WHAT IS IT?: Article: SEO 3.0 – How to get your site ranked on Google in 2008 by Laura Creekmore

Here are the notes that Laura Creekmore took from Bill Leake from Apogee Search’s presentation on SEO.

Pay per click is moving to cost per action.

Use bid management to hit your users when they’re searching…don’t pay when your prime users aren’t there.

Target particular sites with your keyword buys.

Be sure you are testing your PPC buys.

Use the Proctor & Gamble strategy: Own an out-sized share of the shelf space.

This point is great: Good content matters. It makes a difference in your link ranking. About 80% of your ranking on Google is probably what other people are saying about you. Maybe 20% is what’s on your site. But your title tag is the most important part of that. Keyword density on your own site is very, very far down the list. Don’t let your SEO write content!! You need real content that inspires other people to link to you–because that’s what gets you links and pushes you up in Google.

PR can really help SEO. A press release that gets picked up is your content, posted elsewhere, linking back to you. Release frequently. Send some smaller distribution. Use good keywords in the release. Use Internet wires. Train management to understand that Internet-only mentions are actually good, sometimes better than offline.

Manage your online reputation well. What shows up when people search for you? How are you addressing negative sites, comments?

Use Google Local.

Video, products, etc. are starting to be blended in with text search results. Make sure ALL your products/services are listed, especially multimedia. Video converts well. Your #1 ranking is irrelevant–what matters is getting conversions.

MORE LINK(S) WORTH YOUR TIME

• SEO 3.0 Notes

WHAT IS IT?: Many including Dell have done it well and now Starbucks is in the game with their new MyStartbucksIdea.com website that encourages customers to share their ideas to improve Starbucks.

HOW DOES IT HELP MY BUSINESS?: Like a 24×7, global focus group you can get fresh ideas that can help drive your business.

PROS: Free focus group from your most influential customers (those who are online and active)

CONS: Be careful to understand who the customer is that is actively participating in these feedback communities. They may not be representative of your masses, but it does give you insight where you may have had none and will be for you to decide what to apply and what not to apply to your entire business.

MORE LINK(S) WORTH YOUR TIME:

• My Starbucks Idea by johnmoore
• Starbucks’ Bright Idea: Launch a Social Network by Kristen Nicole

Click #1

Click #2

*Unfortunately, it failed to show me a confirmation after I received my email.

HOW DOES THIS HELP MY BUSINESS?: It shows us that the ‘gain’ or ‘pain’ reduction must be big enough to overcome the perception of risk. Who doesn’t want to organize their closet. I sure the heck do. Think carefully to address the very ‘pain’ that your customer feels in their daily lives and get their attention to act and maybe even submit their email. Even I came to concluded that submitting myself to email spam was overcome by the ‘gain’ of turning our closet into a closet you see on MTV Cribs or at least a humble version of it.

PROS: Understanding the true ‘pain’ or ‘gain’ of a product for your customer can increase your ad success rate exponentially.

CONS: Be very careful not to misrepresent your ‘pain’ or ‘gain’. If you push that boundary too far, you will loose the trust of that customer forever.

MORE LINK(S) WORTH YOUR TIME:

• Best Practices for Conversion: The New Engagement Funnel in 7 Steps – from Omniture

PROS: Be a pro after you read and understand the trends in this report.

CONS: I literally could not put it down and ended up reading it all on a flight instead of going thru emails.

MORE LINKS WORTH YOUR TIME:

• Avenue Z Razorfish 2008 Digital Outlook Report – Guy Kawasaki
  
• Ad spending moving from portals to search, entertainment sites
• OgilvyOne China President Chris Reitermann: The Digital Outlook for 2008

Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide – Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations. By Amy Shuen
First Edition April 2008

Web 2.0 makes headlines, but how does it make money? This concise guide explains what’s different about Web 2.0 and how those differences can improve the bottom line. Whether you’re an executive, a small business owner, or an entrepreneur, Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide illustrates through real life examples how various businesses are creating new opportunities on today’s Web. This book is about strategy rather than the technology itself.

More link(s) worth your time:

• A Web 2.0 Strategy Guide

Previously, this blog was titled ‘Web 2.0 Evangelist’. The title will now simply be on ‘Web and Ecommerce Strategy’ which will focus on the ideas, people, technologies, and companies that will drive exponential revenue growth and brand awareness online for businesses big and small.

There have been ‘generations’ of change within the last 8 months online. I think the keyword for today is ‘saturation’. People simply don’t have enough time or mind share for most of what the internet has to offer. More and more it’s a human limitation and not a technical one that is in the way of marketing and messaging online. In order to overcome this fact, I believe the new strategy for ecommerce and online awareness is ‘shock and awe’.

Shock and awe can come in the form of amazing customer service with FREE overnight shipping for every order as Endless.com does or a video of an iphone being shredded in your company’s powerful blender as Blendtec does.

What can you do to create the ‘shock and awe’ required for your ecommerce and web strategy to be heard above the saturation? Feel free to send me your business model and I would be happy to think of some with you.

WHAT IS IT: I’d like to call it, ‘username branding’. Username branding relates to the creation and usage of a unique username that you can use across all social networking sites to build brand awareness.

HOW CAN IT HELP MY BUSINESS: By standardizing your username, you increase the ability to surface to the top of search engine results and build a recognizable brand online across various social networking sites.

PROS: Something simple to do, yet could be valuable in building online brand awareness.

CONS: It’s not easy to come up with a unique username that closely matches your branding and have it be available on all the various social networking sites.

BOTTOM LINE: More and more, your brand is only as good as its searchable. It’s very important to recognized that online search results are more and more a part of who you ARE to the world. Username branding is a simple yet highly effective practice that all businesses should follow.

Basic rules to coming up with a powerful username brand:

1. Make it unique so that it will more likely be available on all sites.
2. Be sure it’s a username that you think will be timeless for your branding. Example: Don’t use the username ‘likeits1999′.
3. Make sure it coincides with your company name or brand. If it’s identical, that’s obviously the best.

3 Simple steps:

1. Get Gmail invitation from Google. I can send you one if you don’t have access to one. Email me at jameskeylim [at] gmail [.] com.
2. Sign up to Gmail using your username. Example, username@gmail.com.
3. Sign up to the following websites:

Sites to sign up to:

• Yahoo (for Flickr and instant messaging, I don’t use their email anymore)
• Myspace (be sure to create the ‘MySpace URL)
• Facebook
• Delicious
• Digg
• MSN (for instant messaging)
• Skype
• Slideshare
• Youtube
• GizmoProject
• AOL (for instant messaging)

MORE LINKS WORTH YOUR TIME:

• How Branding Scores Traffic from Social Media

NOTE: Sorry, typed this live. Please excuse the typos and errors.

• link to session description
• philosophy from internet seen more and more
  • podcasting blogging applied to audio
  • unconferences – discussion with audience is like a blog
• not ‘smart’, just use the technology
  • focus is first is being a user
  • always a lot better when you actually use the product
  • when products go wrong is when they loose that perspective of never had it
    • that’s why wordpress is great; it’s pragmatic
      • comes from being user and wanting product to be better
        • it’s that simple
          • but often not as simple when people loose track
• story of how got involved in blogging
  • don’t claim to have first blog
  • first blog
    • info.cern.ch
    • there never was a time on the web when there wasn’t a blog
  • first 1996
    • leading editor at wired
    • leading a fight for communication decency act
    • no blogging community at the time
    • gov trying to destroy it before it even started
    • 24 hour of democracy
      • in 24 hour period wrote about what democracy meant
      • had a mail list
        • mail list flamed out
    • people had weird theories
      • problem with mail list is that people are ‘self important’; people want to feel that they do it the right way or else
    • did reverse link to article in reverse chrono order
      • remembered it was interesting idea and noted to come back to it
    • started frontier news page
    • germ of idea is that mail lists are one kind of thing
      • things like mail lists
        • comment thread
          • techcrunch for example
            • flames out quickly and people get personal
            • people always getting defensive
            • because everyone has the final say and veto power and everything gets veto’d
              • blog is different since only one person and no veto and if someone wants to contradict you they have to do it in their space
                • no one can say you can’t do it
                • that’s why RSS gaining traction
                  • because there was a way to communicate without objection i could use RSS despite objection
                  • preserve basic idea: it’s one person’s voice and can not be prevented to say what you want to say
• 3 or 4 things to think about
  • top 2
    • link blogging
      • 2 forms blogging developing
        • 1 is what wordpress
          • title, link, description model
            • like an essay on to itself
              • wordpress rich set of features
          • is RSS model
        • another is link blogging
          • human aggregation
          • or micro blogging
            • twitter is microblogging
      • few months ago switched totally to long form
        • reason did it was to want to fit into netvibes pageflicks
        • mixed 2 forms and aggregators didn’t know what to do with my feed
      • love twitter
        • twitter picked up my slack entirely
          • ‘go here and look at this thing’ this is interesting for the following reason
          • acting as a directory
    • why should wordpress embrace that [micro-blogging]?
      • e.g. mark canter’s? blog uses links and little description
  • another topic
    • future-safe archives
      • had this problem
        • use case: 2004 donated RSS 2.0 spec to harvard law school
          • idea was to get it off of company server and put it on university server and change to creative commons
          • idea was it would be reference source for anyone and everyone
          • RSS 2.0 didn’t need to involve and lots of building
          • so needed to be in place where it could survive for the future
            • 2 years later being hit by spam comments and 1/2 time go to site couldn’t get thru
      • there should be a place with some degree of assurance that it will stick around
      • why shouldn’t your blog be around for 100 years?
        • people think it’s arrogant and be humble
          • strongly disagree
            • prior to revolution there were essays about life in america
            • you can triangulate from all points of view
        • if there’s a hemingway how much you want to bet he’s writing a blog
      • what do you need to do to future-safe
        • is mysql a good enough way to do it
          • didn’t think so
            • not sure what will be around 100 years from now
        • we don’t have the answer, but we should be thinking about it
        • news.com, salon.com is great and they are thinking about the future
          • never seen a broken link at salon.com
        • archive.org
          • it’s not a long lived organization. it’s good, but not enough
          • archive.org could partner with harvard university
            • would you pay them a 1x donation for the purpose of archiving.
              • micro endowment
              • now getting to what i’m talking about
  • open source identification system
    • like twitter
      • not feature bloated
      • like api
        • easy and isn’t missing anything
      • really stuck their neck out and give you everything and give you one crucial thing
        • an identity system
          • he can build on to twitter a whole application onto twitter and take own data storage
          • great so can create more apps
    • also understand facebook
      • swear don’t understand facebook
        • at friends parties yesterday
          • she’s making parties out of facebook
        • friend likes looking at the faces
      • don’t like it because it’s a walled garden
        • siloed
        • go in, but can’t go out
        • wonderful web of relationships
        • and it’s not open architecture
      • 10x more interested
        • something there need to understand
        • can’t go on w/ life until can figure it out
    • since this is open source
      • want to build something that can take all identify systems
      • same thing wordpress.com is not only place you can have a wordpress site
        • not being forced to use server is very important
• ? questions
  • mail lists
    • sure mail lists have value
    • work up to a point
    • for x months or sometimes x years
    • someday some scientists will study and come up with a theory
    • i have comments still on my blog
      • have thing ‘comment on today’s post’
        • keeps it to how people understand how scripting works and don’t get hit and run, idiots
          • we get it but not so much of it
    • but also believe in other tool
      • that you don’t worry about what you think

• link to session
• plugins i use
  • akismet
  • math comment spam protection
  • google analytics
  • feedburner
  • democracy (polls)
  • SEO title (swap name <> title)
  • love/hate: wp cache
• SEO tips
  • not put blog at root of domain
    • people will link to your root domain and your blog so want to focus it
    • also want to leave room for future expansion
    • call it ‘blog’ vs. ‘wordpress’
  • what do SEOs know that bloggers may not know
    • keywords
      • helps to think of words that you are typing
      • type in ‘keyword’ tool in google you’ll get a tool
    • if you know people are going to type in ‘funny pictures’ type it in your post
    • e.g.
      • URL had ‘change’ in post title ‘changing’
      • using synonyms in natural way makes you more rounded
      • use this knowledge only for good
        • if you cultivate community your users will give you synonyms
      • wouldn’t go as far as misspellings
    • use singular and plural
  • use categories that are good keywords
    • but don’t use it if it’s not real
  • domain.com/my-words
    • use dashes
    • used to treat underscores as a part of the word, ‘a_b’
    • no spaces is worst
    • should i change if i’ve done the wrong thing?
      • no, wouldn’t re-work site
  • ALT tags are handy (3-4 relevant words)
    • don’t forget image search, videos, etc.
    • ? if do full sentence won’t get penalized
    • ? does having .php, .htm,… effect ranking
      • no
      • only extension not recommended is, ‘.exe’
    • ? what about question marks or hash marks
      • google truncates at the hash
      • treat dynamic URL’s the exact same as the static URL
      • advice: keep the number low though to 2-3
  • should i do a video or do a podcast
    • ask yourself how handsome or pretty your are
      • if not sure use, hot or not
        • if 7 or above do video
  • usability
    • make sure site is crawlable
      • if wordpress it’s most likely crawlable
      • hierarchical is the best for crawlability
      • if you can use netscape 4.7 and see the entire stuff then you’re good
    • check out your site on an iphone
      • recommend using the same style sheet
      • for mobile browsers use w.b. kanes?
    • make sure post creation dates easy to find
    • recommend full-text RSS feeds to get loyal users. partial feeds get more page views, but not as much love
    • you blog should do standard pings
    • ? if put date in URL that adds more slashes
      • it doesn’t effect google
        • he doesn’t put date in the URL
  • moving to new IP address
    1. reduce your DNS to time-to-live
    2. back up your site. bring it up on new IP
    3. Watch Googlebot & user traffic until they fetch the site from the new IP address
    4. take down the old site
  • moving domain
    • user a 301 (permanent) redirect
    • pick one sub-directory and do 301 on the one sub-directory
    • then do 301 for entire site
    • people shoot themselves in foot with www. and half no www.
      • write to everyone and ask them to update their links
      • ? www. is technically different sites
    • even if doing 301 redirect
      • google provides a way to get all the backlinks to the site
    • recommend, do audit of site
      • am i splitting where index is going
      • standardize to get google and all search engines to give credit
• google services
  • webmaster console
    • test out robots.txt before pushing live
    • report spam
    • URL removal URLs / directories for 6 months
    • See your backlinks
    • see crawl errors
      • you can make 404 re-direct to your home page
  • feedburner
    • feeds.mattcuffs.com instead of feeds.feedburner.com
      • if you change from feedburner to your own domain it will not break anything
  • adsense
    • <!–google_ad_section_start–>
      • ? can you add multiple sections
        • he thinks so
• ? does installing analytics lead to a crash
  • no
• creativity is king
  • lonleygirl15
  • million pixel home page
  • mac vs. pc
  • free hugs campaign
  • sold mustache on ebay
  • “say google fast”
    • got 8 people to do it and got 500,000 views
• getting known
  • tutorials
  • less spam with gmail or yahoo
  • liveblogging
  • make lists
    • 13 reasons why something
  • mention robert scoble
  • use controversy use it sparingly
• tips
• vary keywords
• metatags are not used for weighting
• if can get key words more in the title it helps a lot
  • journalist get most important words at the top
  • go for something more newspapery’ as far as titles
  • don’t bury your story
• DON’T vary the content you send to Googlebot; it will get you kicked out of the index
• go for some hook
  • social engineering
• Google knows about these synonyms under the hood
• if you want to sell links make sure they don’t effect search engines you’re polluting the pool and making it harder for people

Here is a good summary of the session from Amit