Moderator August 26th, 2009

In keeping with the trend toward SEO becoming a general term having to do with web promotion of all types, the phrase “social media SEO” was bound to creep in. What does it mean?

Much of classical marketing seeks to create a competitive advantage for the focus of the practitioner’s efforts. So we can generally assume that the phrase refers to achieving marketing objectives in some part through use of social media.

Social media is rife with buzzwords and ambiguity. Wikipedia portrays the following hierarchy and organizational scheme for social media:

Communication

Blogs: Blogger, LiveJournal, Open Diary, TypePad, WordPress, Vox, ExpressionEngine, Xanga

Micro-blogging / Presence applications: Twitter, Plurk, Jaiku, fmylife

Social networking: Bebo, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, Skyrock, Hi5, Ning, Elgg

Social network aggregation: NutshellMail, FriendFeed

Events: Upcoming, Eventful, Meetup.com

Collaboration

Wikis: Wikipedia, PBwiki, wetpaint

Social bookmarking (or social tagging)[2]: Delicious, StumbleUpon, Google Reader, CiteULike

Social news: Digg, Mixx, Reddit, NowPublic

Opinion sites: epinions, Yelp

Multimedia

Photo sharing: Flickr, Zooomr, Photobucket, SmugMug

Video sharing: YouTube, Vimeo, sevenload

Livecasting: Ustream.tv, Justin.tv, Stickam

Audio and Music Sharing: imeem, The Hype Machine, Last.fm, ccMixter

Reviews and Opinions

Product Reviews: epinions.com, MouthShut.com

Q&A: Yahoo! Answers, WikiAnswers

Entertainment

Media & Entertainment Platforms: Cisco Eos

Virtual worlds: Second Life, The Sims Online,Forterra

Game sharing: Miniclip, Kongregate

Got that? When considering any form of internet marketing our suggestion remains to first get clear on the objectives. After that a determination can be made as to which tactical channels might best serve the purpose. And those just might include some form of social media. The meaning of the phrase social media SEO may stick around and evolve, and eventually as with most things, segment into further to-be-defined categories.

• SEO-SEM , Social Media
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Moderator August 24th, 2009

The Google Adwords Keyword Tool and other similiar online keyword research tools are not only good for SEO but also for general market research. Using the data that’s available from the Google keyword tool provides near realtime input on what’s on prospective customers’ minds, how to phrase marketing messages, and possibly even whether the services associated with a prospective new venture are in demand.

Note numerical returns in centered columns for 'spanish translation services'.

For example, one of the websites we promote is for a company that specializes in Spanish translation services.  The company’s website is at www.affinityspanish.com. Utilizing the free online keyword tool that Google offers (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) we can take the temperature of the current market for Spanish translation services.

Typing in the phrase “spanish translation services” into the keyword box and hitting return tells us that over a recent 12 month period, searches on this phrase numbered about 90,000 per month within the Google network. Comparatively, searches within July 2009 were much lower at about 30,000. What might the company take from this?

1) The market for their services is down, perhaps due to the general economic climate.

2) Revenue projections for the short term might track downward following the current search volume.

3) Alerts the company to look for other/additional search terms that might be coming more popularly in use at this time.

4) Provides an indication for projecting potential future revenues/business if search volume returns to previous higher levels.

5) It could be a good time to invest in website development of content to position the company for future higher search volumes and general demand.

Additional supporting research and consideration might be required to draw actionable conclusions, although keyword research can be an excellent supporting input, whether the application is for SEO or supporting other business decisions.

• General Commentary , SEO-SEM
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Moderator August 16th, 2009

Recommendations from customers and other third parties have for decades been among the most valuable endorsements a company or business can have. Put those endorsements online and their power is multiplied many times.

Anyone can write a review of your business and post it online, just as anyone can say pretty much whatever they want to about your company. It’s expected that for most companies, reviews and comments will contain a mix of those favorable and unfavorable. A goal in managing your company’s online reputation then becomes to ensure that the positive comments outnumber the not-so-positive ones. People who want to compliment your business may in some cases just need to be directed a bit. In such cases a form letter like the one below might help.

======================

Dear Customer:

We hope your experience with our company has been favorable. It is our goal to provide exceptional customer service in all aspects of our business. If we have not met your expectations in any way we encourage you to let us know by contacting a manager or by sending an email to my personal address listed below.

If you are comfortable in recommending our company then we would welcome you posting your comments online so that others can read about your experience with our company. If you wish to take a moment you can post online reviews of our company at any of the sites listed below.

We thank you for your business and look forward to serving you in the future.

Sincerely,

(Name & Title)
Email: yourname@yourdomain.com

If you’d like to post an online review please go to any of the sites listed below and search on our business name. Then click on “write a review” to enter your comments.

Google Maps
http://maps.google.com/

Yahoo Local
http://local.yahoo.com/

Yelp
http://www.yelp.com/

City Search
http://denver.citysearch.com/

Insider Pages
http://www.insiderpages.com/

Example posted online comment/review.

• General Commentary , SEO-SEM
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Moderator August 14th, 2009

For SEOs and internet marketing specialists it’s easy to get so caught up in the tactics associated with the discipline that it’s temporarily forgotten what gives internet marketing such a unique position in the marketing mix.

For those that have studies traditional marketing methodologies there may be a vague recollection of the 4P’s of marketing (yes, I was awake that day), those being product, place, price and promotion. What makes internet marketing such a powerful promotional element is near realtime attributes. In response to search engine queries, marketing messages that promote awareness and discovery of companies, products, and services are presented at the precise time that someone’s indicated an interest. No other form of marketing we know of can make this claim so effectively.

Affinity Track Internet Promotion | Denver-Boulder SEO
357 S. McCaslin Blvd.
Louisville, CO 80027
(303) 404-8699

• SEO-SEM
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Moderator August 11th, 2009

Google’s testing some new search enhancements and has posted the following on their blog:

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.

Some parts of this system aren’t completely finished yet, so we’d welcome feedback on any issues you see. We invite you to visit the web developer preview of Google’s new infrastructure at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ and try searches there.”

We’ll be monitoring this latest Google announcement to see what affect it has on our clients’ search results. Stay tuned.

Affinity Track Internet Promotion | Denver-Boulder SEO
357 S. McCaslin Blvd.
Louisville, CO 80027
(303) 404-8699

• SEO-SEM
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