Social Media and SEO Integration-5 Key Strategies for Higher ROI

Social Media/SEO Integration: 5 Key Strategies for Higher ROI

To the budget-conscious marketer, it can still be a challenge to connect social media to real return on investment. “How can tweeting or wall posts translate into sales or revenue?” some wonder, “and is this the most efficient investment of my limited resources?”

Many are unable to find concrete answers to these questions and therefore are hesitant to hop on what some term the “social media bandwagon.” Rather than recognize social media as a lasting, valuable marketing channel, they regard it as an unproven and less-than-predictable distraction that offers few conventional media metrics.

But that’s simply not true.

How to Make Friends and “Sell” Social Media and SEO
Social media can do more than offer uniquely powerful benefits (such as increased visibility, deeper insights and stronger relationships with customers). In fact, social media has also become a critical component of a successful SEO strategy.

Social media and SEO are a package that must be sold together.

The issue, however, is that many marketers present social media campaigns as standalone efforts, rather than a brilliant opportunity for cross-channel integration and optimization, most notably in the case of SEO.

To have the biggest impact, social media and SEO must be presented as an integrated package and executed in unison. Think about it: algorithmic search engine rankings rely in part on the quantity and quality of inbound links to your website; therefore, a successful SEO strategy goes hand-in-hand with link building. And because links are a reward for great content, the key is to create unique, link-worthy content.

A smart social media strategy can then help you disseminate content and build links back to your site. Furthermore, social media allows you to be proactive with your link building efforts by publicizing and energizing your content. Hosting the content on social media networks also enables you to galvanize discussion and engagement around your content, which can then help it spread like wildfire. Social media can also help you win multiple Page 1 search engine listings, allowing you to dominate the SERPs through a combination of brand websites and social media pages.

With that in mind, here are 5 critical elements to a great SEO-Social Media strategy (be sure to include these in your internal or Client presentations!):

1. Align Your SEO and Social Media Objectives. Add Twitter and Facebook to your SEO tool kit (or, if you must, utility belt). Your goal as an SEO is to achieve rankings, and social media is what’s going to help you do it.

2. Define Your Success Metrics. Higher traffic and higher rankings are not end goals unto themselves. Work to obtain rankings for highly relevant keywords that’ll result in qualified traffic that ultimately leads to conversions.

3. Determine Your Segments. Use your marketing chops to identify, segment and target your customers. Different segments may search differently, even when looking for the same content. Define your segment and optimize with the keywords they use and understand; in other words, utilize keyword intelligence and keyword-driven techniques to inform your optimization decisions so that customers will be more likely to find (and respond) to you.

4. Develop a Content Strategy. Produce valuable, targeted content for your customer segments in order to drive qualified traffic and conversions. Once again, in-depth keyword analysis can reveal what customers are looking for and are interested in. Create content around these themes and trends for maximum relevancy.

5. Coordinate Your Social Media Strategy. Social media networks don’t exist in a vacuum. Bridge your social media efforts to engage multiple communities and increase the spread of your content.

Social media and SEO can often be a hard sell, but they are invaluable to any company hoping to run a successful and cohesive web marketing strategy. More than anything, remember that social media and SEO must work in tandem. So, be proactive, and open the door to the increased SEO value and new marketing opportunities this smart integration offers.

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Majestic Social Media offers amazing social media and SEO work so be sure to check out our website at http://www.majesticsocialmedia.com/ or like our fanpage at http://www.facebook.com/UtilizeSocialMedia

Why isn’t my website converting? Well here are five reasons

So, what are your big Internet marketing plans for the New Year? Will you be investing more time in social media? Will you start blogging? Will you take a more proactive stance with self-promotion? Whatever your online marketing plans, the end goal is likely to attract more people to your website in the hopes that the influx of new eyes will translate into new customers, new leads and new opportunities for your business. However, you won’t be able to do any of that if your Web site is turning people off, instead of turning them on.

Below are some very common reasons SMB Web sites fail to attract customers and how to avoid falling prey to them.

1. There’s no conversion path in place.

One criticism of many SMB sites is that they don’t include a clear conversion path for their customers. If you want customers to take a certain action, you need to create a funnel intended to guide them to do that. Simply stringing together a number of content pages won’t necessarily put someone on the path to buy. Your conversion path may be as simple as a solitary landing page paired with a call to action, or as complex as an entire microsite. Either way, you are in charge of designing the flow of your website. Creating a clear conversion path not only helps customers feel more comfortable on your site, it also gives you clear data to track so that you can see where people are abandoning, where they’re engaging, etc. The more data you have to act on, the better you can design your site to attract new customers.

2. There’s no sign of life.

Customers are discriminating. You can bet that when they land on your website they’re going to kick the tires a little to see if they can trust you. They’re going to check your copyright date to see if it lists 2011 or 2006. They’re going to look for old statistics or other signs you haven’t taken the time to update your content. They’re going to check your company blog to see how often it’s updated, if you reply to commenters, if people are talking back, etc. They’re going to look for signs that you’ve created a dynamic website, instead of one lying around in stagnant water. Before your customers get there, take a look around yourself. Would you hang out with you?

3. It’s all about you.

Customers don’t head to your site to hear how awesome you are. They’re there because they have a problem they need you to fix or a question they need you to answer. Your website should be designed to help them quickly achieve whatever it is they came for. Too many references to “I” in lieu of “you,” too much sales talk instead of helpful information, and too much of you not addressing their fears/wants/desires will turn people away from your brand, not on to it. Your customers don’t care about you–they care about how you can help them.

4. People can’t find you.

If you’re finding that customers aren’t interacting with your website at all, there are a few questions you need to ask yourself.

1. Is it accessible? With more and more users searching via mobile devices and on the go – is your website mobile accessible? If it’s not, users trying to find you may hit a dead end. There’s nothing worse than trying to find your accountant’s website while on the road and finding out his site only renders in Flash and won’t load on your phone. Not that I’m talking from experience.
2. Is it properly SEO’d? Have you made it easy for users and search engines to find your content? That means using the right keywords, linking properly, making your site super crawlable for spiders, and staying away from common SMB SEO mistakes

Sometimes before you can see more traffic, you have to break through the obstacles preventing you from seeing any.

5. There’s no POD.

If you want to attract people, you have to give them more of you. You have to stand out from the crowd and show them something that they’ll want to align themselves with. Take a look at your own site – what are you showing potential customers? I don’t mean the graphics or the videos you choose to incorporate (don’t forget to SEO those, too!), I mean the experience that you’re creating. Are you using your site to set yourself apart, or do you come off like everyone else? Are you talking to customers in their own language or filling your pages up with buzzwords and jargon? The more powerful a POD (point of differentiation) you can create, the better you’ll attract the right customers to your brand.

If you’re finding it difficult to attract leads via your website, it may be time to ask yourself some hard questions. Before you can fix the problem, you first have to identify it. What are some struggles you’ve had attracting new leads? How have you fixed the problems?

Search Engine Optimization in an Increasingly Social World!

While many (foolishly) argue that SEO is dead, that isn’t likely to happen soon. Many experts tells us that SEO is here to stay, and I agree.

But SEO is changing rapidly, and one of the biggest forces driving those changes is the increasingly social nature of the web. (social media)

Search Engine Motivations

One fascinating thing about SEO is the constant change. Most of us experience this through the changes made by the search engines to their results, such as the recent advent of Google Boost. What interests me more is what motivates these changes?

We could provide the simplistic answer of “increasing profits,” which would be correct, but it isn’t sufficient. It may sound trite, but the answer for both search engines is increased user satisfaction.

In Google’s case, this is measured by click-through rates, low bounce rates, and a variety of other metrics. These types of metrics are seen by the search engines as social signals.

Google’s sources for this data include: Google Analytics, the Google Toolbar, Custom Search Engines, and user behavior within the search engine itself. Data available to everyone includes user engagement with social media sites. Google has more access to data on user behavior than any other entity on the planet.

Some of you may think I’m missing the fact that large companies are inherently evil and Google is no exception. Let’s not debate that point. The profit motive of Google (and Bing as well) is well served by high levels of customer satisfaction.

Google’s huge market share is the key source of its profits, and they have a huge disincentive to drive down that market share. If you were Google, would you make changes that increase your profits today by 5 percent if you knew that you would lose 10 percent in market share over the next year, probably to an extremely dangerous competitor, such as Bing or Facebook? No.

That market share is the golden goose that drives profits. Google wants to maintain or increase that market share by using the enormous amounts of data it has to constantly test new ideas and increase user satisfaction.

With Bing and Facebook pushing new and innovative ideas, the pressure is enormous. Users aren’t compelled to use Google, and all these services are free, so switching costs are low. Don’t piss me off Google, or I’ll take my searches elsewhere!

Social Sites

Another aspect is the interactions on social media sites. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter are the obvious examples, but there are also user reviews, comments in various forums, spam complaints, blog postings, news articles, and more. These all provide signals to the search engines.

Volume of activity is one signal. Lots of references to your site is certainly an interesting data point, but sentiment analysis also allows search engines to get a signal as to whether people like what you’re doing. Sentiment analysis may not be in active use by the search engines at this time, but it’s hard to believe that it won’t be in the future.

Thinking about a spammy link campaign? Think again, because someone might decide to spill the beans on you and start a raging discussion on a blog, or set of blogs, about your site, or do it on a forum somewhere. That would provide negative sentiment signals.

Plan to do some guest posting and provide people with crappy articles because all you care about is the link? Bad idea.

Starting to build thousands of crappy web pages to capture the long tail of search? Could well backfire on you.

In our highly social online environment, the true spam police is us. Our behavior on a web site can impact the way the search engines perceive it.

What we write as comments on a blog post is crawled, interpreted, and read. Is there a risk of manipulating this collection of signals? Not easily.

Social communities guard the sanctity of their environments more thoroughly than any search engine ever could. Spammers still can run a bot that jams thousands of comments into inactive forums and blogs, but the search engines aren’t going to put much weight on that. A discussion involving a popular Twitter user, or on a popular blog like TechCrunch will get a lot more weight.

How Does Social Behavior Affect SEO?

The main impact is on the amount of time you must focus on providing a positive user experience on your web site.

Website conversion optimization is now an important part of SEO. So is a deep understanding of usability and web design. As Kim Krause Berg would argue, a holistic approach to usability and SEO is required.

Traditional SEO thinking would tell us that videos and graphics should be used sparingly, and that text is king. However, the web is a place where instant impressions matter most, and few people want to engage in paragraphs of text.

Put another way, people want visual experiences. If you don’t take the time to do that, what are you? To many, that is the mark of a spammer.

People don’t hang out for long periods of time on sites that they believe are spam. This may not be entirely fair, but the judge and jury is the user.

This doesn’t mean that text is dead. It still plays a big role in driving the long tail, and providing the search engines with context that they can’t get from other signals. So you should have text as a part of your pages, but if you implement large gobs of text on the page you may drive users away and hurt your SEO results to boot.

Balance is key. In addition, there are some types of pages where large quantities of text are highly desirable. Someone who just found out they have cancer will want to read everything they can get on the topic.

From a link building perspective, it’s important to provide value wherever you go. Give them something valuable to link to. Or, if you’re giving them an article, give them good stuff to post.

Is that guest post something that someone might tweet? If you spew a hundred articles out in guest posts and no one ever tweets any of them, you’ve just provided a signal of low quality user experiences that reflects poorly on your site.

Embrace the Social Web

Instead of focusing on the negative, focus on the positive. Embrace the social web, feed it good stuff, and it will embrace you back.

This isn’t meant as a “build and they will come” statement. You need to actively promote your stuff. You need to tell the world about it.

But, if you’re truly a contributor, no one will mind. In fact, they will jump right in and do some promoting for you. Now that’s a positive signal!

How will Social Media transform the SEO Industry

Facebook and Bing announced last week an agreement that would allow Microsoft’s search engine to return results based on the Facebook “Likes” of the searcher’s friends. Additionally, Google recently began including Twitter updates in its search returns. It’s a natural innovation that fits into the business models of both companies and takes the trend of individualized search results to its next logical level: results tailored to the searcher’s existing social footprint.

SEO insiders have wondered whether this new search innovation would affect placement strategies. And the simple answer is: yes. Yes, there will be changes to the way SEO professionals run their clients’ campaigns. Yes, this will affect the industry as a whole. And yes, we believe SEO professionals will have to adapt to meet ever-evolving needs.

 

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Changing the Method, Not the Mission

But to think that this development is rocking the SEO world is to misunderstand the realities of the industry. In its roughly 15 years of existence, SEO has grown from being a small wildcat operation run by webmasters and content services to being one of the most dynamic, fast-growing sectors of the tech market. The reason for this rapid growth is because — not in spite –- of the constantly evolving nature of search engines.

Of course, as with any complex question about a dynamically evolving industry, there is a caveat. While the Bing-Facebook agreement and the recent updates to Google will change elements of how we do our business, the fundamentals will remain the same. As much as innovation shapes the day-to-day processes of optimization, the core foundations of the industry remain unchanged. The goal was — and still is — putting clients at the top of results pages, whether this is through organic search, paid search or social media.

Social media is nothing new in the world of online marketing. Facebook alone has 500 million users. We have already seen certain Twitter feeds included in Google search results. Before long, results may integrate other social networking sites, like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and myriad other sites that haven’t even been developed yet. For SEO professionals, this change highlights the need to integrate social networking if they haven’t already.

The Bing-Facebook agreement is indicative of the many changes that have taken SEO from a small-time game to a major, innovative industry. SEO is not about counter-punching, and it’s not about simply reacting to the changing search-engine landscape. Instead, it is about growing alongside search engines. It is about evolving with them to ensure that searchers get the results they need.

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SEO Firms Must Become Digital Media Agencies

For years now, successful SEO firms have not been focusing their efforts strictly on organic search results. They’ve been steadily evolving along with changes in search engines: new Google algorithms, the emergence of Bing, the development of Google Local, instant searches, paid search, and searchable Twitter feeds. At my company, we believe that to be successful, SEO firms need to become something more advanced: Digital Media Agencies.

A modern DMA resembles an SEO firm from 2002 in the way that a Ferrari resembles a Model T. The basic elements remain the same, but sophistication and complexity have resulted in a better product. DMAs are about handling the many online representation needs of their clients. While top search engine placement remains the major goal, it is just one aspect of what they seek to do. A DMA also seeks to manage a client’s online reputation, create and maintain their social presence, and handle the many other aspects of a client’s online brand.

Will SEO professionals have to change their strategy in reaction to a new social media paradigm? The answer is yes. Their evolution into full-fledged Digital Media Agencies is imperative. And as the social and search industries continue to change, so too will DMAs need to innovate.

For more information on social media marketing or SEO Services feel free to visit us at www.majesticsocialmedia.com

we would also like to thank Joe Devine for the hard work on this blog.

Why Cant E-Commerce software be more SEO friendly?

I cant tell you how many times I have worked with clients whose ecommerce platform is either totally incapable of being optimized for SEO or is severly limited.  Heck, in some cases, we can’t even get basic Google analytics tags installed!

I  hate to name names but one of the worst systems I have seen to date is Miva Merchant.  Several developers I have worked with absolutely hate the software, saying it is ‘a bunch of crap…’ and basically they are not even able to add a basic Google analytics sitewide tag, and asking them to add the commerce tracking tag or even the basic Google conversion tag (which is so so basic) was simply impossible to do!

How do these vendors expect their customers to run ecommerce business using a software platform that doesnt even allow for web analytics and tracking?  I have basically had to tell several clients that I couldnt help them, as much as I wanted the business, I cant really conduct online marketing programs if I cant even have analytics in place.

Other clients have come to me with inhouse/homebuilt commerce systems, again with some real fundamental problems like not being able to have customized page titles or meta information for each page!  Or using session ID’s in the URLs….

I guess I am just upset that these customers basically are SOL and will likely have to migrate to a new platform..

For any more information on E-Commerce or setting up an E-Commerce store please visit www.majesticsocialmedia.com

We would like to thank www.outofboundscommunications.com for their hard work on this blog.

PPC 101

The Changing PPC Landscape and Challenges for the Search Marketer

One could argue that there are three main PPC players right now: Google, Yahoo and MSN. Ask.com has a smaller market share, around 7% (Comscore

PPC 101 from majestic social media-seo

2006) while Google commands around 50% of all the searches. 2nd tier search engines, like Kanoodle, Dogpile and Mamma, niche business search engines like Business.com, or even PPC networks such as Quigo, give us as search marketers many options for our paid search advertising.

However, along with all these options come challenges:

• Data Management and Integration – how do you capture and act on all this data?
• Targeting Options – Google offers geotargeting, time and day parting, with Yahoo hot on their heels with a similar set of options in their upcoming fall 2006 release. MSN even offers lifestyle targeting and demographic data on their searcher data. How do you properly configure these parameters?
• Competition – How do you see what your competitors are doing? How much they are bidding?

PPC Optimization Levers

Short vs. Long Term Optimization Levers
Short Term – Done every couple days – examples: adjust CPC bids, monitor/adjust coverage monitor 3rd party PPC tool settings, adjusting budget to adjust coverage
Long Term – This takes more planning and analysis – biweekly or monthly – examples: new text ad creative/offers, study/adapt to competitor ads/creative ideas, adding new keywords, changing overall bidding strategy

Campaign Structure

Having a well organized PPC campaign can help you in several ways:

• Easier to manage your budgets, targeting and ad positioning settings (Google, MSN)
• Allows you to quickly see what is going on with your PPC campaigns at the campaign level, before you jump in and get lost right away at a more granular level
• Organized campaigns lead to better organized ad groups/categories and thus more relevant keywords and higher response rates.

 

For more information on how Majestic Social Media can help you with your PPC needs please visit www.majesticsocialmedia.com
We would like to thank our friends at www.outofboundscommunications.com for this blog.

Social Video Marketing

Marketers get serious about Social Media

Jeremiah Owyang, 01.22.10, 10:20 AM EST

It’s here to stay. Use it to improve your customer relationships

Jeremiah Owyang

We looked back at 2009 to see that, in many cases, companies struggled to keep up with customers using social technologies. With technologies changing every few months, senior marketers must have a plan for social marketing. But first, to understand what to do, they should consider what’s going to happen in this space in 2010.

Social Adoption by Consumers Continues to Grow
It’s impossible to watch a news show on TV or radio without hearing shows extending their experience to Facebook and Twitter. They know that adoption by celebrities, media, newspapers and consumers is happening. Facebook, which boasts more than 350 million users–more than the U.S. population–continues to show global growth.

Yet we shouldn’t look at social networks alone. We’re now seeing social features in gaming systems like Xbox and PlayStation, and with adoption of mobile devices, social networks that can be used wherever consumers go. Marketers must consider “what’s next” when they are making their social media plans.

CMOs Will Get Their Companies Organized Around Social Media
For the serious players experimentation time is over. Companies are putting real money behind attention-getting social media campaigns. PepsiCo ( PEP – news – people ) has shifted $20 million of its Super Bowl TV ad money social cause marketing in what’s sure to be a much-watched effort. Perhaps companies will learn from Pepsi that social technology is part of every customer touch point.

Likewise, it should be part of every department within a company–not just the corporate communications department. CMOs need to empower the right roles to lead the social marketing efforts. They need to establish “triage” processes so teams can respond instantly to customer tweets, along with policies to protect the company and employees. Because social initiatives often span the customer life cycle from awareness to support, companies should treat launching social initiatives like launching a product. They need to include marketing, product, sales and customer service.

Marketers Will Focus on Customer Goals Rather Than Latest Twitter Strategy
Senior marketers should beware of agencies that approach the table with “Twitter strategies” or “Facebook strategies.” Instead, CMOs should look for agencies that extend their overall customer strategies to the social sphere. Many junior (and senior) marketers have gotten wrapped up in the cool factor of the latest social tool, only to find that within a few months they have to rewrite their plan.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

Utilize Social Media!

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Where did the passion go?

Do you remember when you first started your business? The ideas, the fire, the drive you had when you woke up in the morning. Sitting at your coffee table, reading the paper, following CNN; thinking about how you are going to change one aspect of your business to better the rest. You had no doubt about the direction, you had no doubt that you wouldn’t succeed. No one could tell you any different from what you thought. You attended the network meetings, you handed out the business cards that you self designed. You even made it a point to shake everyone hands.

So now you are a few years into your business, the fire is still there but it is now more of a light flame, just enough light to keep you going, but not the fire it use to be, getting up in the morning doesn’t have the same flare it use to. The once organized coffee table is now a cluster of assorted papers that you still have to go thru. Where did that passion go? Where did that love for your business go? Why isn’t the fire burning as bright as it use to?

Maybe it is the routine of your business, like any new job, once you begin, you have this passion to be the best, strive harder then any other employee, to stand out above any other, but once that passion in that job is gone and the days and hours come and go, you get into a routine, and that passion doesn’t go away but instead turns into routine, you are no longer have that “on fire” feeling, but now it is a routine of daily chores that provide you with a pay check.

So how do you get that passion back? How do you get back to the days when you were on fire, how do you incorporate the passion you once had with the market and changes of today?

I think one way is integration. As the years go on, the way we market, promote and advertise ourselves changes. I have been to so many networking groups where the people use the same techniques from years passed to market themselves. You start introducing yourself as if you were reading from a que-card. The speeches, the act, the persona you once carried is now routine. We have forgotten to integrate our unique personality into our business. Remember that people are buying you as well as your product. Selling is a face to face art. Not just handing out a business card and calling it quits.

Try new ideas and techniques. Marketing in this economy is as every changing as the people who do the marketing..

I think another way is stepping outside of the box and looking at your competition and seeing what is working for them. You don’t need to copy them because success is not universal. The person who is successful by doing one thing is not necessarily going to work for you.

The goal in the end of course is to get that passion back into your life. Even I sometimes lose a little of my fire for what I do…even blogging. As the market changes entrepreneurs, individuals and corporations have to change with it. Passion is huge! You need to keep that fire for what you love going! Without that fire and passion in your business. It will never grow and you will never succeed, no matter how smart you are or no matter how much you want it. People can see that passion for what you do in your voice, on your face and in your heart! Remember you are a reflection of your business!! If there is no Passion in your heart then there is no passion in your business.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…