2011 SEO and Social Media Checklist
2011 SEO and Social Media Checklist. Here Is A List You Need To Check Twice! Popularity: 32% [?]
Search Engine Journal post
Here is my latest post at Search Engine Journal: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-key-to-increasing-inquiries-leads-sales%E2%80%A6/25762/
Enjoy. As always, questions and comments are welcome!
Jennifer Horowitz, Director of Marketing
Popularity: 28% [?]
Google Update: Preview Results in SERPs
Mashable tells the story best, so here is the link to get the news : http://mashable.com/2010/11/09/google-instant-previews/
Popularity: 23% [?]
Holiday Marketing Insights From Google
Thinking Holiday Yet? Google Is!!
Google has launched an interesting and informative page with stats about holiday marketing. You can check it out here:
http://www.google.com/thinkholiday/index.html
Highlight of the key stats:
73% of consumers have started researching their holiday purchases.
89% of those consumers started their shopping online.
51% of consumers have already made a holiday purchase.
76% of consumers haven’t yet completed their holiday shopping.
They are also sharing info about what products are hot and search trends, as well as marketing tips.
Have you started your holiday marketing yet?
It’s not too late.
• Get your site in shape.
• Get your social media ramped up.
• Get your product feeds out there.
• It may be too late to do SEO for the holiday season but you could get some quick long tail keywords ranked and also get yourself positioned for next year’s success.
Not sure what you need to get ramped up for the holiday season? Request a proposal or consultation and we’ll help you figure out a plan! Request your proposal or consultation here: http://ecombuffet.com/Consultation-request.htm
Popularity: 19% [?]
Facebook Announcements
Facebook made some big announcements yesterday and about 5500 people watched the streaming presentation live to hear the news (numbers varied at different points in the presentation and more watched the replay later).
Facebook is making themselves a major player in mobile and location-based services. And with over 200,000 active mobile users already, it makes sense.
OK so onto the announcements…
Single Sign-On: This allows users already signed into Facebook on their smartphone to login to other sites with a single click (in other words, without entering any login credentials). Often mobile users are required to login again to access various apps. Now they will just be able to click “Login with Facebook”. Facebook says users will have control over the functionality and there are no new privacy implications.
Facebook Places API: Facebook is making its local data and activity stream available to third party publishers and developers.
Facebook Places for iPhone: The iPhone app is being updated with some new features including Facebook Deals.
Groups for Mobile: Both on the iPhone and Android apps, Facebook will now allow users to access Facebook Groups.
Android App Upgraded: Facebook’s Android app has been upgraded in several ways and includes Places. It doesn’t include Deals yet. (Deals will be accessible to Android users from the touch.facebook.com site).
Facebook Deals: This was the big announcement that’s got everyone talking.
Deals gives the average person a reason to use Facebook Places. It gives you deals or rewards for “checking in” – which is good for the consumer and good for the business. This is very similar to Foursquare, (which I’ve heard 6-7% of mobile users participate in)
The Details…
Facebook is launching Deals with an initial group of businesses.
There are four types of deals (including charitable contributions) – some are worth more and others not so much. We heard the Gap is offering free jeans to the first 10,000 people that check in to the Gap on November 5th.
Here is the first group of Deal partners:
24 Hour Fitness
San Francisco 49ers
Macy’s
McDonalds
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema
The National Park Foundation
American Eagle Outfitters
The North Face
Chipotle
The Palms Casino Resort, Las Vegas
Gap
REI
Golden State Warriors
Starbucks
H&M
TAO and LAVO, Las Vegas
Harrah’s
Texas Tech
JCPenney
UC Berkeley
Lululemon
University of Nebraska
The number of businesses able to participate in Deals will increase soon and it looks like it will be simple to participate in.
In the iPhone, businesses with deals will be “tagged” with yellow coupon marker. Users then pull up the Place Page and “get the deal” by clicking on a button. At the point of sale the user shows the coupon on the screen at the checkout.
It’ll be interesting to see how all this plays out and what the reaction is. There will be some concerns about privacy, and much like on Foursquare, many users won’t use it. But those that do, will get some good deals!
Popularity: 20% [?]
Snippet/Caption/Description In SERPs (Search Engine Results Page)
New month, new Google news!
Before we get into the Google change, let’s give some background info.
This is straight from Bing:
“A caption (also known as a summary) is the area of a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) devoted to a particular result. Captions help users to decide which result to click on and help site owners to communicate to users what to expect on their page.
Captions are an oft-forgotten tool of the SEO toolkit. Ranking is certainly the most important factor in determining user clicks, but captions are also a contributor. In this post, I will give you a primer on captions. I’ll show you all of the components of a caption and give a bit of insight about how Bing generates each of those components.
Every search result has a caption, which consists of four parts: the title, the snippet, the URL, and the Preview.”
Bing and Yahoo sometimes use the text in the first H1 header on the page to supplement or replace what you have in your Meta Title and/or Description tag.
Typically Google uses your Meta Title and Description tag. Sometimes in the past they have shown snippets taken from the page if they felt it was more relevant than your Title tag. But they’ve always been more conservative about this. It seems that is now changing. They have gotten a little bolder and a little more experimental and are sometimes using anchor text or on-page headings (text in H1 tags) to supplement the description in the SERPs.
The take-away here is to not only craft compelling Title tags but also H1 tags (make sure you use keywords well but don’t overuse them and consider this marketing text that will help you get clicks – so be compelling and inviting)
Now back to Bing for a second – since they were doing this before Google, let’s look at what they have to say on the topic. Here is a great little table from Bing that shows the 4 parts of the results on the SERPs and where they pull the info from:
Title: <title> tag and <hx> tag
Snippet: Meta Description tag, page content, DMOZ description
URL: Page URL
Preview: Page content, extracted page data, commonly clicked links
Source: http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2010/10/25/anatomy-of-a-bing-caption.aspx
The Title is the most important part of the caption because it is what users see first when they are scanning the SERPs. It is also the blue clickable link. Bing usually pulls this from your Title tag (and so does Google) And as noted above the engines seem to be using H1 tags for that). Note because of this, you should have unique and compelling H1 tags and Meta tags on each page!
The snippet is also called the caption and description. It’s there to let the user know what the page is about and should compel them to click on that listing. It is pulled from the Meta Description tag, the DMOZ description or algorithmically generated from your page.
The URL is of course your URL and Bing suggests that it is helpful if the URL is descriptive of the page.
The Preview is unique to Bing (although if you recall, Google was testing it last month). Bing says they are still playing with that area and determining what is best to include on the page.
The take-away? Make sure you have compelling Hx tags and Meta tags that use your keywords well and make sure the tags are specific to the topic of that page.
Popularity: 19% [?]
My latest Search Engine Journal article
Check it out and share your comments and questions!
Thanks,
Jenn
Popularity: 16% [?]
The Death Of SEO? NO!
It’s that time again…time to proclaim the death of SEO! Let me start by saying, as always, it’s not true.
The cause of the proclamations this time? Google Instant!
Lemme break down Google Instant for you and then we’ll talk about why it doesn’t mean the death of SEO.
Here is an overview:
It has been said that this is the closest any engine has come to reading users minds! It delivers the results as soon as you start typing!
“I think it’s a little bit of a new dawn in computing,” Google co-founder Sergey Brin said during a press conference on Wednesday.
What does it mean to you? You will see evolving search results that can change -potentially even as often as you type each additional character, into the search box.
Google will predict what you want by filling out the anticipated search term in grey. Below that there will be a dropdown box where Google will offer other suggested queries.
The feature is being rolled out in the US this week and will roll out around the world later in the year. It works with most of the latest versions of popular web browsers.
By speeding up search results, Google believes it will keep its users happier and if they are happier, they hope they are more likely to search even more (which is good for Google because they get to serve ads on each query, which means potential for them to increase their revenue)
Interesting: Google expects to reduce the time that people collectively spend on its search engine by about 350 million hours annually with Google Instant!
Straight from Google:
“Benefits
Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.
Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.
Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.”
Source: http://www.google.com/instant/#utm_campaign=launch&utm_medium=van&utm_source=instant
So the SEO is dead bandwagon is out in full force as a result of this new change. Any change by Google potentially changes things but it doesn’t kill SEO.
In order to be one of the sites that comes up in the Instant search your site needs to be optimized! It’s that simple.
How we optimize changes and that is a good thing. But it doesn’t mean that optimization is not important.
Ex-Googler Vanessa Fox backs up that assertion here, in her fabulous Blog Post: http://www.ninebyblue.com/blog/seo-is-dead-andor-irrelevant-with-google-instant/
Googler Matt Cutts has weighed in with: “The search results will remain the same for a query, but it’s possible that people will learn to search differently over time,” says Cutts. “For example, I was recently researching a congressperson. With Google Instant, it was more visible to me that this congressperson had proposed an energy plan, so I refined my search to learn more, and quickly found myself reading a post on the congressperson’s blog that had been on page 2 of the search results.”
Google clearly said that ranking stays the same with Google Instant.
We should also remember that some people will simply deactivate the feature, leaving them open to Google’s standard results.
Want to learn more and try Google Instant:
So, yes it’s interesting, yes SEO is evolving, NO SEO is not dying! 
Popularity: 18% [?]
Facebook Fan Page Changes…
Facebook has announced that effective August 23, there are new sizing requirements for Fan Pages (and they are removing the Boxes tab – to which I say yay!!).
The new width for custom pages is 520 pixels wide.
Facebook is offering a preview now so you can see what your page will look like (go to your Fan Page while logged into the account that “owns” the page and you will see the preview).
You have until August 23 to resize your pages. The resizing of the pages will happen automatically during the week of August 23 and if you don’t make the changes in advance – your page will truncate.
Here is a screenshot of what my page is going to look like after it truncates (I circled the truncated areas to better show you where it cuts off):
My truncated Fan Page
Another screenshot that shows the truncation
Obviously that won’t do!
Many people are not going to be happy about this change because it will mean extra work or incurring extra costs to have the pages redesigned.
Facebook says the changes are a result of feedback from developers.
I can’t imagine people will ditch their custom tabs (and they shouldn’t!!), so I imagine a lot of people are going to be scrambling to get their page redesigned.
It’ll be interesting to see the reaction. Most Facebook changes are met with initial grumbling and complaints.
Popularity: 20% [?]
How much should you spend on SEO?
It’s a tough question, especially in a bad economy.
The question really begs another question – what is your goal for your site?
If you are operating it as a real business where you hope to either supplement your current income or rely on it as your sole source of income – then you need to be prepared to invest in search (it’s often the foundation of your marketing and a consistent source of regular traffic).
You can invest time or money and in most cases, you usually need to invest both.
I think there is someone out there spreading some erroneous information about starting a business online. There is a lot of the “build it and they will come” mentality – in other words throw up a site and voila insta-business!
While in many ways, it is easier to do business online because you don’t need to set up physical stores and have a lot of the issues you have with brick and mortars, it is by no means a “sure thing” – you still have to work for your success.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying you shouldn’t start an online business - I am just saying if you expect your business to grow and treat you well, then you need to treat it like a serious business.
So, yes, it will be necessary for you to invest both time and money into generating traffic.
So back to the question at hand – how much should you spend on SEO?
You need to crunch some numbers and see how many visitors it takes to get a sale and how much a sale is worth to you to really fine-tune your budget – especially if PPC is part of your plans (so many people waste money on PPC that isn’t converting – spend wisely or it can suck you dry!)
For organic SEO you will find everything from $19.99 mass submission (avoid like the plague, you may as well burn your $19.99) to tens of thousands of dollars per month.
Most small to medium sized businesses spend between $300 – $800 per month, although I’ve also heard people say numbers a little higher, like $500 – $1500 per month is the norm. So somewhere in that range is what you should expect to pay for quality SEO work.
It always amazes me that people are annoyed they have to pay for SEO. People will pay for a doctor or a mechanic, or even a web designer but they seem to resent having to pay for SEO. If you have the time and knowledge, then by all means, don’t pay anyone, do it yourself. However if you don’t have the time or knowledge, it’s a valid, and important expense and not something you should begrudge. Driving traffic to your site is the foundation and not the area you want to go cheap.
I’m jussayin…think about your goals and think about what you are prepared to do to get there.
Popularity: 17% [?]
