process unless you have website analytics goals and conversions configured."

Goals and conversions in your analytics system do not have to be complicated. Start with simple conversions and as you learn about your web presence increase the sophistication. Think about what you want your website visitors to do. What would you consider a successful visit? Here are a few examples of metrics to measure successful visits (conversions) from organic search:

Time spent on site - If a visitor has stayed on the site for a certain number of minutes (3+) and the bounce rate is low, then perhaps it can be concluded that the visitor read the content. The content was appealing to them.

Number of pages visited - If the visitor reviews two or more pages, then perhaps it can be concluded that they were intrigued with the content enough to read further.

Main product or services page to contact sales page - If the main purpose of the site is to promote the organization’s main product, did the visitor review the product page, then the pricing page then the contact sales page?

Take away: Below is the process for uncovering highly converting keywords.

1. Set up goals and conversions in analytics.
2. As frequently as possible, look for the top non-branded keywords that are driving organic search traffic and conversions.
3. Understand the rank position for the keyword and which page or pages are ranking.
4. Understand the search volume for the keyword (both broad match and exact match).
5. Analyze the ranking pages and look for opportunities to optimize for the keyword in question.
6. Implement changes and watch for changes in position, traffic from organic search, and most importantly conversions. If there are positive changes, create some additional content that includes the keyword and again watch for changes.
7. Report newly identified, non-branded keywords and progress to the client.

Step #3: Deliver Additional SEO Services to Capitalize on Highly Converting Keywords

Once a new non-branded keyword is discovered and reported to the client, discuss the keyword opportunity and the plan for capitalizing on it.

• What was the entry page for that keyword?
• Where in the buying cycle is that keyword likely to be used?
• What kind of content can be created and distributed to further support that keyword and the prospect as they demonstrate their intent to find content?
• Is it worth further investment in SEO?

At this point, there is an opportunity to upsell the client on additional service hours to optimize and create content for the newly discovered and agreed upon keywords. It is also the point where the keyword should be included in the full content marketing strategy and further planning done on the type of content prospects require at this particular stage in the buying cycle. Perhaps it’s a focused case study, with supporting blog content, video, whitepaper or a combination. Think about the distribution points for the content and the possible backlinks and social signals that can be created for the keyword.

Take away: Set aside time each month to discuss newly discovered keywords with the client.

Step #4: Report on the Evolution of Highly Converting Keywords & Content

The approach of identifying and focusing on highly converting keywords then incorporating those keywords into the full content marketing strategy requires a different level of reporting compared to the basic monthly SEO reporting of number of backlinks, number of keywords on Page 1, etc.

Including keyword visits and conversions data alongside position data is a great first step to getting the client thinking about the difference between ranking #1 for any keyword versus ranking for the keywords prospects actually value and associate with your organization.

Once the keyword is incorporated into the full content marketing strategy the reporting requirements should shift to be focused on the performance of the particular piece of content or the content marketing campaign. This is where the disciplines of SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing begin to completely collide. (Read: 10 Reasons Why You Need an Optimized Content Strategy Now)

Take away: With the right tracking and metrics technologies the impact of content on a web presence for the purpose of organic search optimization can be reported, including:

• How the position has been affected for a particular cluster of keywords
• How many backlinks and social signals have been created
• How many keyword visits and conversions are associated with the content campaign
• And most importantly, how many sales are attributed to the content

Conclusion

Google’s algorithm updates have changed the practice of SEO. Search marketing firms have an opportunity to evolve their sales, delivery and reporting practices to differentiate themselves. Focusing on the discovery of highly converting keywords beginning with the sales and marketing conversations through delivery and reporting will produce stronger SEO results over the long term and happier SEO clients.

Step One - Optimize Your Site

Step Two - Find Your Tribe

Step Three - Find Your Media

Step Four - Making Your Connections

Step Five - Manage Your Content

Social SEO - Step Five

If you've been following along in this how-to series, you'll have a sense of how to connect with your online audience, the best channels to use to reach them, and how to manage all the new connections you've been making.  You've also explored your favorite content delivery system, be that a blog, podcast, videos, or social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Quora or Instagram.

Manage Your Content with Calendars

Managing all that content is a balancing act that starts with one simple thing: Create an editorial calendar for yourself.  You can start up a calendar on Google or if you use WordPress, there is a terrific plug-in that you can use to see and schedule all your upcoming posts. If you use Hootsuite, check out the Publisher view (it has a paper airplane icon) which allows you to see all pending posts in a calendar format.  All those solutions share some key features: They are visual so you can see what things look like over a month's time, and they allow for drag-and-drop, which means you can switch the schedule of posts around just by moving them.

Know What You're Going to Write

For two years I wrote a blog called 500 Words on Thursday. It was (guess what?) five hundred words, posted  each week on Thursday.  Each week I rarely knew what I was going to write before I wrote it. I let each blog flow out of me. It was exhilarating, scary, and I am totally over doing it that way any more.  When you're managing content across a lot of platforms, seat of the pants doesn't really cut it. (Although it is fun.) Now I have Google Alerts set up for topics I write and post about. I use Google Reader to monitor ten thousand sources. (Not an exaggeration.) Our researchers have complied  schedules of conferences and events concerning the topics we post about, so if we're writing about a related topic, we'll know the best time to post it. We keep lists of bloggers writing about topics we care about and build relationships with them so that we can trade blog posts and share content from time to time. All of this creates a solid foundation for creative spontaneity.

What a Minute? Spontaneity?

Yes, exactly. Writing often and well, whether you are writing a blog, novel, Twitter post, Facebook entry, or screenplay, is all about support.  To take the risks that writing requires, you need to feel safe. Same thing if you are doing a podcast, video, or making a series of images that will go to Instagram. Here's one way to give yourself support: Whether you use Word, Evernote, a napkin, or the back of an envelope, write up one-sentence versions of your major themes. Got a lot of them in play, let them incubate for a while, and then when you're ready to write, see which one of them jumps out. Has somebody written an e-book about this?  Of course. I have. Click the link for info What Should My Blog Be About?

Start Small

To add a little more to that previous section: If you've done your homework, know your audience, have researched your keywords, you'll be in a great position to brainstorm lots of on-message topics for Twitter, Facebook, or for your blog. Start small, look for themes, and review your keywords now and again so that your message stays on message.

Ask for Help

If you're planning an interview series on YouTube, or prepping to start up your podcast, you'll want great interviewees. Check out these free services for help in finding people to interview.  Post a free request for an interviewee on Help a Reporter Out, Steve and Bill Harrison's Reporter Connection, or ProfNet. You'll get lots of responses from experts, authors, professionals, and their publicists.

Photo Credit:  Joe Lanman via Flickr and Creative Commons License.

The Internet is Overwhelming

I get this comment a lot: 'The internet is overwhelming. I don't know where to start.' I hear you. It will help you to know that you don't have to communicate with everyone all at once to effectively practice Social SEO. Being effective starts with getting a sense sense of your best connections and then creating a system to manage them.

You already know, if you read step two of this series, who your tribe is and where to find them online. Now you need to manage all those contacts, engage the people you like and learn who matters most to  you. It's about tracking, and Hootsuite is great for this and well as TweetDeck.  With both applications you can create and monitor lists of people and respond to them when you want to. In Hootsuite  you can watch over Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Tumblr all in one dashboard. You can even check your mailing list performance from MailChimp. It's all sortable by keyword or by Klout score. Setting this up takes 20 minutes, and then you have yourself an engagement dashboard. Now, what do to with all that information?

Social SEO is Engagement

A reminder here: Social SEO is about engagement. Sure, you can use Hootsuite and other tools like Social Oomph, Sprout Social, and  Twuffer to schedule social media posts. I think that's a good idea, even though it can lead to spectacular disasters if you don't monitor things closely. You need to be present online throughout the day, however, and pretty much every day. That's a commitment. A small part of that can be automated and scheduled. The most important part of it is hands on. Let's break down each channel.

Facebook

99.99% of your posting on Facebook has to be done in real time, and you should personally respond to comments. Exception: If you have a company page, and a staffer or two trained to respond, they can do the typing.

LinkedIn

Posting into LinkedIn Groups is an excellent way to reach the people who can benefit from your message, but get to know the group  first before you post.

Following Blogs and Commenting

Blogs remain one of the best ways to increase your visibility online, and once you finish writing yours, the next best way to build a presence is to follow other blogs and comment on them in a meaningful way.  (Posting 'good blog!' is not all that meaningful, by the way.) I track blogs in Google Reader and Feedly. On your iPad, Zite and Flipboard also work well.

Adding Subscribers to Your Mailing List

According to research cited by DocStoc, 94% of people using the internet are using it to read emails.  Before you consign this to the 'well, duh, that's obvious' category, remember that a solid email newsletter builds loyalty. So add sign up forms to your websites, social profiles and a link in  your email signature. The people who are opening your newsletter online are interested in what you have to say and what's more, you can track them. It's possible to fine tune your newsletter sends so that you can address specific groups within your broader newsletter audience.  Examples?  If you market adventure travel, you can send newsletters about Great White Shark diving to your underwater adventure enthusiasts, and news about that safari go to the readers who are interested in Africa. If you market wine, you can send your red wine people newsletters about Merlot and Shiraz and your white wine people newsletters about Pinot Grigio and Chardonnay.

Managing your Connections - Deciding Who is Important

Wow, this is a tough one. Who is most important to you? All that engaging, communicating and connecting online can take up a lot of time, so you'll want to use it wisely. There's no doubt that most every day I will check in on friends on Facebook and check the Twitter feed of people who make me laugh. (Regular readers know I like Animals Talking in All Caps.) But once I do that, we consult the databases we have of the most influential bloggers, Twitter people and Facebookers in the areas we market to, and retweet, comment and follow. How to determine who is most influential? You can use tools like Traackr, Klout or PeerIndex. You can use Compete.com and ClearWebStats.com to see how their websites rank.

For Social SEO to be effective, not only to you have to make your connections, you also have to maintain and manage them - every day.

Photo Credit: brewbooks via Creative Commons License.

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, love is in the air. And on the web. Online dating has replaced cruising the bar for other singles, especially during the website dating ‘high season’ between Christmas Day and Valentine’s Day. For those of us who’ve dabbled in Internet dating, the anxiety of choosing the right photos and words is an all too familiar feeling in the quest to attract “the one” (or just someone. Anyone.) But Amy Webb, CEO of WebbMedia Group, threw her human instincts by the wayside to master dating sites through a data-driven approach of mathematical equations, key words and an SEO-friendly profile. She logged her story in her new book, Data, A Love Story.

Webb joined JDate and was disappointed with her initial matches. On sites like JDate, the users themselves provide data. When ineffective data is entered into the site’s “matching” algorithm, ineffective matching is put out. Ergo – online dating is the pits, spitting back incompatible mates.Webb wasn’t satisfied with the system, and instead spent a month researching data points, crunching numbers and analyzing the competition, ultimately finding a formula for the most successfully matched user profiles on the web.

Here’s what she found:

The most successful women on the site had profile pictures that showed some skin, wrote short, positive bios and waited about a day to respond to messages from admirers.

"When you think about it, online dating is sort of the ultimate exercise in product marketing. Except that you are the product. So how can you leverage what you’ve got, how can you make sure you’re being seen by the most number of people?" Webb explains. "If you think of (it) as more of a catalog database ... as long as you know exactly what you’re looking for, it’s no different from doing a search in a library or doing a search for shoes on Zappos."

As a frustrated online dater I can’t help but be a bit exasperated with her findings. Weren’t we taught that the right person would like us for who we are? But as a brand strategist, I should have figured this out sooner. We are in an age that requires us to brand ourselves all the time, so why should it be any different in dating?

Before I landed a great job, I spent hours tweaking my resume. From format and font to titles and time frames, it never seemed quite right. But when I joined OKCupid, I only dedicated about 15 minutes to filling out my profile. In my (obviously) romanticized version of online dating, it would be easy to charm my potential suitors with my best photos and sparkling wit. But Webb’s story brings up a valid point – when positioning yourself for love, forget about branding for your own satisfaction. Like you would with any great product, use your data, strategize, and brand for the consumer.

This is a multi-part series written by Lee Schneider about how to be found online using social SEO.

Everybody talks about engagement, but does anybody really know what it means? For me engagement has a lot to do with loyalty. If people like the content that you're putting out, they come back for more. Either it's interesting, funny, or funny and/or interesting.  (For an example of funny and/or interesting, see @pourmecoffee on Twitter.)

If You Were a Content Tree, What Kind Would You Be?

To make social SEO work for you, you have to practice it. A lot. Some recommend posting a blog a day, or at least several times per week. To create all that content, you'd better like doing it. So we have to ask, What do you naturally like to do? Some of us are writers. Others are talkers, and still others are visual people. Take some time to think about the content you really enjoy posting and you'll find the best fit.

Blogging

Blog articles are the gold standard of social SEO. Heidi Cohen has just posted a terrific guide to what goes into a successful blog. She suggests researching keywords to find out what is popular, taking the time to craft a consistent message, and recommends posting often. That last part resonates most with me, and it is the most challenging thing for many. To post often you have to plan. You have to research topics (or hire somebody to do it for you), break out a calendar so that you know what you're posting about next week and the week after that, and stack up usable rough drafts in advance so you aren't creating on the fly all the time. If you have more ideas than time, you can hire writers or invite guest posters to fill in your calendar. My Blog Guest is a free service that facilitates content sharing.  Here at Red Cup we work with teams of writers to develop blogs for posting our clients' sites and other high-traffic sites.

Podcasting

If you'd rather talk than write, podcasting is a great way to go. I host a weekly podcast called TechSmart that is about start up culture and also business applications that are well designed and fun to use. Whether you set up your podcast on your own (as I have done through SoundCloud) or go with a service like BlogTalkRadio where they do everything for you, podcasting affords you a fun way to discuss issues that are important to your business, brand or cause. You'll need to know how to ask good questions, and listen, and the only writing you'll do is a short introduction to the podcast. It's easy to get a podcast on iTunes or Stitcher Radio to enhance distribution.

Pinterest/Instagram

If you are often snapping pictures, and can find a worthwhile theme that advances your cause or expresses your brand, then Pinterest or Instagram are both excellent choices.  A client of ours, Smidge Wines, has been posting a Vintage Diary on Pinterest. It gives viewers an inside look at their vineyards, harvest, and even bottling. Another client, Lars Topelmann Photography, posts on Instagram and Facebook about an ongoing worldwide street art project. When you post images, be sure to provide links back to your home site.

YouTube

People spend lots of time looking at videos, and yours doesn't have to be about cats to be a success.  (Although it is possible that in the near future, all videos will be about cats, at least according to one ad agency.) Gabrielle Bernstein posts videos that are blog-like (called Vlogs), and Mama Natural posts a new video every Tuesday. The secret to success, as in blogging, is to be present and consistent with your posts.

Social Media Support

You have to choose one home base. This is usually the place where you need your visitors to take action, join your movement, or make a purchase. If you're measuring site visits to chart your success, for example, then you'll want all liks to lead back to your website. If you find Facebook to be your base of operations, then be sure all paths lead there. You can't be good at everything, but you owe it to yourself to try as many forms of social media as possible to see what sticks.Twitter, your mailing list, Quora, LinkedIn, Facebook and Pinterest are all worth a spin. But once you've determined what works and what doesn't you'll need a little discipline.  You can connect with thousands of people daily online, but if you want to achieve measurable success, you'll need focus the traffic toward your best goal. For most of us, that's Facebook or our home page.

Photo Credit:  Jesse Pearl via Creative Commons License.

[If you missed step one of this series, it's right here.]

You have a brand new website or you've just refreshed your old one. It's got great flow, with an action step on each page, calls to action sprinkled liberally throughout, and a clear mission statement where everybody can see it. Great!  Then why is it so quiet around here? You've checked your Google Analytics and the numbers are looking like a 10 year old's shoe size.  What's wrong?

Designing for Your Crowd

I'm a big fan of aesthetics. I like simple, clean designs. There are some really ugly sites out there - and, paradoxically, some of those eyesore sites have the most traffic. Why, with their sidebars, popups, banners and screaming color schemes, do they become popular?  Simple answer.

They have designed for their crowd.

The people who visit those sites are comfortable with a lot of ... well, let's call it noise. I know they're not in my crowd, but when designing sites and advising clients, I always do this when on the road to building more traffic:  Consider how people really use the site, and question who is really visiting it.

The best way to do those things is to look at sites that are like yours, that might speak to the same tribe, and study them. What makes this site or that site work for you? What are they like to navigate? Then, you'll need to dig a little deeper.

Who's in Your Tribe?

Seth Godin's book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us is worth a read if you haven't had a chance to get into it already. Every brand, every public person, and every social movement has a tribe, and those tapping into a big tribe become hugely popular. The tribe can be lovers of baseball, left-handed cooks, fans of the Grateful Dead, NRA members or readers of the New York Times. Tribes are powerful interest groups, and they express themselves beautifully on the social web.

The Social Web

For most of us, our websites are where we want to direct traffic. They are home base, where people learn more about you, sign up for your mailing list, buy your products. The people who come to any website are invisible to us except as numbers in Google Analytics. But Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, Quora, Goodreads, and Pinterest give us lots of insight into the real life humans who are checking us out online.

The social web connections of any site similar to yours deserve a close look. Look at their Twitter followers and see if you ought to be following some of the same people.  Look at who they follow and see if those folks also merit a connection. Do the same with Facebook, Quora and LinkedIn, and blogs. When you do this, you're levering the affinities other sites have built - perhaps the result of years of effort - and tapping into that intelligence.

It's fairly easy to map your brand, persona or movement over the books your tribe may read (check Goodreads), the questions they like to answer (check Quora), the people they hang around with (Twitter, Facebook) and their business interests (LinkedIn Groups).

Tracking the Web

Now, if you're like me, you've amassed a monster list of people. You've got lists of contacts to follow on Twitter, friend on Facebook, link to in LinkedIn, and follow in Quora. You have a million blogs to read. Before you lose your mind about all the work it might entail to track all those contacts, you'll want to prioritize.  Here's what I do. First, I get to know the players.

Blogs. I use Google Reader to take RSS feeds of any blog that might be on message for my brand or a client's campaign. I hook up Google Reader with Feedly, a free magazine-like reader that makes it easy for me to look through a hundred blog posts a day. At Red Cup we've built databases and posted them as Google spreadsheets. These editorial calendars list the blogger, their favorite topics, and the traffic their site receives.  Then we sort the blogs by traffic, and look most closely at the top ten who have the most traffic or the most interesting posts over time. We pay attention to those popular blogs.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. I use Hootsuite to track social media, build lists, respond and interact. We sort the Hootsuite Streams by Klout score to be sure we are interacting with those who have the most reach.

When I want to drill down further, I use Batchbook to track individual contacts. Batchbook (and a few other socially-smart CRM applications) allow you to track Twitter and Facebook feeds of your contacts so you can see everything on one screen.

Learn from Your Affinity Sites

Now you can take all you've learned and apply it to your own site. You've surveyed the landscape, met and tracked the major players, leveraged the knowledge provided to you by competing and affinity sites, and discovered the boundaries of your tribe. You can guide your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Quora friends to your site and get more traffic - but not just any traffic - you're connecting with the people who really want to hear your message. That's using social SEO.

A major part of online marketing is making sure that your website shows up in search engine results. For the small business owner on a budget, hiring a consultant to handle the search engine optimization (SEO) for their business website can sometimes be expensive.  There are definite benefits to having a specialist manage your website.  But it is always good to know these basic elements of SEO, whether you plan to do them yourself or just want to understand what your consultant is working on.

Titles Count

The page title is what shows up in the results pages when someone performs a search, so it's important to have a page title that very accurately reflects what the page is about. It is also important to have unique page titles for each page on your site and the more descriptive the better. Some of the elements you may want to include in your page titles are the name of your website, name of your business, maybe some description of your products or services and your location if it is a local business. On the technical side of things, make sure to use title tags to identify your page title.

Make Site Navigation Easy

The easier your site is to navigate the better able search engines are to evaluate the most important content.  While Google's search engine treats each page individually for search results, it also takes into account the pages context within the website.

Breadcrumbs

Using "breadcrumbs" is a good way to make things easier for your visitors. Breadcrumbs are a series of the links the visitor has followed to get from the home page to the current page.  This is what breadcrumbs look like:

Provide Two Sitemaps

A sitemaps is a page that shows all of the pages in your site organized by their hierarchy. For site visitors this is a good way to get a quick bird's eye view of your website without having to click through all the navigation links. Search engines like XML sitemaps, but humans like good old HTML sitemaps that are easy on the eyes and easy to follow. From a technical standpoint, there are free tools to create both types of sitemaps.

Promote Your Website

With the latest changes to Google's search algorithms it is more important than ever to promote carefully. You do want to get your website noticed, but you definitely want to avoid anything Google may see as extreme, which it views very negatively.

Put your URL on all your promotional materials, including your business cards. Create an RSS feed so people can keep up with your new content easily. Get to know sites related to your topic and approach them about linking to each other's sites. Inbound links, also known as backlinks or incoming links are a great way to get SEO love. Running display ads can help both for the clicks they can attract as well as by increasing how often people search for your business by name.   Be judicious in who you get to link to you, though, because unrelated links will actually hurt you.

Use Free Webmaster Tools

All of the major search engines provide free webmaster tools that are designed to make it easier for them to gather the information about your site to make their search results better. Google Analytics and Website Optimizer are two basic tools every webmaster should use. If you use Wordpress there are also free SEO plugins that make it much easier to optimize pages with very little effort.

Provide Great Content

We have saved the best for last, because great content has the biggest impact on your websites long-term SEO. If you get all the other things right and have lousy content, you may get site visitors, but they won't come back. Content SEO is a subject all its own, but a great start is to have well written content that is extremely relevant to your products and/or services and keep adding new content frequently. We have touched on frequency in other articles and it bears repeating here. One great article won't cut it. When it comes to content you must be consistent and persistent to get good long-term results.

From an SEO buyer’s perspective, it must be downright confusing and discouraging to obtain multiple quotes from SEO service providers that very clearly have differing price ranges and service methodologies, but not so clearly defined differentiating skill sets and experience.

So sellers attempt to make it easier for buyers to understand SEO proposals in order to ultimately get to a closed deal - a signature on a contract. In the meantime, are they undermining their own profession and setting themselves up for failure by setting unrealistic expectations with clients?

Or are SEO clients being unrealistic in their expectations of SEO results in the short term versus the long term, leading SEO service providers to drastic measures that may ultimately result in the client’s web presence being penalized in organic search? Or even results in the client quitting or not paying?

This blog post is for both buyers and sellers of SEO services in hopes that 2013 will be the year of equilibrium for SEO. The year that SEO is finally regarded for what it is – extremely important in the digital marketing mix; a long-term online strategy that is based on strong, optimized content published and distributed across the entire web presence proving relevance and authority.

The four SEO selling and buying tricks described below produce unachievable expectations and create disequilibrium in the SEO services market. When these tricks are practiced by either the buyer or the seller the economics of SEO fail, because the time and effort required to meet SEO expectations and results will not match.

1. Promises of a #1 Search Position

The trick of selling the promise of a #1 Search Position as well as clients buying the promise has been around for quite a while. It still surprises me, especially with all the algorithm changes that have occurred recently, when I see this assurance in online advertisements or on an SEO agency’s home page.

Buyers, if an SEO agency promises a #1 Search Position for a keyword, exercise caution. Unless you are Wikipedia, a #1 Search Position cannot be guaranteed. Buyers need to understand that organic search positions are produced based on relevancy and authority of content around a keyword. There are numerous, uncontrollable, external factors and competition around a single keyword - no one, not even Google, can guarantee organic search position.

Read: The Five Forces of Keyword Competition Framework.

Sellers of SEO services, if your team is able to consistently deliver a #1 Search Position for a keyword, can that position be maintained over the long run, is it a highly converting organic search term, or is it perhaps not even searched on?

2. Promises of Increased Sales from SEO

The promise of increased sales as a result of SEO efforts is only possible if the SEO agency has complete control over the client’s sales processes (e.g. sales funneling, pipeline structure and reporting, sales team, commissions, etc.) and the SEO agency has sales consulting expertise on staff.

Sellers of SEO services beware… how do you even know there’s a market for what your client is selling? You may be able to improve their web presence for organic search conversions, but how do you even know their products or services are in demand and the processes around selling those products or services are efficient and proven?

Buyers of SEO, if increased sales are a requirement for your business, consider hiring a sales process consultant rather than an SEO professional whose actual task it is to improve your web presence visibility in the search engines for highly converting keywords.

3. Selling and Buying SEO Services Without Any Mention of Content Marketing

The outcome of Google’s massive algorithm changes over the past two years is that it takes really great, fresh, optimized content produced on a regular schedule to convince Google that the source is relevant and authoritative and should therefore be returned as a search result. This takes a lot of commitment, work and a strong focus on content marketing.

SEO (including the building of backlinks and the creation of social signals) requires a content marketing strategy. In fact, it is impossible to execute on SEO without one. Buyers’ expectations of SEO services will be better met if they also buy into a content marketing strategy.

SEO will also have a longer-term effect on a web presence in organic search when more quality, optimized content is produced.

The lack of a content marketing strategy will leave the SEO seller with insufficient content to work with to positively impact organic search position and the buyer with unmet expectations about SEO in general.

4. Selling and Buying SEO Services Without Any Mention of Social Media

Similar to #3, SEO agencies that are not yet factoring social networks, social media and social signaling into their SEO services methodology are doing their clients a disservice.

A blatant note to both buyers and sellers of SEO services: a year ago, Eric Schmidt, Google’s Executive Chairman, said, “The social signal, the people you ‘hang with’ is actually a ranking signal.” (December 2011).

In 2011, Matt Cutts was asked by an SEO Agency what three things should be included in your SEO strategy, and one of the three items he suggested was, “think about social media marketing … a lot of people think SEO versus social media marketing, and a lot of the time it makes sense to keep a holistic view.”

SEO results will be better gained and expectations better met when an entire web presence is optimized for organic search. This means distributing optimized content across the web presence to be socialized and shared, thus increasing relevance and authority for your audience.

This is a multi-part series written by Lee Schneider about how to be found online using social SEO.

You want your site to be indexed by Google, Bing and other bots. The reason is simple: when people search for the name of your business, your business comes up, and even more importantly, when people search for the market category you're in ('eco-friendly dry cleaners in Jackson Hole') your business comes up at the top of results. Optimizing your sites for search engines is making them machine friendly. But that's only part of the puzzle, because people are your customers and clients, not computers. (Unless you're living in an advanced civilization somewhere, in which case I suggest you just get on your jet pack and fly away now.)

People find what they want online by using search engines, but they also go by recommendations. If they don't have a friend to give them advice, they turn to online proxies, like Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and Google. Activity online like posts, conversation and comments will change rankings. People are calling this conversational approach Social SEO. Let's start with the simple things you need to have going on for your site to be found, then we'll move on to some deeper social SEO techniques.

Key Phrases

If you have Google Analytics installed on your site you'll be able to see how people are finding you. You'll see the keywords they use in search, where they come from, and what pages they like the best. (If you don't have Analytics installed, get someone like me to install it for you.) You'll want to look at the key phrases people use who successfully find your site. These words and phrases form a path to your business online. Open up Google's Keyword Tool (Google it) and type in some phrases and words you think people would use to find your business online. If there are a lot of searches for your keywords, that's okay, but it means there will be a lot of competition.

If they are just a few searches it means that your search term is obscure. You want to find the sweet spot for your key words, and yes, there is an art and science to this. For example, there are more than a million searches a month for the word poodle, which is a lot, but 74,000 searches monthly for miniature poodles. If you have some miniature poodles you need the world to know about, you'd have a good chance of your audience finding you. If you use the keyword poodle, you'll get (ideally) a million lookers, but only 74,000 of them actually will want what you have. Focus is important. In fact, Nick Stamoulis pointed out in the comments below that we can take things further and include grooming supplies, breeder, or other keywords to get as specific as we can.  "It might cut down on the number of people actually searching for your site, but they will be a much more targeted audience," he commented.

You want to be sure your finely-tuned key words appear in your site title, url, and description. If you're on WordPress, there are plugins that do this for you.  If not, you'll need your web developer to be sure they are in there.

Free Listings

Next, list your site with these free services.

• DMOZ.org
• AllTop.com (if you have a blog)
• ProfNetConnect.com (if you give interviews or do speaking gigs)

Then, if you want to attract local business, and especially if you have an office location or place of business, register with these local listing services.

• Yelp.com
• Local.com
• Manta.com
• MarketCircle.com
• brandyourself.com
• SuperPages.com
• Yahoo Local
• Google Places

Take these first steps and you'll see a short-term spike in traffic on your site.  If you want more people to discover your site over the long term, you'll deep some deeper engagement. That's covered in the next blog:  How to take your social conversations online with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora and Pinterest.

What are your thoughts about attracting visitors to your site?

I spend a lot of time thinking about how the SEO landscape has changed for the better over the past three years, with Google’s continued and unwavering focus on the concept of relevance. However, three aspects of SEO have not changed at the same pace. The outcome is often a gap in expectations between the team delivering SEO services and the client literally banking on the results. The three aspects of SEO that I feel have not changed at the same pace as the SEO industry include:

1. The way SEO services are marketed and sold.
2. The processes around how SEO is delivered and reported on.
3. The ability for agencies and in-house teams to prove the ROI of SEO efforts.

But the importance of SEO in the digital marketing mix remains unchanged and unchallenged. There are consistently 1 billion Google searches performed every day with 94% of those searchers clicking on organic search results over paid search results. Patience will continue to be a virtue to the marketer who invests in SEO over the long run.

Here are 10 SEO truths I have discover in SEO conversations I have had with agencies, in-house marketing teams and end clients over the past 12 months:

SEO Truth #1: Rank Doesn’t Matter, Conversion Does.

If I had a dime for every time I heard the statement, “Oh, we don’t need SEO, we already rank #1 for [insert keyword here].”

I witness many SEO conversations where improvement in rank or position is the focus without any consideration given to web page visits and conversions. Many prospects, clients and bosses are lost in the infatuation of ‘Ranking #1 in Google’ and unfortunately because that’s what they want to pay for, that’s what they are sold and/or what we attempt to prove to them.

The more important metric is conversion.

So it could be that a client wants to rank #1 for ‘HR Software’, and they currently rank #5 for that keyword with a conversion rate of 5%, while a similar keyword phrase, ‘HR Software for SMBs’, has a conversion rate of 10% and is ranked #9. Clearly the latter should be the focus since it already has a higher conversion rate with a lower rank. Assigning resources to understanding the opportunities throughout the web presence, and optimizing content for the keyword ‘HR Software for SMBs’ is a better investment of time and money.

SEO Truth #2: Great SEO Results Require Great SEO Data.

SEO is the ongoing process of understanding a web presence, how it compares to the competition, which keywords are driving organic search conversion, and optimizing for those keywords by producing fresh, relevant content. This process is impossible without access to accurate, timely data about that web presence including: page-level rank, backlink metrics and social signals data, organic search keyword research, competitive intelligence, analytics conversion data.

Basing SEO decisions on old, inaccurate SEO data will yield corresponding SEO results. SEO data is the starting point to the entire SEO process and outcome. Great insights will lead to great outcomes. SEO data and SEO software should be considered a cost of doing business or executing a campaign just as email marketing campaigns require an email marketing platform.

SEO Truth #3: Report on Social Signals Just Like Backlinks.

Think of social signals as the new backlink. Now don’t get me wrong, backlinks are still important to organic search and should continue to be reported on, but social signals also deserve ongoing focus and integration into an SEO strategy.

It has been two years since Google and Bing announced that social signals are now factored into their organic search algorithms. Agencies and in-house SEO teams need to demonstrate that they are increasing the number of Likes, Shares, +1s, Tweets, Retweets and YouTube Views at both the web page level and the network level. Social signal metrics should be included in the monthly SEO report as well.

SEO Truth #4: SEO Technology is Telling.

Just as a sales consultant hired to improve sales processes and ultimately conversion rates would not attempt to do so without customer relationship management (CRM) software, neither should an SEO agency or in-house team attempt to effectively improve a web presence for SEO without some support and assistance from technology.

There are many SEO software and tool options – from full software systems to stand alone tools. SEO technology is required more today than ever before in order to assist in the ongoing efforts of keyword research, rank checking, competitive analysis, backlink discovery and tracking, content tracking, analytics, social signal monitoring and monthly SEO reporting capabilities. The technology and tools you select can make or break you too.

Going it alone, without the support of a technological foundation to track a web presence on a daily basis for the purpose of ranking higher organically in the search engines is like trying to do email marketing by BCCing your list from MS Outlook – your deliverability rates, open rates and conversion rates will be immeasurable and less than expected.

SEO Truth #5: Daily Insights into SEO Metrics is Essential.

The SEO reporting cycle is still very much a monthly process (although I’m seeing this standard move to weekly with larger agencies and marketing teams). Having daily and weekly insight into all the SEO metrics included in an SEO campaign is important to understand how your efforts are tracking towards the ultimate goal. Having the insight and intelligence to adjust the goal if more or less progress is being made than anticipated can only be accomplished with daily insight into accurate SEO data and metrics.

SEO Truth #6: A Backlink Strategy Without a Content Marketing Strategy is Just Plain Scary.

Even after all the Panda, Penguin and Freshness updates, I’m still amazed to see some agencies providing quotes to clients where the main thrust of the contract is a promise to build ‘x’ number of backlinks per month. SEOs should continue to deliberately build backlinks in directories that are industry or locally specific to the client, but that’s where deliberate backlink building should end.

To build long-term, non-spammy backlinks, an optimized content marketing strategy is required where fresh relevant optimized content is being produced on a consistent basis. Content in the form of blogs, press releases, case studies, and whitepapers wherein the content contains keywords that are driving organic search conversions as well as naturally occurring backlinks to the main corporate website. Not only will this approach to backlink building withstand the test of time, it will also create social signals which will also positively impact the web presence.

SEO Truth #7: Spend Less Time on Reporting, More Time on SEO.

A typical SEO contract consists of analysis, recommendations, implementation and reporting. The most painful of which is reporting - mashing together end-of-month reports from multiple data sources to demonstrate progress to the end client, never mind trying to make it look pretty. Laborious, repetitive reporting takes away too much time from what will really pay off – the doing of SEO.

This reinforces truth #4: SEO Technology is Telling. Making use of technology for weekly or monthly automated reporting will allow for more time being spent on the task of SEO which will yield better results for the client and will allow you to scale your business.

SEO Truth #8: Think Outside the Google Search Box.

Yes, Google continues to be the entity that SEOs attempt to please, and rightfully so. I can’t see this focus changing in the near or distant future either. With the continual convergence of social media and SEO, we also need to think about the prospect of searchers starting their searches directly on social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest. A web presence should be represented for its branded keyword phrases within these sites as well. Test your branded keywords and test your clients’ branded keywords to see if they return the expected search results on these social networks. If not, optimize!

SEO Truth #9: Communicate the CTR Opportunity Gap by Keyword.

Once there is an understanding of the high-converting keywords, it is worth the exercise of applying paid search volume data with organic clickthrough rates (CTRs) to communicate the opportunity gap between ranking #9 versus #3.

Let’s use the keyword “HR Software” as an example. The total Google search volume (U.S., Canada, and Australia) is 2,120 searches per month, combined with the fact that 94 percent of searchers click through on organic search results (GroupM UK and Nielsen, August 2012). Given Optify’s CTR data for positions #1 through #20, the opportunity gap can be communicated to the client.

2120 monthly searches * 94 percent = 1992 * 3.0 percent /30 days = 2 daily click-
throughs for position #9 in Google.com for the keyword "HR Software"

Position #9 will yield 60 clicks per month (2 clicks per day * 30 days) while increasing the position to #3 will yield 180 clicks per month (6 clicks per day * 30 days) presenting an opportunity gap of 180-60 = 120 clickthroughs per month. What value does this translate into for the client?

SEO Truth #10: It’s about the Hierarchy of Web Presence Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization is now more about Web Presence Optimization. As the ways we sell and deliver SEO services continue to evolve, the hierarchy of web presence optimization is a model that may help structure sales contracts and service delivery tasks while ensuring that keyword metrics are focused on conversion, backlinks are built out effectively, and social signals are integrated into the overall SEO strategy.

The post on Mike White's blog, entitled 'Blogger Outreach - To be (anonymous) or not to be (anonymous)?', got me thinking about the various pros and cons of anonymity when guest blogging, and whether it has a place in online marketing today.

It has always been a contentious issue for guest-bloggers and SEOs as to whether being totally up front with your outreach efforts performs better than creating specific aliases for various clients, or to suit the blog that you're reaching out to. Like Mike, I've always been a fan of the upfront and honest approach and have always reached out to bloggers using my work email address and explaining exactly what it is that my client can add to their blog.

Google Authorship Mark-up

I think it's particularly important in a post-Panda/Penguin world to publish legitimate articles that add value to a blog and drive traffic in their own right, rather than just acquiring a link.

The issue faced by agency-side SEOs is how to approach outreach for multiple clients in multiple business sectors. The best way to attack this is to have a point of contact within your client's organisation who is happy to be the 'face' of the company and have posts published under their name. This tactic not only enables the publication of guest posts for the client, but raises the profile of key individuals within their industry.

Google's introduction of it's Authorship Mark-up has lead to the concept of AuthorRank, whereby an article may rank better in Google's results based upon the strength/authority of the author. Therefore, as part of my outreach strategy, creating individual author accounts for my clients has proved successful, by adding a face and author to what would otherwise be an anonymous post with limited authority.

I'd be very keen to find out what you think of my approach, and whether you agree with Mike's article. It's a topic that will continue to cause debate in the SEO community, but I think the days of anonymity are over.

As you are planning for 2013, your business will find itself facing questions concerning the social impact of your business and brand.  Winnie Hart and Lorrie Lee from TwinEngine share 13 in 2013 – Social Media Marketing trends that will take flight.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a practice that all marketers should be using to promote their brand.  In 2013, though, there will be a shift in how businesses should approach SEO.  Businesses would do well to avoid tricks, focusing instead on people, behaviors, and what it really takes to do good online marketing.  Google will reward marketers that follow the proper steps of SEO, such as producing solid, quality content (and promoting that over social media content), using a variety of applicable keywords, and improving the user’s website experience.  Conversely, Google will “punish” those who try to duplicate content or have poor quality on their website.  The websites with the best practices in SEO will find that Google rewards them with a better search rate.

Google will also focus on its maps feature, which will help localized search focus.  Local SEO will play a major part in helping users find businesses that are closest in location for them.  This will be a benefit to smaller, local brands that may feel unable to always compete with larger or national brands.

#13 SEO shifts – less focus on tricks and more on good online marketing

- Authenticity and understanding needs of target audience drive engagement

- Brands build from quality content, interactions with influencers

- Google rewards good marketing

For a complete list of the 13 in 2013 Social Media Trends

For more trending in 2013, follow our blog.

Download the complete infographic here.

Content Marketing How To: 5 Actionable Tactics to Improve Your SEO

1. A Web Content Strategy Matters

You wouldn’t build a house without first creating a blueprint, would you? So why create a blog without first developing a content strategy for the web? Start with the basics- identify the types of content that resonate with your audience, and provide actionable positioning of your brand. Timing, frequency, tone, relevancy, roles, responsibilities and structure all need to be given careful consideration and planning when you are developing out a web content strategy.

If you need help getting started, check out R2integrated's content strategy and development team.

2. Write More, but Don’t Write Crap

Yup, I said it. Don’t-write-crap. Consumers don't care about your latest balance sheet. They want you to solve a problem or answer a question with thoughtful content. At the end of the day, that is what it is all about. This will allow you to engage with your audience- operative word being “engage.” Don’t talk at. Talk to, and engage with them. Influence them with your content at every stage of the decision-making process and buying cycle.

3. Be Social, Yes Even on Google+

Unless you are living under a rock, you know the importance of Google+ from a SEO perspective. And while you know my feelings on Google+ in the social realm, I can’t deny the value it provides brands from an SEO perspective.  It is a powerful content discovery engine- get your content out there.

4. Refresh or Revive Old Content

I don’t agree with some recent conversations around stale blog content. Yes Google will penalize you for old content on your site. And, while there is no value in having outdated industry content on your site, I don’t agree with completely removing it from your website. Part of your web content strategy should focus on reviving older content that still provides value. Dust it off, refresh it and provide some additional insights.

5. Guest Blogging: Tap Your Influencers & Advocates

I get it. Everyone is busy, and sitting down to write a thoughtful blog post peppered with strategic keywords takes time. You have loyal followers, brand advocates and partners. Why not tap them to share a moving or compelling story, share their product knowledge or experience, and help to promote your brand? As a marketer, this will also help you in solving the resource/bandwidth issue we all face and provide some extra SEO juice. We do it. Check out: 5 Opportunities to Increase Internal Links to Improve SEO, from our awesome partner Optify. Think about it.

Questions? Let's start the conversation below.

Fundamental SEO Initiatives B2B Marketers Should Focus on:

• Go mobile: Mobile search and browsing in B2B is rapidly increasing due to high-end smartphone devices; according to emarketer, in 2016, a quarter of the world will be using location based services. Mobile optimized sites and content are key.

Learn more about mobile optimized websites

• Include relevant keywords in your copy: This is a no-brainer, but often forgotten when trying to get content out the door quickly. In addition, don’t write web copy or blogs that are “inside out,” meaning- don’t write in the same manner in which you speak internally about your products, services, etc. Identifying your customer persona and keyword search behavior is key. Steady and thoughtful wins the race here.

• Be Smart about your tags/site architecture: Not all site visitors are created equal- but most are pretty intuitive. Make sure your site architecture is as well. Also, optimize with unique title tags and meta descriptions.

• Do something cool: No, don’t put your boss in a dunk-tank (although tempting, I know). Build out “an arsenal,” as Sebastian states, of great content, with informative videos, imagery, and insights.

Trending: The Visual Web is on the rise. Are you there yet?

• Be social: You have great content- get your customers, advocates, and loyalist to share relevant, insightful, and most importantly- useful content.

• Sign up for email from Google Webmaster Tools/Webmaster YouTube Channel: Sign up for Webmaster alerts and tutorials to keep on top of potential issues with your site. There are a ton of valuable 2 minute videos; up-skill your content marketing team and you will reap the benefits.

While this all may seem logical, there is a delicate balance between quality of content and the quality- especially through the lens of local and B2B content marketing. Sebastian elaborates, “Both are important and can vary be the type of content considered. For professions seeking knowledge, original/quality content such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on will go a long way in achieving a better ranking.”

Recent SEO and Content Marketing Insights:

Read: 5 Actionable Content Marketing Tactics to Improve Your SEO
Download: Mobile Marketing SEO & Visibility: Why You Should Care
Contact our SEO experts today
Request R2i’s Content Marketing Template

The Reasoning

Why would some blogs offer you money for content while others charge for it? It boils down to a difference in perception. People that offer payment see your contribution as helpful to them. They are paying you for fresh content on their blog. In a way, you are saving them work, and the payment is an offer of gratitude, as well as a motivation to produce an article that is worth the money.

Blogs that charge you to guest post view you as nothing but a marketer. They know you want links, and they are willing to give them to you, but they want their cut. If you’re making money off of this post, why shouldn’t they?

The Dilemma

You know better than to buy hundreds of links at a time, hoping that a few will not get caught by the spam bots. But paying for a quality link.. That can’t hurt you, can it? Sure, you’re providing them with content, but you are doing it for your own benefit. Maybe they do deserve a couple bucks.

What Google Says

Google’s webmaster guidelines are clearly stated. Paid links are fine as long as they are clearly marked as sponsored links and are designated “no-follow”. This means that no PageRank is passed through that link. The bots do not read them. If you pay for a do-follow link, that is a clear violation that will result in being penalized. This penalization means going down in the search results. If people can’t find you, what is the point of your site?

It is important to stay up to date on white-hat SEO tactics and what search engines promote and penalize. Link building is an evolving field, so staying informed on what is allowed is a great business strategy.

The Next Step

If the site abides by Google’s guidelines and is charging you for a no-follow link, you have a couple of options. You can decide that a link is a link and even if you don’t get PageRank, it helps. After all, providing users with content is what you’re supposed to be about. You still may get exposure for the article.

On the other hand, there are plenty of great sites that don’t charge for guest posts. Even better, if you don’t pay, you get the exposure as well as a do-follow link. All in all, the decision is up to you, and should be made on a case-by-case basis. Pay attention to how links in guest posts are displayed on a site. Does your target audience frequent the website you are trying to get published on? These are things that you should consider when deciding whether to pay for links. After all, you want the content you’ve worked to create to be displayed in the best place possible. Sometimes that may cost money, but sometimes it doesn't.

If you want to succeed, you must succeed online. Maybe going online is not the very first market you need to conquer. If you have a coffee cart, for example, your brew may be so good you might be a raging success before you even design your logo. But you have to pay attention to the online world eventually, even with a popular coffee cart, and for most of us, the online world the very first thing we think about. Why?

Online is where the conversations begin. It's where 'word of mouth' is happening on a global scale.

Getting into that conversation means putting up a website with the grabbiest graphics and the most potent message.That's the common wisdom. But here's a better idea. Ask first, 'What is my website for?'

Types of website experience

I'm not just talking platforms, like WordPress, Tumblr, Drupal, Joomla, or some fancy proprietary platform your designer is trying to sell you. I want you to think about the visitor experience. You may want a website that is basically a business card. I'd call that an information experience. You may need people to shop through catalogue and buy something - a consumer experience. You may want to share images, information or music - a sharing experience. You can build a community experience with blogs. If you say, 'oh, I just need a fancy business card that moves and stuff and has pretty colors,' you will be missing out on a lot. Community and sharing are powerful drivers. If you can get people involved and engaged, they'll come back. Wouldn't that be nice?  If your site is all about you it might not be as engaging as a site that invites the viewer in to your experience. Think bigger than 'you' and offer more than an online business card. Here are those categories again. What kind of site experience do you need to offer?

• information experience
• consumer experience
• sharing experience
• community experience

Functionality

Ok, scary word. But functionality means what kinds of bells and whistles you site will have, and how they will affect the site. Most important factor? Site load time. If you want to showcase lots of beautiful images and your site takes five seconds to load, you will lose visitors. They will bounce off impatiently. I've seen sites that are dumb as dirt become very popular because they are fast to load and to the point. Find a balance between beauty and practicality.

Desktop and Mobile

Remember that your visitors are looking at your site on all kinds of screens. I worked with a designer once who did great work, as long as it was viewed on his humongous cinema display. He wasn't interested in hearing me talk about people with 13-inch displays, or tablets or phones, who might be trying to view his masterpiece of design. How well will your site travel to different screens?

As you look over your website plans, ask these questions:

Who will this reach?

Know who your audience is. Try to understand what they want and what your site will deliver. Sounds basic, but this will make your site far more effective.

How easily will my visitors find my site?

Are you going to put up great content that draws visitors like a powerful magnet? Are you going to invest in advertising? Are you going to depend on organic search queries, and optimize your site for them? You better do something. Or else nobody's going to show up.

What should my visitors do?

People may find you online, but then what? Every website has a narrative. It may not be linear, but there is a story to tell in words, pictures and sounds. It has a first, second and third act, just like a good movie or play. Do people need to end up on your contact page or buy page? If so, how will you lead them there?  If you want your visitors to simply 'get to know more about you' that's nice, but that's all they will do. Is that enough for you? What is the call to action? Having one makes everyone happy. A call to action gives visitors a sense of mission when they visit your site. Get that right, and then move on to business cards if you need them.

Oh, and if you know about any coffee carts better than the Mud Truck in NYC's Astor Place, let me know. Always in the hunt for those.

PHOTO CREDIT: Question mark by alexanderdrachmann via Creative Commons License.

As a quick recap, the research concludes that 94% of searchers click through on organic search results, and that the top three positions in Google earn 61% of the clicks. These numbers are not far off the numbers I’ve used for years when describing the importance of SEO in a marketing budget as well as ranking on Page One for the keywords prospects are searching on to find your organization. The GroupM and Nielsen numbers simply (and strongly) validate the importance of an on-going SEO strategy.

A significant disconnect, however, continues to exist between the impact that SEO can have on impressions, clickthroughs and lead generation compared to PPC and the representation each receives in a typical marketing budget. Take Forrester’s U.S. Interactive Marketing Forecast, for the years 2011 to 2016. Marketers are spending and will continue to spend, on average, 88% of their search marketing budget on paid search campaigns to access just 6% of the available clickthroughs, and 12% on organic search in attempts to reach an astounding 94% of the available clickthroughs.

I’m not the first person to point out this imbalance, nor will I be the last.

I find it useful for marketers to visualize the difference in available CTRs from SEO versus PPC. Before the GroupM and Nielsen CTRs were published, I used Optify’s CTR data to apply to monthly search volume for a given keyword. The chart below depicts the daily estimated number of clickthroughs for the keyword phrase “HR Software” in Google.com, Google.ca and Google.au across Page One and Page Two of the SERPs.

Based on the research, data available and assumptions below, an HR software company attempting to rank for this keyword should expect, if they were occupying position one in Google for the term “HR Software”, 24 clickthroughs per day from SEO and just two from PPC; three clickthroughs from SEO if they were in position six or seven for the same term and nothing from PPC.

Think of this more as a model for comparison rather than an exact answer since there are so many uncontrollable factors surrounding a keyword. (Read: Five Forces of Keyword Competition)

In this model, one must also consider the difference is resources (time and money) required to increase positions in SEO versus PPC. With SEO, the input of time and money is uncertain, however, the results are longer lasting. With PPC, one can instantaneously gain a top position, but it can disappear just as quickly without a trace of ever being there.

2120 monthly searches * 94% = 1992 * 36.4% /30 days = 24 daily click-
throughs for position #1 in Google.com for the keyword "HR Software"

The purpose of this blog is not to convince marketers to shift their marketing spend, nor is it intended to discount one marketing tactic over the other. (I believe there is a time and a place for all marketing tactics within a given strategy). The purpose is simply to take a closer look at SEO as a line item in a marketing budget and other marketing tactics that affect SEO.

SEO as a Line Item in your Marketing Budget

Marketers are spending more on SEO than they realize when they also have the following line items in their budget:

• Content Marketing
• Social Media
• Video Production
• Public Relations

These marketing tactics affect a web presence and organic search rankings and can have a significant positive impact on SEO including: rank, backlinking, social signal generation and fresh content, but are often not included in the traditional SEO budget.

Content Marketing

SEO cannot be done without content creation in the form of on-site content optimization and off-site optimization (i.e., blogs, press releases, case studies, how-to guides, videos, etc.), yet content marketing is often a separate line item from SEO, and unfortunately a lot of off-site content is not optimized for SEO.

A client case study, for example, can have a significant impact on SEO rankings if it is deliberately optimized for keywords driving traffic and socialized for the purpose of organic search ranking.

It is worth noting that according to the Custom Content Council, marketers spent $16.6 billion on electronic content marketing in 2011 and the trend is continuing.

Social Media

Social media and SEO are very much separate line items in a marketing budget, but content socialized at the page level through Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube generates social signals which can positively impact SEO and an organic search ranking.

The most direct link between SEO and social media is Google+ and Search plus Your World. If you have not yet started to build out your personal and business Circles, please do. A piece of content shared through your Circles has an opportunity to be found by your followers through Search plus Your World – before your competitors’ content is found.

Video Production

Video can be a secret weapon in an SEO strategy given that YouTube is the second busiest search engine and your prospects want to consume your content in video format. Many organizations are specifically itemizing video creation in their marketing budget. If the video content is optimally tagged, it can dominate in both YouTube and Google proper for the keywords the video has been optimized for.

Public Relations

Many organizations have a PR budget that does not factor into their SEO budget. So although PR efforts may be impacting SEO, they could be positively impacting it even further if the PR content was optimized for keywords driving traffic.

Press releases that are written specifically for a keyword that is converting targeted traffic will be more impactful on lead generation efforts given that Google gives priority to fresh, relevant content and will likely list the press release in its News section if it is distributed through the proper channels (e.g., Marketwire, Businesswire, PRWeb, etc.).

Stop Underestimating SEO in Your Marketing Budget

SEO today consists of more than just backlink building and on-site optimization. Content marketing, PR, social media and SEO go hand-in-hand, and the investment in one tactic can positively influence the outcome of another.

If you are an SEO professional, but not yet involved in your clients’ social media, PR and video production efforts, talk with them about the importance of bringing these tactics together for the overall benefit of SEO. If you are a marketer and are working with different professionals or employees on each of these tactics, it is worth your time to bring the different disciplines together in attempts to optimize all content across your web presence for keywords that are driving targeted traffic and conversions.

SEO as a line item in marketing budgets is typically underestimated. The gap between what marketers spend on SEO versus PPC is not as significant as Forrester indicates. Those marketers and SEO professionals who attempt to execute SEO in a silo will never get the results they expect (especially not overnight).

My marketing budget has a line item called “Optimized Content Marketing Strategy” with sub categories that include:

• Content Marketing
• SEO
• Social Media
• PR
• Video
• Email Marketing
• Paid Search

This approach will give you a better chance at reaching the top of Google for your converting keywords and the opportunity to enjoy awesome organic clickthrough rates!

• Integrating personal Gmail results into search; and
• Adding 13 new languages to its voice search function.

The latter isn’t an earth-shattering announcement. Google launched voice search for both desktop and mobile platforms in 2011 and now serves dozens of languages. This latest update, according to Direct Marketing News, adds languages from various European markets, including Swedish, European Portuguese and Finnish, along with regional tongues such as Basque, Catalan, and Galician. The company said in a blog post that the addition of those newly added languages will add nearly 100 million people to its voice search function.

It’s the integration of Gmail into search results that has generated the most intrigue. Industry reaction to the announcement varied. Some said it wasn’t that big of a deal, while others called it “interesting and creepy.”

Setting aside the usual industry criticism, the bigger question remains: What is the benefit to the user? And will users be freaked out by privacy concerns or just accept the integration of personal Gmail results into search as a natural evolution of search?

On the surface, this appears to be a wise move by Google. As Bing makes greater inroads toward fully integrating social media and search, Google must be feeling the pressure to add more contextual value and relevance to users’ searches. There is no better way to do that than to integrate users’ personal Gmail results into search.

The benefit for consumers is fairly clear. Let’s say, for example, that a person searched for hotels in rural Pennsylvania and a friend emailed her two years ago about a great hotel she stayed at in the area. The ability to include highly relevant information from that person’s personal communications into her search query only makes sense. If it adds value to the users and saves her time, then it’s likely consumers will overlook some of the obvious privacy concerns.

But there is a caveat to all of this, and it is one that demands digital marketers’ attention: people don’t like to have what they consider “personal” communications (i.e., email) to be available publicly (in this case via search), even if those results are only viewable by that person.

Google has made strong inroads over the last year in integrating most of its services with its Google+ social network so that there is always a social tie-in to whatever a user does across the Google network. That’s fine if a user isn’t logged into their Google account. But as soon as they log in, and then forget they are logged in, problems can arise. It’s not a stretch to think of a situation in which someone logs into their Google account on a public computer, makes a search, has their personal Gmail results integrated into that search and then walks away from the computer without logging out.

There is no doubt that Google has made a bold move with its integration of personal Gmail results into search. It was a natural, and, some may say, necessary move for the company as it fends off rivals and seeks to keep its search marketing dominance.

But what price will it pay as the battle over online privacy continues to wage? Will users eventually balk at the idea of having so much personal information available when they are searching for seemingly innocuous information like how far it is to the next town over? Or will this type of integration seem natural and become part of an evolution that eventually sees consumers’ personal data and information integrated with brand promotions, offers and search results into a truly integrated search marketing experience?

The latter appears to be the path that search marketing is moving toward. It’s one that will surely cause consternation and hang-wringing among the pundits and online privacy advocates. But it may be an inevitable step toward the future of search and online marketing.

Google has shown us a peek into the new era of search marketing. If its latest move is any indication, it will likely be an era that the search giant continues to dominate.

These days site reliability has much more impact on search listings in Google than it used to.  My own observations suggest the Penduin update added much more emphasis on assessing site reliability than we realised at the time.  Sites with less than perfect reliability are seeing listings which have remained solid for years suddenly dropping.

If you look at the Google Webmaster Tools, you can see the list of errors it complains about.  These include the HTTP status code 404 (file not found).

So the issue is - when a page is removed from your website, what happens?

Most CMS systems will update site links so the page is no longer linked to.  Google (and Bing) XML sitemaps will probably be updated.  The website sitemap page will probably be updated.  Your site does all this automatically - right?

But this still leaves Google with a listing for that page.  Sooner or later, it will ask for it again.  What happens then?

On many sites, Google will get a 404 error.  This is BAD.  Boo to 404! 

A 404 status code merely says "I can't find it."  It could indicate a minor malfunction, or that the page is just damaged, soon to be restored, or that the page is gone for good.  Google has no way of knowing.  So it has to come back later and try again.  If it keeps getting 404, does this indicate the page is gone for good (and why are you wasting Google's time) or does it indicate you've got a second-rate website which doesn't work properly?  Obviously you don't want Google removing a listing the instant it gets a 404, that's terrible punishment for what may be a temporary glitch.  So poor old Google has to keep hammering the site, asking for the same page, until it finally gives up.

THERE IS A BETTER WAY

This is sloppy server configuration.  We have had a better way of doing things for 20 years.  You need to use the HTTP status code system properly:

1. If the page has moved to a new location, put a 301 (permanent redirect) in place.  This tells Google to replace the old URL with the new one.  You can also do this if the page is gone, but equivalent copy exists somewhere else in the site.
2. If the page is gone and there is no replacement, put a 410 (permanently removed) in place.  This tells Google to remove the URL and never ask for it again.

Google likes both these methods, and will reward your site for it.  Besides, it's just doing things properly, as the web was intended to be done.

Don't move or remove a page from your site without setting the correct status code.  Sites that fail in this respect will see their search listings suffer.  Don't let that be you.  Know your HTTP status code policies, and ensure you use status codes properly.

The full list of HTTP status codes is at http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html

Here's a basic video from Google on errors it may report in Webmaster Tools.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH1gQoCd05g&feature=plcp

Surprisingly it seems even more business owners debate the value of having a second site when their traditional site can open up on a smartphone browser “just fine” and may be reluctant to spend the extra money on something they don't deem as "broken." Well, with over 100 million smartphone users in the US alone and half of all search being performed on a mobile device, the value and necessity for a mobile web site is higher than ever.

Simply put: Search, social and mobile all go hand-in-hand (pun, intended).

Below are The Top Four Reasons You Need to Launch a Mobile Site:

1. Content Prioritization

- Mobile browsing is all about an easy, accessible experience. In comparison to desktop web sites (which usually contain a wide range of content and information) mobile sites include only the most crucial time- and location-specific functions and features. Traditional websites are too content-heavy, complicated and usually not relevant for practical mobile use.

- Traditional websites simply can’t give mobile users what they need. They are designed to be viewed on a computer screen instead of a mobile device. This means that regular websites, while still serve a purpose, are not effective for a mobile user with broken links and cluttered information. Too much chaos on a little screen equals high bounce rates and a negative response to your company.

2. Rank Higher in Search

- Because of their simplicity in nature, mobile websites have higher speed, making the visitor experience more pleasurable and this means increased relevancy to search engines.

- Mobile allows you to have the advantage of coming up higher in search engine results for local searches performed on mobile devices. This means that when people search for your type of product or service using their mobile device, you can show up higher in the results just because you have a mobile website.

3. Increased Conversions

- A mobile site makes it easier for on the go visitors to easily access information. Conversions increase as users can contact you with one-click calling, one-click email, and instant directions. This eliminates the need for your customers to take “extra steps” in order to contact or visit your business. In the age of instant information, an extra click could mean missed opportunities.

- Integrating social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube with your mobile website is simple and will help retain your visitors and increase customer base and lead generation.

- Fact: Mobile coupons get 10 times the redemption rate of traditional coupons.

4. Friendly User Experience = Repeat Interaction

- Mobile sites help you attract both new and repeat customers by giving your business instant appeal when visitors land on your clean mobile site with all of the important information clearly and easily accessible.

- When users are successful in finding what they need while visiting a mobile website, they’re more likely to come back. When mobile users land on a website that is distorted, they quickly exit and make a mental note never to return.

Bottom-Line:

Your customers and potential customers are utilizing mobile for almost every aspect of their daily lives. To stay relevant and accessible you must adapt your web strategy to align with current mobile trends, which are only going to increase in use. Mobile gives you the advantage over your competitors; most of which are not yet leveraging the powerful benefits of mobile marketing.

Want to know how you can improve interaction with a mobile site? Let's connect! You deserve a new, sleek, very mobile interface.
@amykauffman