A great session of “Technical SEO” tonight at Phil’s SEO Meetup was mind bending and fun. Fun if you like twisting your mind into a pretzel which I do, but many were lost between Content Delivery Networks, Mod Rewrites and Canonical URLs. This post starts at the beginning focusing on 5 SEO BASICS every marketer MUST know since to NOT KNOW endangers everything including your ability to hire help.

Must Know SEO #1 = Page Titles

Your page titles are always the highest words on your rendered web pages. You can also see page titles in code. In FireFox, go to Tools > Web Developer > Page Source. Here is how your page title will look:

<title>SEO, LinkedIn and The Real You ScentTrail Marketing</title>

Page titles should be keyword rich and unique.

WordPress and other blog software provides a place for YOU to create a title. Your WordPress blog may have the ability to vary your titles. Sometimes you want to feed the search engine spider one title and customers another, but be careful to be sure this passive rewrite of your title is consistent with the page’s content. Titles that don’t speak the same language as the page get you in trouble with Google.

I’m writing this post after eating a great Cheeseburger at the Zaxy’s Restaurant on Glenwood. Here is the ZaxyRestaurant.com title:

<title>ZakyRestaurant.com: Homepage</title>

Anything in a tittle is a word you want the page to rank for, so keywords are your friends.
There are 5 MAJOR mistakes in the current ZakyRestaurant.com title including:

• No keywords such as “Raleigh”, “Mediterranean restaurant”, “Glenwood Ave”, “Gyro”, “Lebanese” or “Hummus”.
• Zaky is concatenated into “restaurant” (no space) signalling the two are one word to Google except they aren’t. People will search Zaxy Raleigh or Zaxy Restaurant not ZaxyRestaurant.
• Never put a period inside of a tag since periods can looks like code.
• Never use a : inside of a tag, use a | so the punctuation doesn’t look like code.
• Never put “homepage” or a keyword so general it is meaningless in a title.

Here are Zaky’s description and keyword tags:
<meta name=”description” content=”Zaky is a downtown Raleigh Mediterranean restaurant in a convenient Glenwood location.“>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Mediterranean, Raleigh, Restaurant, Glenwood, Food, Lebanese, Pita, Gyro, Hummous“>

These are not as terrible as the tittle. Too bad Google doesn’t even glance at these tags anymore. These tags tell me the person who created the page knows a little SEO, but not nearly enough.

TEST your title simply by making sure ANY word inside the tag (showing on the very top of the page) is an important KEYWORD you want your website to be found for (to rank for).

PS. Another quick page title note. Google assumes position = value. Your most important and defining keywords should be far left and count down toward things you should win anyway (like your name). Use of | doesn’t interfere with the spider’s “read” and creates better usability. Titles are “spider food” mostly, but the most important spider food on the page so create titles carefully, with research and don’t exceed Google’s 69 character (spaces count as characters) limit.

SEO Must Know #2 – Consistency

Your titles, page content, image alt text (the keywords attached to images to explain what they are) and navigation should tell a consistent story. This is why it is so damaging to use a keyword like “homepage” in a title.

Zaky won’t have homepage anywhere in the page’s content so the keyword will stand out like a sore thumb and look spammy to Google. You and I know the designer who created the page didn’t know better, but ignorance of SEO guidelines is NO EXCUSE. Google is clear. Knowing SEO’s “laws” stated and unstated is you and your designer’s /programmer’s job not Google’s. Doing a few hours of reading on SEO is a good idea.

SEO Must Know #3 – Unique & Accurate

The good news for ZakyRestaurant.com is at least their designer created unique page titles. Many templated sites simply copy the same title on every page. Make sure your have unique titles and that each page’s titles is accurate to the content on the page.

SEO Must Know #4 – Junk In The HEAD

Google’s bot starts counting the moment it enters. It works its way down through the head content, the content that controls important tags like your <title>. Many designers like fancy roll overs. They jam the controlling code in your website’s Head. Don’t let that happen. Keep your Head CLEAN.

If you want fancy rollovers there are ways to code them with less spammy code in the head. If you see lines and lines of code in your <head> you have a problem.

SEO Must Know #5 – First Rule = Do No Harm

If your website exists then Google knows it. This means Google has expectations for how your website will ACT (your update frequency, your link add frequency, your inbound link gain frequency, etc. to infinity).

Here is a good question to ask any SEO. Ask any potential SEO how they would change your page title to rank for a keyword you want. This is a trick question since I don’t operate unless I know WHAT is WHERE. The right answer is NOTHING until research is created.

Here are other danger signals. If you here hear or see any of these RUN:

* I can get your website ranked #1 on X keyword in Y time (no they can’t).
* I guarantee your will rank (VERY dangerous for many reasons, RUN).
* If you ask about the Google float and they stammer or make something unreal up RUN.

The “Google float” is Google’s increasingly individual search results. Social signals, your past browsing history and even your friends LIKES ans SHARES mean you and I see different results even if we do the same search at the same time. The only way to benchmark and understand SEO progress is via analytics. Any SEO who can’t explain the float is dangerous and you should RUN.

Hope these 5 tips help you avoid the Zaky problem where a little knowledge proved to be a real problem. If you are a Zaky make sure you ask for a simple WordPress blog YOU can maintain. That way if some goofystupid person make mistakes you can easily fix them AND you have the added benefit of being able to easily add content. Adding content is KEY for any website these days. Static 4 page websites don’t rank, so get a blog YOU can maintain.

Don’t worry. You can and will make mistakes, but there is only one Internet marketing mistake that is unrecoverable – doing nothing and you are already out there trying so keep it up and avoid these simple mistakes even if your designer makes them.

Why Q&A Content Rocks Content Marketing

After joining Atlantic BT I was asked to evaluate client websites in 5 different business verticals. These verticals varied from Business Intelligence software to high end government research. A single theme kept coming up in my research – the power of Questions and Answer content. Q&A content was consistently over subscribed (high search counts) and under published (low competition). Why? Who knows, but conjecture says we often overlook the most basic things. Turns out those “basic things” when formed as Q&A content can be worth millions. This post is about how any small to medium sized business can mine the rich vein of golden Q&A content.

Evaluate websites by asking a series of cascading and linked questions such as:

Homepage PageRank (Use PageRank Checker)
Highest PageRank of Category Pages (use PageRank Checker)
# Links In (use Alexa)
PageSpread (#pages in Google, use site:www.URL.com and site:URL.com use higher number)
# of Twitter Followers (go to their Twitter page)
# Facebook Likes (go to their Facebook page)
Top 3 Competitors (who they think and then online)
* Same data as above for top 3 competitors.

Note: This post limits tool suggestions to free tools. We also use Raven Tools and SEOmoz but they aren’t free.

Know these metrics and you can know a website’s past and predict its future. One of the most difficult things to understand is how these metrics are tied to each other.

• PageRank is a signal of SEO strength or weakness.
• PageRank is tied to inbound links since Google places primary SEO value in links.
• High PageRank, low # of links in means the links in are highly valuable (probably .edu).
• High PageSpread (pages in Google) and LOW PageRank predicts low links in too.
• etc.

Look at Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like these often enough and long enough and patterns form. Patterns form maps for where to dive for more detail.

Next Stop: Keywords

Who is your competition? Competition in the world is not necessarily the same as competition online. Use Google’s free Adwords Keyword tool to review and understand keyword demand. This is not the post to explain Google’s keyword tool, but a quick note.

There are three kinds of searches: broad, phrase and exact. Think of these as BIG, MEDIUM and SMALL result set generators. At this stage we are creating a model of keyword demand. Use broad match terms because actual values don’t matter as much as the relationships or patterns in the data.

Everything online is a model. In a model the veracity of numbers is not as important as being consistent with treatment. You aren’t searching for a mathematical truth as much as modeled patterns, actionable patterns.

You need to know three things about keywords:

• Search demand over some time (monthly is what is normally used).
• Estimated cost of buying the term (we aren’t buying but cost is an important data point).
• Competitiveness of the term (sites with the term in anchors or title).

Construct a spreadsheet and then create a simple calculation of “efficiency”. Efficiency divides competitive supply by keyword search demand to identify over subscribed and under published terms, the nirvana of all keyword research. Sort the sheet by the efficiency and you’ve created a “long tail” list of keywords.

Q&A Content: The American Meltdown Food Truck Test

In virtually every vertical we’ve studied the most commonly over subscribed and under published content is Questions and Answers. I’ve been fascinated by food trucks since reading a feature about how popular food trucks were becoming in LA.

Today’s content strategy test is to quickly determine Q&A content to help American Meltdown.

The American Meltdown Food Truck looks delicious. The team is hard working. Let’s pretend the American Meltdown gourmet food truck and team are our clients.

American Meltdown KPIs

Homepage PR: 4
Menu Page PR: 3
Photos Page PR: 2
PageSpread: 272
Links In: 33

* Seeing these metrics American Meltdown had to be good in social since a PR4 with only 33 inbound links means support has to come from social or they wouldn’t have a PR4.

Facebook Likes: 851
Twitter Follows: 2,021

** Social strength is indeed why American Meltdown earns a PR4 with only 33 inbound links.

American Meltdown Food Truck Keywords

There are probably 3 to 7 keyword “silos” for American Meltdown. It can take a day or two to fully explore a keyword silo such as “food truck”. Today’s research is condensed into a few hours to provide a general idea of how to explore keywords.

Legend: Keyword phrase, competitive ratio from Google higher is more competitive, Global Monthly Search demand for the keyword, Local Monthly Search Demand for the keyword, CPC or Cost Per Click when advertising on the keyword, Docs = documents returned a good competitive indicator with lower being less competitive and so better, Effic = Efficiency or demand divide by supply (documents) with higher being more “efficient” or more likely to generate positive Return On Investment (ROI). ..
. 

Q&A Content Wins Again

FoodTruck spelled with no space is our standout winner with high search demand and a small number of pages focusing on the term generating the highest “efficiency”. Efficiency means the chance of creating a positive return on investment (ROI) for work done on a keyword. It may seem strange to say “small” when there are a quarter of a million pages, but most search terms have millions of returns.

Another solid content phrase is, “What is a food truck”. If we use a tool such as the AnswerHub to create Q&A content to answer these questions there is a very good chance our content will rank well. There is something about forming a Question combined with an Answer that Google loves.

The best way to use a tool such as AnswerHub.com is seed some starter Q&A content, provide social capital for customers to create User Generated Content (UGC) and gamify the environment so it is easy to find loyal supporters.

American Meltdown needs a content strategy that can work while they are on the truck. This is another advantage of UGC generated Q&A content. Setting up an AnswerHub mini-site is easy and cheap compared to the SEO returns.

There are other Q&A tools from Bazaar Voice and OSQA, but I like AnswerHub’s gamification, ease of use and easy installation. AnswerHub.com is located in Cary and they have a supportive, creative and smart team.

Every website should have a store and every website, including our friends at American Meltdown, should have a dedicated Q&A environment powered by UGC and an occasional post from the team. I should have included AnswerHub in our 5 Magical Do More With Less Curation Tools, a post that went “mega-viral” with an audience past 1M thanks to power retweeters.

Q&A content can be worth millions in traffic and conversions for B2B and B2C websites. The keyword research above is only a beginning. If American Meltdown was our customer I would spend several days before finding the 5 keywords like “FoodTruck” that could be magical.

How would I use “FoodTruck”? Write content such as:

• 5 Differences between Food Trucks and FoodTrucks
• The FoodTruck Manifesto.
• Why FoodTrucks are way cooler than Food Trucks.
• Why American Meltdown is a FoodTruck not a Food Truck.
• FoodTruck Swag (the t-shirts etc. to support American Meltdown’s brand building).
• Etc.

If we wanted to create a castle around the keyword “FoodTruck” we might buy 2 to 7 URLs such as FoodTruckSwag, FoodTruckManifesto and FoodTruckGifts. These URLs are available and could prove immensely supportive to American Meltdown’s content strategy.

I would also be sure to create pages for Durham Food Truck Rodeo, What is a Food Truck and Food Truck Locations. American Meltdown has a calendar, but it is hard to engage with and understand. Since knowing where they are = money, I would rework the locations and calendar page substantially.

Since it seems like they have a regular circuit I would create pages for each place in the circuit. On these pages I would have a link to the “tracker”, pictures, some copy about what they like about that location and a Twitter roll. Twitter rolls, if positioned in the code correctly, can keep a webpage “alive” to Google. Some of this content I would put in the Q&A area, some I would include in the “stack” of American Meltdown pages.

Might want to take a quick look at Advanced SEO: Bleeding, Siloing and Bottling for more on how to form content silos for maximum impact.

Don’t Forget SEO Basics

Buying URLs with keywords is advanced Internet marketing. Before you go there, check SEO basics such as:

• Is your page title keyword dense?
• Do you have unique page titles?
• Is your body copy aligned with the listings you want?
• Are your images using alt text with keywords?
• Can visitors easily share your content via Facebook, Twitter and G+?

American Meltdown needs some SEO tuning. These days I tune AFTER working out a storytelling and User Generated Content (UGC) strategy. Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm changes made constantly improving site heuristics the most important metrics.

“Constantly improving” heuristics imply:

• Storytelling to promote page views.
• Photos and videos to promote time on site.
• Contests and games to promote user engagement.

Overwhelmed yet? Remember the power of Q&A content and you’ve found the secret RPG of content marketing.

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Martin W. Smith on 

How SEO Can Ruin Your Day

Search Engine Optimization is many things– fair and kind aren’t among them (lol). I sat down to create a list of 5 things to NEVER do on your website or risk the wrath of Google Gods, and I ended up with 20 big SEO cracks your website should avoid stepping on.

If this sounds like SEO is live ammunition, you are getting the idea. Here is the other part, the hard part: Search Engine Optimization’s “rules” change all the time. If that sounds strange for a “rule”, you are starting to understand the difference between Internet marketing and everything else (lol).

Internet marketing is ALIVE. Every second of every day, something is moving, changing and rearranging itself in Internet marketing land. If you guessed that MONEY is the prime driver of the web’s insatiable appetite for arbitrage, you win a dollar. If you figured out that everything is for sale and there is more than one currency, you win $100 (US). If you figured out everything is in movement all the time so the only TRUE NORTH is what is happening NOW, you are good to go.

NOW means that the best guide for how to win top positions on keywords you care about is to watch who is winning them now. Watching who holds or loses top SEO positions with a tool like MIKE’S (FREE) or SEOmoz (not free). Tools help you see through Google’s float of their index to “absolute” values. Here are the 20 “cracks” sure to break your website’s back if you step on them (so don’t do that):

Published on Scoop.it first:

My SEO Secret

Ever wonder how I came to know so much about SEO? Yes, I spent a week in Mill Valley with SEO Guru Bruce Clay, but that isn’t the biggest source of my knowledge. I managed a team running what became a $6M website, and ask any FOM (Friend of Martin), I can BLOW SOME STUFF UP (lol).

If you aren’t blowing some things apart online. you aren’t really an Internet marketer. We never wore black hats. Sometime we blow stuff up because we were stupid, and sometimes our IT guys stepped right on us. Nothing like blowing up a million dollar thing to LEARN FAST.

My Admission of Guilt for Being Able To BLOW Websites UP.

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3 Internet Marketing Ideas

Internet marketing may feel complicated these days. Let’s simplify IM down to 3 ideas. Take the Atlantic BT 3 Internet Marketing Ideas Challenge.

I’m just back in the office from the Raleigh Internet Marketing Summit. Over the course of the two day event 2,000 people came to downtown Raleigh, all looking for the next big thing. This post is about 3 Internet marketing ideas that will help you win online:

• Platforms (with gamification) Beat Websites.
• Mobile First.
• More, Faster and Better.

Platforms with Gamification Beat Websites

I wrote about the death of websites on ScentTrail Marketing a year ago. That post quickly became a content “tent pole“. Here is the link to my September 2011 post on ScentTrail Marketing:

Platforms vs. Websites

User Generated Content (UGC) is critical to Internet marketing success. Platforms, if built right, are more social and fun than the one sided lectures that some websites can feel like. Platforms use content management systems (Social CMS) and gamification to create UGC faster and better, better and faster.

Think Mobile First

Don’t think of your phone as “mobile” in this context.

Think of your phone as a game console. Mobile is the key to more, faster and better content distribution and customer engagement (love). Your content and website must lower barriers between YOU and THEM. You need advocates and help.

Read David Edelman’s influential HBR article “Branding in the Digital Age” for more on how your relationship to THEM needs to change.

You may hear “Responsive Website Design”, “Adaptive Website Design” and “Hybrid Mobile Website Design”. Don’t attempt to decipher or understand these terms (is my advice). Think about any marketing with these mobile marketing concepts in mind and worry about labeling later:

• FAST beats SLOW.
• Visual beats TEXTUAL.
• EASY beasts Complicated.
• On a PHONE, All Content Is LOCAL.
• On a PHONE, All Content Is SOCIAL.
• Phones CURATE every other device (laptops, desktops, TVs, game consoles).

3 Internet Marketing Ideas Challenge & Free Lunch

We shared our 3 Big Internet marketing ideas, what are yours?

Tweet your ideas to @Atlanticbt or email them to Martin.Smith(at)Atlanticbt(dot)com. We will curate ideas into this piece. The first few who share 3 magical ideas win FREE LUNCH with Atlantic BT on the Friday of their choosing. The 3 Internet Marketing Ideas Challenge ends on Christmas Day.

Deadline: 12.25.2012

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MY Becomes OURS

Social media is transforming what I did in 1999.  When I wrote the HTML for FoundObjects.com (now RIP), the page was a beautiful flat table. Feels like there is a different THING going on now.

Read SEO and Data Got a Thing Going On (ScentTrail Marketing)

I wrote “SEO and Data” on Saturday while listening to Marvin Gaye. It felt like secrets fell from Marvin out through my fingers. The “Secret Internet Marketing Implications” I found include:

• Testing Culture Is a Must.
• The First to Figure out How to Do More with Less Wins.
• The More Content You Write, the More “Local” It Becomes.
• We Are All Rebel Disruptors Now.

Testing and Internet Marketing: Test More

If you asked me for the single tactic we used when I was a Director of Ecommerce to make over $30M in online sales across more than 600,000 transactions, TESTING would be my single word answer. “SEO and Data Got a Thing Going On” has a funny testing story I won’t repeat here, but you must become a “testing culture.” Take our Testing Culture Quiz to find out if you are good to go.

Internet Marketing: Do More with Less to Win

Internet marketing teams should be small and scrappy. You NEVER want to give an Internet marketing team all they ask for, because it takes the fight out of them. Keep your Internet marketing team on a short leash and they’ll use creativity to bridge the gap between what they have and where they need to go.

The ONLY exception to this rule is NEVER spend less on your web marketing team and campaigns than your most aggressive competitor. I suggest spending about 10% more than your competitor if you are ahead, and 20% to 50% more if you are behind (use SpyFu to know their spend). Ahead, in this context, means ONLINE, not in the real world.

Related: 5 Magical Do More with Less Curation Tools [went mega-viral]

Internet Marketing: Content More Local, the More You Create

“More Local” in this context means more micro rather than more near you, but geographic location could apply too. One thing is clear from mobile search: We need new data dimensions. As Google gets smarter about where you are and what you want, having BREAKFAST information large and in charge if you serve breakfast is going to be important. This idea of how DATA is going to need to change to feed the future deserves a longer post (watch this space).

Internet Marketing: An Army of Rebel Disruptors

Even if you own a market, you must think like a rebel force. The minute you sit down for a quiet lunch in the shade, someone is going to disrupt you, so make sure some elements of your team are dedicated to discovering and implementing the new things, the crazy things and the ROI-questionable things. Internet marketing is always changing. The way you stay on top is to stay hungry, resist the temptation to automatically judge new things as “silly” or “stupid,” and always be open to crazy fools like me (lol).

Attending the Internet Summit in Raleigh for the next few days. Stay tuned for updates from the Summit.

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Image at top of this post is a graphical representation of Google’s PageRank algorithm from Wikipedia.

How URL Management Can Hurt SEO

This week’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tip comes from a good friend and a great SEO. Bill Ross runs SEO for a Chicago agency. Bill also created LinchpinSEO to answer questions and share articles from friends. Read my article about SEO and the Amazon Paradox BEFORE you sign up to become an Amazon partner (lol). I owe Bill a followup to discuss Amazon’s same day shipping, but not today.

Today’s post is about URL management. Quick note: URL stands for Universal Resource Locator and it is your web address, so when you see “URL,” think website name such as www.Atlanticbt.com (URLs become numbers too, but that is another post for another time).  After Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm updates, what you don’t know about URL management can hurt your website’s SEO.

Bill outlines excellent tips for URL management in his How to Do Site Consolidation the Right Way article. I learned about URL management from SEO Guru Bruce Clay. Here is a quick summary of what I learned during Clay’s week long SEO training:

Marty’s SEO URL Management Tips

• Never redirect every domain you own to your core domain.
• Never create small sites that do nothing but link to your main site.
• Never interlink to excess between properties you own.

Even if you are smart enough to play the variable IP game, the pattern of your linking can be seen clearly now post-Panda. I understand how to randomize IPs, and I don’t do it anymore. I don’t play games with URLs because Google knows, the math always wins and it was a pain. The over, what can be gained, is small compared to the under, what you stand to lose, when you play URL games.

When you create an external website with keywords in the URL, one good reason to create a “snapsite” for example, NEVER link to other properties you own without a disallow (code that tells Google’s spider NOT to follow the link). If Google senses you are trying to multiply one site into two, they will divide your PR.

If you were a PR6 on your core website and Google detects you are playing games, your PR6 website could become a PR3 and your new site a PR3. You DO NOT want this. PR  is equal to strength, and 6 is more that 2×3 in this context (more like the 3 squared, due to how hard it is to move up the PR ladder). If you create a snapsite, it must establish its own identity.

BTW, adding a site is not just 2x the work. When we added a robust alternative site after observing our traffic was splitting due to inconsistent branding, it was the work of one site SQUARED to manage two active websites. This is why that second website can start to look like your other properties. Everything online is MATH, and you don’t fool math forever. Even my black hat SEO friends know they have a limited window to have a tactic “game the system” and gain SEO traction. Google’s magical algorithm always wins, so wear a white hat and manage your URLs with care.

One last tip I learned from SEO Guru Bruce Clay. In my last company we owned hundreds of URLs that all pointed to our main website. Never do that, because pointing inactive URLs to lock down search was a common spam tactic. Hold those URLs and point to a junk URL that doesn’t matter. There isn’t any benefit to pointing non-active URLs anywhere, but there is a HUGE potential penalty to pointing inactive but owned URLs to your crown jewels.

Interlinking Lesson Applies to SM Accounts Too

If you have multiple social media (SM) accounts. be careful about how you inter-link. I manage a handful of Twitter accounts. I’ve learned the hard way to send original Tweets. I don’t RT my content in the same way over and over. I NEVER RT my links with my accounts either. If I tweet something on @atlanticbt, I don’t RT that Tweet with @Scenttrail. Google and Twitter know I manage both because it is in the math. When I tweet, there is a signature. Twitter and Google have my “fingerprints”  in their models, so be careful what you touch and how in social media marketing.

Facebook’s Link Out Rule

If you have a solid Facebook presence, make sure you are linking your hard-won Facebook PageRank, the number Google gives every website from 0 to 10 with ten being best, out to properties you own. If you don’t link out to sites you own, you just make Facebook richer, and they don’t need it. If you send links out out, make sure you consistently create content IN Facebook too. Never ONLY link out, as that will kill your Facebook rank.

Finally, I just realized something. I discuss PageRank frequently, but many reading these posts may not know how to find their web page’s PR (you have PR for every page on your website). There are a number of free Page Rank Checker tools. I use PageRankChecker.info, because it is free and gives results I trust. Put your URLs into the box, type the captcha, and these tools show your current PR. PR fluctuates every 90 days too, so don’t think because your homepage was a PR5  a year ago it still is; check PR frequently.

Read Bill’s excellent Site Consolidation the Right Way article to learn more.

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Startup Success

I know about the wild ride of creating companies. I’ve created four of them (lol). I know and have interviewed (for ScentTrial on Technorati) hundreds of startup entrepreneurs. I’ve noticed one big difference between successful startups and those whose entrepreneurs end up working for someone else again:

Successful startups are more OPEN!

Successful startups share, collaborate and engage. They harvest the wisdom of crowds and use their social nets to tweak, modify and improve their business model, tactics, strategy and people. Being open on social media can help your startup reach for success.

5 Social Media Marketing Tips For Startups

Tip 1: Facebook Is Your Exclusive Club
Tempted to NOT have a Facebook page? “Too early,” someone might say, and they would be wrong. The faster you create a viable Facebook community, the more traction every other digital asset you create and your company gets. Here are 3 good Facebook Usage Guidelines:

1. Listen more than you talk.

2. Contribute meaningful content TO Facebook.

3. Drive links OUT to your owned properties (websites, blogs, other social).

Ask questions. Treat your Facebook page like an exclusive clubhouse. People in your club love you and want to help, so let them. BTW, play for LIKES and SHARES since they help SEO (Search Engine Optimization). LIKES and SHARES are the table stakes of social media marketing, the report card on your efforts, and you need to get all A’s.

There is no replacement for learning as you go. You will learn how best to phrase and share so your stuff gets picked up, commented on, LIKED, SHARED and Retweeted. I wish I could give you a magic bullet, but experience is the best teacher because YOUR voice is (and should be) different from MINE (lol).

One last FB tip: Pictures and video RULE. The more visual and social you can be, and this rule applies to every marketing activity you create, the more you are likely to win.

Tip 2: Twitter Is the Radio of the Web
Use Twitter to announce stuff. Keep your “self-promotion” links to about 50%, and curate and follow others with the rest of your space. For example if you are creating mobile apps, you might want to follow Luke Wroblewski, author of Mobile First.

Be generous, and people will be generous back. Be an ass, and you won’t last long! If you are young and arrogant (you know who you are!) in real life, try to appear less so on social media. Social media amplifies your positive and negative traits, so a little arrogance becomes an ego that won’t fit in the room. Humble, kind and honest all work. When in doubt, get someone you trust to read your stuff (or even if you’re not in doubt). I do this kind of “how does it sound?” review for lots of friends all the time, so don’t hesitate to ask your Internet marketing friends for help.

Tip 3: Blogs Are Traffic Catchers
Blog early and blog often. The more you blog, the more SEO traffic you catch, the more feedback you get, and the stronger all of your digital properties become. Short 200 to 500 word posts are better than long posts (says the man famous for 1,000 word blog posts, LOL).

Long posts are great for search engine spiders, but you sacrifice engagement, so I wouldn’t suggest ANY startup write long blog posts. Being long-winded feels incongruous with “startup,” so keep it short and post DAILY. Break up longer, complicated topics into multiple parts if necessary.

If blogging gets good to you and you want to post more than daily, CREATE a second blog, since you don’t want to step on your own blog posts. Remember the Facebook visual rule and ALWAYS have at least one picture or graphic in every post. Consider creating a Vblog or Video Blog too, since the video tsunami is almost here.

Tip 4: Video on YouTube and Video Because Marketing Is TV Now
The BIG THREE social media tools for startups are Facebook for community, Twitter for announcements and YouTube/Vimeo for telling your emotional short stories on video.

If you are in the advanced social media class, Scoop.it should be in your bag of tricks, but only if you are a master of at least one other social media tool (because social media tools amplify each other). Scoop.it is a great HUB for all of your social media– when you are ready.

Think of your startup as a reality TV channel. There is always something on TV. You should be generating fresh content constantly and at an ever faster pace (see More and More, Faster and Faster, Better and Better on ScentTrail Marketing).

Create content that creates and then successfully resolves (in your favor) cliff hangers. Humanize your creations, your products. Make people CARE. Steve Sabol, the creator of NFL Films, famously said, “Tell me a fact and I remember, tell me a truth and I believe, tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.” Grab your customers’ hearts and never let go.

Tip 5: People, Not Things, Sell
People want to buy YOU. Don’t frustrate that desire; don’t make your communication and website all about your widget. I got so frustrated with the typical startup “all about the widget” approach to selling that I wrote People, Not Things, Sell.

Here is another important idea for startups: Social media and the web NEVER FIX ANYTHING, at least not by themselves. The web and social media is just a huge megaphone. If you don’t know your Unique Selling Proposition (USP), your elevator pitch, your core values, the web will not help you find them. The web will point out inconsistency and sloppiness fast, very fast, so have your marketing act together. I just wrote about the need for courage and self examination yesterday.

What about other social networks such as LinkedIn, Pinterest, Hunch, or Scoop.it? Using social networks is like weaving a content tapestry. You can weave a bigger and better tapestry with more, but you can also be overwhelmed and confused. If you are ready to teach a social media masterclass, then weave in as many social nets as time allows. If you are time-limited, as most startups are, get good at the big three:

• Facebook for community.
• Twitter for its radio-like qualities.
• Video on YouTube and Vimeo to tell your emotional story.

Social media should be a startup’s BFF. Have your core marketing act together and share, share and share more. Keep calm and Retweet.

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Feel like your website made it through the Google algorithm changes? Maybe, but a complete checkup is the only way to know for sure. Google’s algorithm changes are ongoing. There are more changes coming.

Did you know that Google is writing listing descriptions from your website’s H1 tags? Google’s post-Panda desire is to find the truth of the page, and they are ignoring possibly overstuffed <title> and <description> meta to instead pull descriptions from your page’s content, especially H1 tags.

Here are a few of the implications of Google’s use of H1′s as page descriptions:

• H1′s should have keywords.
• H1′s are being concatenated after 65 characters.
• Multiple H1′s, never a good idea, can be very damaging now.
• Multiple H2′s is not a problem.

See How Google is Describing Your Pages in 3 Easy Steps

It is easy to see how Google is naming your pages:

1. Google search “Site:<yourURL.com>” to see your website’s indexed pages.

2. Review the descriptions and identify their source (probably H1 tags).

3. Make sure your descriptions use the best keywords for your website and the page.

Example of Google Using H1 As Listing Description

Here is an example of a listing using a website that is not an Atlantic BT client, Etymotic.com:

The highlighted listing is for this page (http://www.etymotic.com/ephp/):

Here is the page’s Title:

<title> Etymotic Research, Inc. – High-Fidelity Noise Isolating Earphones and Headsets </title>

Here is the page’s Description:

<meta name=”description” content=”Etymotic Research, Inc. is the world leader of In-The-Ear Technology and Hearing Instrumentation” />

Here is the H1 and the source of the Google listing:

<h1>High-Fidelity Noise Isolating Earphones and Headsets</h1>

DIY SEO Google Description Audit

If you like to work under your website’s hood, follow the steps above to see your current page descriptions. If you know how to do the keyword research needed to enrich your H1 tags, then keyword research should be your second step.

If you need help with a Post Panda and Penguin SEO checkup, let your Atlantic BT contact know you need help.

New customers, email the head of consulting services Mike.McTaggart(at)Atlanticbt(dot)com . Mike and his team will be glad to get your website in for a complete SEO checkup.

or call 919.518.0670.

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It was a wicked sense of déjà vu. The feeling was strong. I lost concentration driving on I-40 during rush hour (not a good idea). For a moment, I was channeling a former life. September is the quiet before the storm for e-commerce B2C retailers. September is the last time “quiet” can be safely used until about March. As a Director of Ecommerce, I didn’t sleep much between September and Christmas. Sweating and pacing I remember, sleeping not so much (lol).

We don’t want you to sweat and pace so much this fall. This post shares ways Atlantic BT can help your website make more money this holiday selling season. E-commerce is so sensitive. Business-to-consumer (B2C) Ecommerce websites can be tuned at this time of year. A tiny tweak here and there NOW makes more money over the next 12 weeks.

Five Ways Atlantic BT Can Help B2C Customers Today

Here are 5 B2C audits I would hire Atlantic BT to help with if I were still a Director of E-commerce.

Email Campaign Audit

Most e-retailers have a schedule for their email campaigns already on paper. Some have campaigns waiting in a tool such as Constant Contact, Bronto or Responsys. Campaign creative and segmentation are queued and ready to fire on a schedule. When I was a Director of E-commerce, Email was our most profitable channel. Email marketing consistently produced profit margins greater than 30%, much higher than the next most profitable channel. Ask these questions to increase results from your email marketing this holiday season:

• Is your marketing segmented and using personas?
• Are you sending relevant creative to your segments? (Hope you aren’t blasting same offer to everyone, a very BAD idea now.)
• Do your emails tell a story?
• Do your emails curate valuable social content?
• Do your emails look good on mobile devices?

If YES is the answer to all of these questions, you should be good to go. But it never hurts to have another set of experienced Internet marketing eyes reviewing your email campaign strategy and testing your assumptions. A tiny tune here or there can make a BIG difference in email marketing results.

Related article:  Email Marketing is Live Ammunition

Post Panda and Penguin SEO Audit

Google’s Panda and Penguin updates are creating sudden and dramatic changes to the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Even if you’ve come through fine until now, Google algorithm changes continue. Don’t wait until there is a problem. Hire Atlantic BT (or someone) to check SEO basics. Search Engine Optimization is an area where tiny tweaks can keep you on page one or banish your website to the cheap seats, forcing your website to earn its way back (been there, done that; trust me, you NEVER want to have to live through a Google reset).

Landing Page Audit, PPC Review & PPI

Do you have special landing pages for the holidays? We organized gifts for him and her with special search result pages, links, copy and graphics. We also increased our PPC and drove to specific landing pages on hot products or unique merchandise bundles. Landing pages are as much art as science. If you’ve tested and tested and tested all summer and are ready to use the winners from those tests, good. But even after a summer of testing, a quick landing page and PPC review can come up with small suggestions that may double conversions. Such a look over your shoulder is especially important if you don’t have a testing culture (take our Testing Culture Quiz).

Google is offering Pay Per Inclusion, PPI, for the first time this year. PPI functions similar to a shopping comparison site such as PriceGrabber.com. You load a feed and BUY your way into the “organic” index. If you’ve never purchased PPI, GET HELP. We bought PPI from Yahoo back when Google said PPI was original sin and I was a Director of Ecommerce. If you can’t work your way into your most important organic terms in this lifetime, PPI may be a good answer for presence on key terms. PPI is NOT intuitive and only as good as your feed, so get help unless you are a shopping comparison engine pro.

WebSite Audit

It never ceased to amaze me when our customers saw our website better than we did. Customers don’t have what the Heath brothers call, “the curse of knowledge” in one of my favorite books, Made To Stick.  When you look at a website each day, you don’t see it anymore. Since 20% of your pages will capture 80% of your holiday revenue, hire an external resource to review those pages. Have someone audit those “mission critical” pages with a fine tooth comb. Grammar and spelling matter, image size matters to site speed, and too much javascript in your <head></head> hurts SEO. Get another trained pair of eyes or two to review your most critical pages, and make sure they look behind the curtain at code.

Mobile Audit

Holiday 2012 will be the first MOBILE holiday. Mobile commerce is coming, but mobile curation is here. If your website or emails don’t look good on mobile devices, you will lose sales and traffic. Mobile is used to curate communication. Mobile is easy to use to delete or ignore groups of emails. If your website doesn’t look good on mobile, if it is slow or if your emails aren’t optimized for mobile devices, you will lose sales and damage your brand. There are technical things Atlantic BT’s team can do to help your website and emails look better and sell more on mobile devices this holiday season. If you are uneasy about mobile, ask Atlantic BT for a Mobile Audit.

Monday Tips For B2B
There are other ways we can help, other audits that would provide value, such as a Google Analytics Audit or a Social Media Marketing Audit. We can discuss the other ways we can help if you have questions or concerns. Conducting one or several of these B2C e-commerce audits will help you sell more this holiday season. Need help conducting those audits?

Call us at: 919.518.0670

Email Mike.McTaggart(at)Atlanticbt(dot)com (Head of Consulting Services)

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Google Adwords, Social Signals, Pay Per Click

Researching keywords, I noticed a funny thing. Google seemed willing to sell us more ads when we blogged, once social signals were involved. I started wandering around deep inside of Adwords. I wanted to answer a simple question.

Are social signals influencing PPC? It was a fascinating journey.

.

Once Google created a floating search engine, in which you see a different search result set on the same keyword(s) as me, even if we search at the same time on the same term, they created infinite ad inventory.

Once your SEO result set is different than mine, Google can mash, spin and snip inventory to meet any demand, segment or call. Keywords become an open air bazaar with Google deciding who sees and can buy what. Google’s float creates a new financial instrument that may be the most powerful currency printing press in the world.

Google can simply “print” more search result sets or feed existing sets to a larger number of buyers when they need to increase ad revenue. Both actions increase Google’s profit. Google’s cost is the data cutting. Cutting, segmenting and feeding data is something Google has down to an inexpensive science, so their costs are low.

The funny, ironic part of the story is how enamored everyone was with Facebook as Google constructed the world’s largest printing press in full view. Facebook has people, but no one has more explicit, near-conversion searches than Google. Translate “explicit, near conversion searches” as “ad inventory” or simply MONEY.

We may figure out how to convert visitors to buyers in Facebook, but Google’s brilliant response to Social Media’s threat – to create a floating and so infinite search result set – makes fighting Google difficult. If Facebook looks disruptive to the most valuable inventory of keywords in the world, Google tweaks two knobs and counters effortlessly without spending much in defense.

Facebook’s R&D budget will need to exceed Google’s by an order of magnitude, for a long time. Chances of Facebook winning are not good, absent a large disruptive force such as Mobile (and Facebook isn’t leading in mobile, far from it).

Implications of Social Signals in PPC

If Google’s PPC algorithm is willing to sell more inventory to buyers with social strength, a new dimension to social ROI is being discovered. The data is tantalizing and suggestive, but not definitive. I looked at the Atlantic BT website’s stats for two 11-day periods, wanting to find days when unique traffic was almost equal so that traffic could be ruled out as the cause of any difference. I used blog days vs. non-blog days as the marker for social signals. The results were stunning:

Google sold 66% more PPC ad inventory on blog vs. no blog days.

By controlling the two sets to keep unique visitors almost identical (no blog days had slightly more visitors), we can rule out visits and visitors as causing the difference. The largest difference between the two sets of days was social signals. Blog days received 57 direct Retweets via TweetMeme.

Past experience shows that TweetMeme only captures about 25% of total social signals. Topsy is a better judge of absolute numbers: Topsy is more accurate with Friends of Friends Retweets. Our model doesn’t require knowing ReTweets down to the follower level, though. It is enough to know that the blog days generated significantly MORE social signals than non-blog days.

The data is far from perfect, but if I were a betting man, and as an Internet marketer I have to be, I bet social signals are influencing the ad arbitrage Google creates every minute of every day. Your website will be allowed to buy more ads faster if you have social strength.

It takes getting used to this idea that you are granted the RIGHT to buy ads Google is willing to sell. It takes even more getting used to the idea that Google is judging your website on criteria so complex and dynamic it is hard to fix what may be wrong. Your Adwords quality score may be the tip of a much larger iceberg, a trailing, NOT a leading, indicator.

Social signals influencing PPC makes sense. Let’s say your website is the world authority on “widgets”. You have a PageRank of 8, and all kinds of inbound links claiming your website is the place to learn about widgets. When you want to buy the highly competitive “widget” keyword before the float, you had to get in line with everyone else and bid. Now Google can construct a highly relevant “widget” result set and feed it to their best “widget” searchers, rewarding your authority with better ads, faster.

Google makes money moving MORE searches to a relevant home faster, much more money than bouncing searchers around the web. The sooner a search produces relevance and lands, the fewer Google resources that searcher uses. Think of searches as costing and making money, and of course social signals are in PPC. Social signals are just one more means Google has to determine the most relevant place to send keyword traffic.

It might seem Google has a vested interest in keeping traffic clicking. Clicks do equal money, but clicks also cost money. Google must seesaw the cost of additional resource calls (clicks) against the ad arbitrage (what they can sell the click for). Money NOW always beats the possibility of money later.

Marty’s Social Signals in PPC advice:

• Embrace social media NOW.
• Apply Google’s post Panda and Penguin algorithm changes broadly (read Storytelling – Panda’s Secret SEO Implication).
• Assume if your tribe and the web’s mob doesn’t love your content, Google won’t either.
• Assume that having MORE Followers, Shares and LOVE is better than LESS.
• Tell great stories people want to share on social media.
• Create great events people want to share on social media.
• Develop great games people want to share on social media.

Still have social media naysayers in your company? Share this post. Social media naysayers may think PPC is the last thing they can just BUY. Afraid not, it appears PPC too is under the thumb of social signals.

- Marty