November 4, 2011 By 2 Comments

Chris Boggs To Speak at today’s Web Association Event

This was the first picture I came across on Google that had both me and Chris in it. Chris is the moderator in this particular panel. It’s not a clear picture of either of us. He’s the person on the right sitting down.

Here’s a better picture of Chris:

He’s the person on the left here.

I could probably just make this a photo post of Chris surrounded by the biggest thought leaders in our industry.

Here’s a nice one of Chris and Jim Boykin:

The reason Chris Boggs is always seen in pictures with our industry’s thought leaders is because he is part of the search marketing thought leader crowd.

There are probably a dozen people I could think of that I would consider the cream of the search engine marketing crop. 12 people that really push our industry forward. People that help set the tone and direction of where search engine optimization has gone for the last decade and where it will go for the coming decade. Chris Boggs is in that list of 12.

But here’s the thing: Chris is a fellow Northeastern Ohioan. He lives right up the road from me.

The President of SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional’s Organization) lives in Cleveland Ohio.

Chris is also the Director of Search and Media Thought Leadership at Rosetta

Here are some of the many places you can find Chris online:

Hey! Why doesn’t he have a Wikipedia page? Will someone get this guy a page on Wikipedia!?

You are can read all the impressive aspects of Chris’ career in those links above. They truly are impressive.

It’s fun to look back over the years and remember things we’ve done together. I’ve eaten sushi with Chris in San Jose. I’ve frozen my ass off to get to tasty gourmet burger place with Chris in Chicago. I’m sure I ate something with Chris at some point in New York. We’ve spoken on multiple panels together in various cities. We’ve worked on projects together even though we are at two different firms.

Search engine marketing has been good to me over the years. But one of the particularly nice things about search engine marketing are the friends I’ve made in the industry. I’m proud to call Chris a friend. And I’m proud to call him a fellow Northeastern Ohioan.

If you are free this afternoon (and in Cleveland) consider checking him out at today’s Web Association event. Today’s topic is “What is up at Google? Panda ? Google + ?”

Chris is tying together the search and social aspects of Google that are happening right now.

And if you aren’t in Cleveland or can’t make this event, keep an eye out for him. He’s speaking or writing all the time. He’s worth checking out.

Keep up the great work, Chris! (See you in  a couple hours.)

Filed Under: Featured, SEM News, SEO
October 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

5 Link Building Tactics

I will readily admit I am a terrible link builder for myself.

I write this blog 3 times a week. I have hundreds of videos across the internet. I have a personal blog that I write.

But rarely do I go out and build up links to my stuff.

In reality I should probably be spending equal amounts of time creating content as I do getting people to link to it.

So, if I spend 6 hours a week writing I should spend 6 hours linking.

Most weeks I do zero hours.

I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s too much detail work for my big picture brain. Maybe it feels harder than actually creating the content. Who knows.

But I’m here to tell you: Link building is absolutely crucial.

This article is actually for me more-so than you. But if you find something useful here so be it.

Sage! Here are 5 easy link building tactics you can do right now:

  1. Comment on blogs you enjoy reading.Don’t worry if the links are nofollow (a tag that some search engines use to decide whether or not to index the link). Just be a good citizen and participate on blogs.
  2. Do reviews of products or companies.If the review is good chances are they will link back to you (if you ask for the link).
  3. Take pictures at an event.Do some nice pictures and post them to your blog. Then ask the organizer of the event if he’s be interested in linking to the pictures.
  4.  Hire a PR agent.Just tell them that as they go about their public relations that a priority will be to get links from online publications.
  5.  Guest blogWriting for other people’s blogs is a great way to get more exposure. Look around for sites that could use a little more content (and of course include a bi-line at the end of the article linking back to you).

There you go. 5 quick and easy things you can do to get some good quality links.

 

Filed Under: SEO
October 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Impact of Blogging

When I ask people what social media tools they are implementing (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging) universally, the one people are using least is blogging.

I think it’s because they see blogging as a big thing.

They have to setup a tool. They have to stylize it. And then, of course, they have to write it. (That last one is probably the part that scares them the most.)

They incorrectly think that Facebook and Twitter are easy. They are only easy if you are doing them wrong.

First, you should understand that blogging isn’t nearly as hard as you think.

Setting up a self-hosted WordPress blog is usually a one click process now at most hosting companies. Or you can use a variety of other tools (such as SageRock Places).

Stylizing your site can be as easy as selecting a template offered by the tool.

Then from there adding content can often times be a breeze. You can write as little or as much as you would like. My only suggestion is to write on a schedule. You will get a much bigger impact if you write regularly. I write here 3 times a week.  Sometimes it is a little hard to get it in. But I always enjoy writing it.

I want to show you the traffic on the SageRock site for September. I also want to show you how it compares to August. The reason for this is because I want you to get a feel for how important blogging is for my business. And how important it could be for your business.

I’ll past some stats here and we’ll talk about them below.

Page date_range Pageviews
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/title-tag-meta-description-length/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 2,439
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/title-tag-meta-description-length/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 2,428
http://www.sagerock.com/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 348
http://www.sagerock.com/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 356
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/seo-pricin/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 224
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/seo-pricin/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 0
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 208
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 214
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/google-mobile-keyword-tool/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 153
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/google-mobile-keyword-tool/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 120
http://www.sagerock.com/Contact/Contact-the-SageRock-Team/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 82
http://www.sagerock.com/Contact/Contact-the-SageRock-Team/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 94
http://www.sagerock.com/SageRock/about-sagerock.html Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 80
http://www.sagerock.com/SageRock/about-sagerock.html Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 75
http://www.sagerock.com/Table/Web-Marketing-Services/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 67
http://www.sagerock.com/Table/Web-Marketing-Services/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 79
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/using-facebook-for-business/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 61
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/using-facebook-for-business/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 0
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/google-product-listing-ads/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 56
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/google-product-listing-ads/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 47
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/6-cheap-website-development-tools/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 54
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/6-cheap-website-development-tools/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 46
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/google-search-query-report/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 54
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/google-search-query-report/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 33
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/using-google-trends-for-seo/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 49
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/using-google-trends-for-seo/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 31
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/team/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 42
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/team/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 33
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/google-adwords-vs-msn-adcenter/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 39
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/google-adwords-vs-msn-adcenter/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 35
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/non-traditional-online-advertising/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 37
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/non-traditional-online-advertising/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 20
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/my-birthday-wishes-for-you/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 36
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/my-birthday-wishes-for-you/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 0
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/team/sage-lewis/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 36
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/team/sage-lewis/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 32
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/wolframalpha-not-google-killer/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 36
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/wolframalpha-not-google-killer/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 21
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/adwords-preview-tool/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 31
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/adwords-preview-tool/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 36
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/google-in-depth-webcast-transcript/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 30
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/google-in-depth-webcast-transcript/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 0
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/about/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 28
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/about/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 21
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/social-media-landscape-for-business/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 28
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/social-media-landscape-for-business/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 5
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/university-akron-google-analytics-class/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 28
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/university-akron-google-analytics-class/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 0
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/top-3-google-adwords-must-dos/ Sep 1, 2011 – Sep 30, 2011 27
http://www.sagerock.com/blog/top-3-google-adwords-must-dos/ Aug 1, 2011 – Aug 31, 2011 43

OK. I will totally admit that took me way longer than I anticipated. Creating that table was a real chore. Sometimes blogging will be like that.

What you are seeing there are my top 25 most viewed pages. I am comparing traffic from September with August.

It is very important to remember to always compare data to something else. Data by itself is completely meaningless. Who knows if the numbers are good or bad.

The first thing I want to point out is, of the top 25 pages, only 4 of them are not my blog. 21 of the top 25 pages viewed are from the blog!

I want you to also notice that 5 pages in the top 25 are completely new for the month of September. I know that because the got 0 views in August.

Our #1 page: http://www.sagerock.com/blog/title-tag-meta-description-length/ is older. It was written on August 5, 2009. So it’s over 2 years old.

You can see that both new content and old content generate traffic. It’s not like only the new stuff gets traffic. It’s a mix.

I can also tell you this: I made a commitment in the last couple months to write this blog religiously 3 days a week. I don’t know if it’s the economy or a shift in the force, but I am here to tell you that I can’t remember the last time I have closed so much new work. My business is like night and day.

I can’t tell you that someone said, “Hey Sage – I was reading a blog post you wrote and now I want to hire you.”

All I can tell you is this: Our company is ridiculously busy. And that happened during the same time I started writing this blog 3 days a week.

I can also tell you that Jason Calacanis http://twitter.com/jason just started following me on Twitter this morning. He is a highly regarded angel investor and Internet entrepreneur. (thanks Jason!) It’s probably not because of my good looks.

Consistent blogging will:

  • Get you free traffic from the search engines related to your industry.
  • Make you stand out as an expert in your industry.
  • Allow you the time to think more deeply about your specialization.
  • Pre-qualify you in the eyes of your prospects. Your blog will show them you know what you are talking about.
  • Be better advertising than the shiniest direct mail piece you could ever make.

The benefits go on and on. If you stick with it, blogging will do your business a world of good.

Filed Under: Featured, SEO
September 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

University of Akron Google Analytics Class

Google Analytics Class at the University of Akron

Google Analytics Class at the University of Akron

Time and time again I see companies having Google Analytics running on their site but they have no idea what the data means or they are looking at the wrong data for their particular needs.

This fall I’m teaching a class at Akron U on Google Analytics to help out with this scenario and many others. I’ll teach you what you need to know from the ground up including:

  • Proper account and profile setup
  • Learn what all the metrics mean (and what they mean to you!)
  • How to use your Analytics to measure success
  • How to track effectiveness of your online presence
  • Filtering results for more effective statistics
  • Running the right reports for your situation

This will be a smaller, hands-on class, so we’ll be able to deal with your unique circumstances and help you on a highly personal level.

Avininash Google Analytics BookIn addition to your coursework, students partaking in this University of Akron class on Google Analytics will get a free autographed copy of Avinash Kaushik’s Web Analytics 2.0 book!

“Analytics is vitally important, and no one explains it more elegantly, more simply, or more powerfully than Avinash Kaushik. Consider buying up all the copies of this book before your competition gets a copy.”
—Seth Godin

 

 

Google Analytics Course Details

Instructor: Greg Habermann, COO/VP of SageRock, Inc.
Cost: $199.00
Location: Polsky M150

Number of classes: 5
2011 Class Dates (Thursday Evenings):

  • October 13
  • October 20
  • October 27
  • November 3
  • November 10

Class times: 6:15 PM – 8:15 PM

Enroll Nowor call 330-972-7577 (reference course #16310)

Filed Under: Featured, SageRock, SEO, Small Business
September 2, 2011 By 2 Comments

SageRock SEO Pricing Revealed

I have to get a section of my roof replaced at the office.

All the roofers that I have had come out to look at it like to tell me the materials they are using, the approach they are taking. They’re trying to make me see the value in the roof.

Really all I want to know is how much it’s going to cost. After I get the price I then want to get a sense if I feel that they are trustworthy and that they will do what they say. But for me the price is the thing I want to know first.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that I am going to pick the cheapest one. But the price is the metric I am using to determine order and hierarchy.

I am no roof buying genius. I’m just a guy that needs a roof.

I suspect that when you are looking for search engine optimization services you probably feel similarly. You just want to know the SEO pricing.

But the price is always the thing that we hide.

I think we do that because, like roofers, we want to understand the entire process and make sure that we are quoting accurately.

But, like roofers I suspect, there is a general SEO pricing guide. Things may go up or down depending on what is found. But I suspect the roofer measures the roof and multiplies that dimension by the cost of labor and material.

Roofers and search engine optimization people are very similar in that regard.

So I thought I might do my best to give you a feel for the price of things. I want to give you SageRock’s SEO pricing.

As a roofer would tell you, depending on what we find once we dig in the price could change a little bit. But for the most part the price is pretty accurate.

Here is a list of some services that we offer. These prices are just for SEO services. Prices for Web development, landing page optimization, paid search management, and all those other things are for another post. This is just the SEO pricing guide.

When you are working with SageRock we can go in several different ways. We offer:

  • Training
  • Consulting
  • Full service offerings

If you are a hands-on type person I might suggest to you the SageRock System. You can learn more about it here:
http://system.sagerock.com/

This is a group led consulting program we have created. It covers all facets of Web marketing. It’s a complete Web marketing strategy, guidance and consulting system. You will see a free trial on the right-hand side of the page.

It includes a lot of different things.

  • Key phrase research tools
  • Competitor tools
  • Social media monitoring tools
  • Statistical and ranking reporting features
  • Complete blogging platform
  • Tons of live and on-demand consulting.

After the 30 day free trial it is $199 a month. The free trial does not require a credit card.

We then offer private, individual consulting. That is purchased in $1500 blocks. You can learn more about that here:
http://www.sagerock.com/Speaking-and-Training/consultation-service-block.html

With that you get 10 hours of personalized and individual consulting and guidance. It can go in a variety of different directions that are custom tailored for your particular situation.

The next step is implementation. In this environment we are a complete outsourced solution for you. Here are some potential services with example costs.

  • Comprehensive key phrase research: $1500
  • Optimization of an existing webpage including title and meta-description optimization: $175 per page
  • Link building: $120 an hour. This includes comprehensive reporting of links requested and links achieved.
  • Statistical analysis reviews and summaries: $350 per review (these are usually done monthly or quarterly)

These are general estimates. They typically hold up in most situations. But sometimes different environments have more or less involvement. If we think the prices would change we’ll let you know before we proceed. Things probably won’t change but I like to say that just in case they do.

We have also bundled complete search engine optimization services in different types of packages.

I really debated about how to give you this next piece of information. The document that I have is not right for everyone. But it does give you a feel for the price of things.

The biggest reason I am hedging giving it to you is simply because we consider ourselves a custom shop. We are not developing cookie-cutter products that we try to force on everyone.

But when I am pricing a job I often times use this document to get a feel for what a potential project may cost. I typically use the information in this document as an internal SEO pricing guide.

Do you get my sense of hesitation here :-) I feel like I have the magic trick guidebook in my hands. I want to show you the secret to how I did the trick. But I’m nervous to do so.

We, however, live in a very transparent world. That is a world I feel is better than the top-down controlled world of yesterday.

You are big boys and girls. You can understand that this is a benchmark. You can also understand that your situation is unique and SageRock is a custom search engine optimization company. So these are just rough guidelines.

Now I just thought maybe I’ll set up a form and make you fill out before you get the information.

- Stop that, Sage! Just give them the information.
- But what if they don’t understand it and I’m not there to guide them?
- They get it, Sage. They can handle the information. And besides, if they get a feel for your pricing, and it’s in line with what they can afford, I’m sure they’ll call you.
- I hope you are right, internal voice. Can we tell them that we have been in business since 1999? That we have worked with huge companies and small companies? That we are super passionate about what we do? That we believe we put out some of the best search engine optimization work you can find anywhere?
- Sure Sage. We can tell them.
- How about a testimonial?
- They don’t need a testimonial. You have a testimonial page.
- All right. If you say so.
- Good job, Sage. You’re doing the right thing.

And now you know how I spend my time alone.

Here is the SageRock complete SEO pricing guide:
SageRock SEO Pricing

Filed Under: SageRock, SEO
August 22, 2011 By 4 Comments

Using Google Trends for SEO

Did you get your HP Touchpad for $99?

I think I did.

Or maybe I got 40 of them. I’m not really sure. I had to reload the hp store shopping cart endless times to try to get through the checkout process.

While I was waiting trying to find a magical window of time where their site wasn’t completely overwhelmed with like-minded greedy vultures, I wrote a blog post about getting an hp TouchPad for $99.

If you haven’t heard, hp is discontinuing the TouchPad after a month of disappointing sales.

It is also in the top 5 list of hot searches at Google Trends.

If you have a blog post coming up but you can’t think of anything to write about, going to Google Trends is a great place to be inspired for content ideas.

You stand a good chance of coming up for these very hot phrases.

The “secret” is to use the exact phrase that appears in Google Trends in your blog title and the body copy.

Keep an open mind about how to incorporate these topics into your particular niche. It can take a little creativity. But you can do it.

This approach is often a nice way to get a little extra traffic coming into your site from the search engines.

Filed Under: Featured, SEO
August 3, 2011 By 2 Comments

Let’s Skin This Social Media Link Building Cat

5 Social Media Link Building Strategies Tactics

The last time we left off we were discussing the value of social media when it comes to link building strategies.

It’s a long story that you might want to read in the link above. But what you should know is this:

  • Important profiles on Twitter matter and are monitored by Google and Bing.
  • Facebook fan pages are monitored and analyzed by Google and Bing.
  • The “firehose” of data at Twitter is monitored and analyzed by Google and Bing.
  • Private information on Facebook profiles are not indexed by Google.
  • Google states “we have no personal wall data from Facebook.”

So, what are you going to do with this information?

Lucky for you, I’m going to give you some suggestions. There are many ways to skin this cat if you are one to like skinning cats. (What’s up with that saying?)

Well, since it’s so visually intense let’s get to cat skinning.

Social Media Link Building Cat Skinning Tip #1:

Work on your Twitter authority.

There is a great article discussing this over here by Rand Fishkin.
He gives some likely signals that would account for Twitter authority.

  • Quantity of Friends/Followers
  • Importance of Friends/Followers
  • Analysis of Friends/Followers Ratios
  • Topic Focus / Relevance
  • Association Bias

In a nutshell, get networking! Follow important people and work on trying to get other important people to follow you. There are many ways to do this. But some may include:

  • trying to engage with them
  • following them
  • telling them they are super awesome
  • stuff like that.

You will have a much easier time getting more friends and followers if you are interesting on Twitter. I strongly encourage you not to promote yourself much, if at all. Just try to be a valuable citizen in the Twittersphere.

Social Media Link Building Cat Skinning Tip #2:

Make sure you have a page for your company or organization on Facebook.

Facebook has recently redone their Facebook for Business section here:
http://www.facebook.com/business

They’re trying to make it a little bit easier to make your way around that section. If nothing else, you are definitely going to want a Page for your organization. These are clearly being monitored by Google and Bing.

Again, be interesting! Don’t make it all boring promotional stuff. You need to think of this like networking and not as advertising. The guy that comes to the Chamber of Commerce meeting just running around stuffing business cards and flyers in everybody’s hands is annoying. Don’t be that guy at the Chamber of Commerce and don’t be that guy on Facebook and Twitter.

Oh yeah, give away special promotions every so often. People like to “Like” Facebook Pages to get deals. So give them Facebook-only deals and incentives. They’ll “like” you for it :-)

Social Media Link Building Cat Skinning Tip #3:

Start to get comfortable on Google+

They got 10 million users in 16 days. That’s crazy! If they can continue anywhere near that kind of attraction level they will be an important component of the social media world. Without a doubt, Google is going to use the profiles, content and links from Google+. I would encourage you as an individual to start getting people into your circles. If you need an invitation to Google+ just go here and ask me for an invitation. I’ll happily give you one.

Social Media Link Building Cat Skinning Tip #4:

Go read this article:
http://outspokenmedia.com/social-media/build-your-personal-brand/

I hear all the time about how people don’t have time and are not interested in social media. I simply do not see that as an option anymore. I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you something different. But I can’t. Social media is here to stay and you might as well get used to it.

Just think about all the poor people that had to learn how to use the telephone, the fax machine, e-mail. The day they had to sell the horse to get their new Ford car. I guarantee there was somebody that was not happy about it. We need to move on.

Your kids are on it, your niece and nephew are on it, your mother is on it, your boss is on it, everybody is on it. 750 million people are on Facebook right now. You are going to start to look silly.

As Lisa says in the article, “these excuses need to go die in a fire.”

We all have something to sell. You need to build your personal brand in the social media area.

Social Media Link Building Cat Skinning Tip #5:

Keep an eye on Google Trends:
http://www.google.com/trends

This is a great place to see what is hot in the search world right now.

When you can, incorporate these trends within your tweets, Facebook fan page updates, blog posts, and Google+ updates. This is where people are searching heavily right at this moment. You can often times become part of that time sensitive conversation. This has the potential of driving a significant amount of traffic.

These current events are often times “trending” because they resonate with a large section of society. That means that it probably can affect your business or organization in some way. Don’t be afraid to jump into that stream of conversation.

I recommend using the trending phrase exactly the way you see it in Google Trends. You will get better results that way.

There you have it. 5 social media link building strategy cat skinning tips. No actual cats were skinned in the making of this blog post.

And if you need a little inspiration click here.

Filed Under: SEO, Social Media
August 1, 2011 By 1 Comment

Social Media – The SEO’s Secret Weapon?

 Social Media Link Building Strategies – Does it matter?

If you’ve been following the world of link building, link building strategies in the social media space have been a confusing and often frustrating topic.

This is because the vast majority of websites in the social media world use what is called a “nofollow” tag on their links. Basically it tells the search engines to not give links any credit. So you can have a really great link on Wikipedia and it wouldn’t matter at all as far as the search engines are concerned.

Nofollow was originally created by Google in 2005 to help stop comment spam in blogs. You can read all about nofollow in this Wikipedia article. Incidentally, this has always annoyed me. You see, I have just given Wikipedia yet another link that has link popularity value. And they give absolutely no value to any link outside of Wikipedia. This seems incredibly stingy and hypocritical if you ask me. The reason Wikipedia is such a powerful force is because everybody linked to Wikipedia. And now they won’t share the love back. But whatever, I digress.

So, search engine optimizers have largely moved away from using social media in their link building strategies as a way to get links to help search engine optimization factors.

However, this is all an evolving topic. What I mean is that the search engines are seeing social media as a place that can offer very legitimate and valuable information when it comes to links.

If a link is being tweeted over and over and over again, there must be something interesting there. For the search engines to completely ignore this information would be shortsighted and too absolutist.

And sure enough, Danny Sullivan teased out in an interview that both Bing and Google use signals from the social media world to influence link popularity.

You will definitely want to read the entire article if you’re into this kind of thing. But here are some of the cooler quotes.

Bing on Twitter: “We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results.” (Google said that they to use it as a signal.)

Danny: “Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on the person who tweets it?”
Bing and Google: “Yes.”

Danny: “Do you track links shared within Facebook?”
These are important quotes:

Bing: “Yes. We look at links shared that are marked as “Everyone,” and links shared from Facebook fan pages.”
Google: “We treat links shared on Facebook fan pages the same as we treat tweeted links. We have no personal wall data from Facebook.”

Those are important because it discusses the value of fan pages.

At the end of the article Danny sums it up nicely. He writes, “In the end, it’s clear that Twitter data especially plays a role in web search, these days. Who you are is being understood. Are you a trusted authority or not? If there’s PageRank for pages, both search engines have a form of TwitterRank for people.”

In his last sentences in the article he writes, “Meanwhile, retweets serve as a new form a link building. Get your page mentioned in tweets by authoritative people, and that can help your ranking in regular search results, to a degree.”

Ever since I have been in the search engine marketing industry I have always seen the word of Danny Sullivan to be definitive. If he states it you can pretty much take it to the bank. As you can see, he is not merely hypothesizing here. These are direct answers he has gotten from Google and Bing.

So let’s sum it up even clearer: Facebook fan pages and tweets from authoritative Twitter accounts matter.

Capiche?

You’ll also want to check out this video:

It was posted on Jan 14, 2010

It is from Matt Cutts at Google. In the video he states these general principles:
Google basically treats links the same. They look at how reputable a link is. It doesn’t matter where a link is from.

A lot of the profiles at Facebook are not public so they can’t index them. But if the profile is public then they can fetch the links.

“We treat links from Twitter, Facebook, .edu, .gov the same,” he says in the video.

“If a link is private or it is nofollow then that would keep Google from using them for PageRank.”

So does nofollow matter or not matter with link building strategies?

Danny addresses this in the same article. He says that both Bing and Google get what is called the “firehose” of data from Twitter. This is just the complete stream of data that comes from Twitter. The links in the firehose do not carry nofollow attributes. So if there is a series of links pointing to the same article this would have value.

At this point things become fishy. So we have learned that the search engines look at the authority of individual people. And they also look at this “firehose.” But supposedly they don’t look at them together. So if you don’t look at the links from a specific person then what are you doing with the information?

It seems to me that we can come up with one of 2 conclusions. Either the search engines are in the process of figuring out how to use the links from the social media world and they haven’t quite decided yet on the best approach. Or they are totally using that data right now and are trying to keep us off the topic.

Getting Likes As a Link Building Strategy

On November 19, 2010 Bruce Clay wrote an article, “Are Likes the New Links?”

He writes:

“Obviously, Google would like to find a better solution for determining trust and ranking than counting spammy links. With link spam winning, search engines are turning to signals received from trusted friends (Facebook Likes), reviews appearing in the LocalPack (7-pack local maps), and in referrals and sharing within social media as new sources for testimonials. By substituting what a user’s actual friends like in the place of spammy links, ultimately what we see today as link spam will lose its impact. “

This makes complete sense to me. It is estimated that 1% of the Internet population produces content. So a very small minority of the overall Internet community is vouching for websites by writing content that has links. This lopsided segment of the Web society allows for relatively easy manipulation of link popularity. It only takes a few well-placed links to significantly change the importance of a website online.

But if social signals were put in place that would tremendously broaden the user-base of people recommending sites. As of writing this article Facebook reports that there are more than 750 million active users.

That is a massive amount of people. In the stats they go on to say that, “50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day.”

There is a strong belief in the Internet community that people with valuable and important profiles in the social media world are less likely to abuse their hard earned authority by putting out spammy links. So, if these people link to something then it probably would be a strong signal that the link has value. Therefore, these links could be really useful in determining the value of an article.

There is just one problem, however. While Google can access the authority of Twitter accounts, Facebook does not readily allow Google to access that information.

Enter Google+

Google+ is making a huge impact in its early stages of its social media life.

You would do well to click over and take a look at this chart.

It took Google+ 16 days to get 10 million users. People are extremely interested in Google+. It remains yet to be seen whether or not it will continue at this rate. However, I can tell you from conversations I’ve had with friends and family, along with my own experiences, Google+ seems to be a force to reckon with.

If, indeed, Google can continue this insane growth pattern then they will have all the individual social profile signals they will need. They will no longer need to worry about Facebook personal profiles. That isn’t to say that Facebook will go away. It’s just that this will be a great resource for Google to mine data from.

So you have now gotten to the end of this article.

What should you do with all this new found information?

I’m not going to tell you. Ha ha!

You will have to read the next installment of this article. It will come out on Wednesday.

Here is the second part:

Let’s Skin This Social Media Link Building Cat

Photo from here: Social Media Outposts

Filed Under: SEO, Social Media
March 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment

How Much Should I Spend On Web Marketing?

I was talking with someone recently who was interested in knowing what Web marketing they should do based on their budget.

So… what should I do if I had $200, $500, $1000, etc.

This is a common interest. And a very valid request.

I will say this, however, you probably should know your marketing budget going in.

It’s similar to buying a car. If you don’t know what you are willing to spend you might be overspending or even underspending. I mean, what if you could actually afford that Mercedes you’ve always wanted?

As a quick guide, I personally try to spend 10% of my gross income (based on the previous year) on marketing.

Marketing is important to our organization and I feel that 10% is a good amount to keep the ball rolling.

Virtually every time I do a proposal I ask what the company’s budget is. I would say 95% of the time they tell me they don’t know. Of those people I bet it’s 50-50. 50% of the time they don’t know and the other percent don’t want to tell me.

I understand why they don’t want me to know their budget. Maybe they’ll get something for a good deal. But it doesn’t actually work that way. Yes, I will use all the budget you tell me you have. But knowing your budget will effect how I recommend you spend it.

And no, it won’t all go to me. Knowing your budget will tell me how much should go towards consulting, how much should go to education and how much should go to advertising.

Let me show you a few examples of how my recommendations would change based on your budget.

  • You have $1000 – And that’s all you have. Once it’s gone it’s gone.
    • Ultimately, you are going to have to do the work… to get the biggest impact.
    • If you have people who are technically savvy but don’t know where to start, then I’d probably recommend you get some consulting. A consulting meeting will give you a good perspective of your strenghts and weaknesses. You can then take that information and go from there.
    • If you don’t have technically savvy people, I’d recommend you become technically savvy. Take an html course. Take an SEO course. Invest the money in training.
  • You can spend $200 per month.
    • This isn’t going to buy you much consulting. I’d probably recommend training. The SageRock System would be a good fit for you. This would give you a guided Web marketing strategy and all the tools you need.
    • In the past, I might have also suggested you go to someplace like Odesk.com and get some cheap work there. But now with Google really on the warpath of poor quality content and bad links, I think you better just stay away from these kinds of places. Quality links and quality content has to be the focus.
  • You can spend $500 per month.
    • This is a tricky point.
    • You probably could start to get SageRock to begin working on your marketing. If all you have is $500 then you don’t have any paid search going. So you could probably get either monthly consulting to get the most out of your Web marketing efforts (that you do yourself). Or you could get us to do some optimization of your content, key phrase research, monitoring tracking of growth. It won’t be a lot of work. But it probably could be enough to make a difference.
    • At this point you are going to have to be careful not to get caught up with less then reputable agencies. This is actually always a problem. But there are a lot of people at this price point that will either just take your money and do nothing or they will do spammy things that will ultimately do your site damage. Get references! Talk to past clients.
    • We probably could do some content writing for you at this point as well.
  • You can spend $750 per month.
    • At this point you can get some pretty solid SEO work from SageRock.
    • You could get content written and some quality links.
    • You could also get some pretty good guidance of how to implement a content management system (if you don’t have one) that would help you easily add content to your site.
    • We probably couldn’t setup a WordPress blog on your site at this price point. But we could definitely setup a Blogger or WordPress.com blog and help you tie it into your site as a sub-domain of your site.
    • I don’t think most people should do paid search at this price point.
  • You can spend $1000 per month.
    • At this point you probably could do a small paid search campaign.
    • I think you probably would want to consult and/or train with us and do the actual maintenance of your paid search account(s) yourself. Otherwise, you probably will be spending too much on outsourcing the maintenance.
    • There are many variables but it’s possible you might consider spending most of this money in paid search.
      • Variables could be:
        • How new your site is.
        • How immediate your needs for sales are.
        • How saturated your industry is from an SEO perspective.
        • How much work is your site going to need to get it driving traffic from SEO.
        • I’m sure there are many others. But these are the ones that come to mind.
    • I strongly encourage you to do something to get your site into SEO shape. You should be doing some sort of content building strategy and getting people to link to your site. It doesn’t have to be a lot. But it should be consistent. You don’t want to get stuck down the road where you are priced out of the paid search arena because of too much competition and you don’t have any other outs.
  • You can spend $1500 per month.
    • At this point you start to have some options.
    • I would probably suggest a blended approach of doing both SEO and paid search. What you do depends a lot on your organization. As an example, SageRock is a marketing-based organization. We have our best luck converting prospects into clients by getting leads through marketing and PR. If that’s the case for you then you should spend most of your money on SEO and probably social media. But if you are a sales-based organization then heavily relying on PPC might be right for you.
    • You probably can outsource a fair amount of the work at this point. But again, that depends on how heavy you are into PPC. If you are doing a lot of pay per click you are going to want to spend as much of that money in the engines. To give you an example, it’s not until you get to about $5000 per month on your paid search budgets that completely outsourcing your management to us makes sense. If you are spending $1500 per month you might want to consult with us for an hour or two a month or even a quarter.
  • From $1500 – $5000 per month the general theory remains pretty similar.
    • You can outsource your search engine optimization to SageRock.
    • But you probably should manage your paid search yourself.
    • If you have long-term goals of bringing these things into your organization then you might want to invest some of that in training and consulting.
  • You can spend $5000 – $10,000 per month (this includes your online ad budgets)
    • When you start to have $5000 and above for all your search marketing then SageRock makes sense for managing your paid search.
    • We can help you really refine your conversion costs in a meaningful way.
    • It’s possible that at this level you are mostly doing paid search. But I strongly encourage you to do at least a little SEO. It will really make you much stronger over the long run.
  • You can spend $10,000 and beyond per month.
    • At these points you can then seriously look at outsourcing all of your online marketing and advertising.
    • You will have enough money to spend on your paid search and also implement a search engine optimization plan.
    • But the specific plan is going to depend on your goals, your industry and the kind of organization you are.

Now keep in mind, I’ve seen a lot of different scenarios over the years. There are many instances where these guidelines are not the case. But as a very general rule, these typically are the levels I see for doing different work.

The moral of the story, however, is: don’t be afraid to tell me your budget. It will significantly help me shape the best plan for you.

If you are interested in learning more about how we might help you, fill out this form (it goes right to me) and we can talk:

Picture from: http://www.wordle.net

Filed Under: Featured, Paid Search, SageRock, SEO
December 14, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Why Online Reputation Management Shouldn’t be a Knee-jerk Reaction

Whether you’re Abercrombie & Fitch writing a letter to the Mayor of NYC asking for help with bedbugs or Domino’s trying to assure consumers that boogers aren’t one of their main pizza toppings, managing your online reputation in these situations is definitely done on a case by case basis. Yes, reacting with speed is good, but so many times reacting too quickly can result in a lack of proper forethought.

One bad experience for one unlucky person can lead to endless problems with how a brand is presented online. If you don’t think that’s the case, then you’ve obviously never had to deal with a Ripoff Report.

There are right ways and wrong ways to handle every situation, but more often than not, responses to negative publicity, especially online, fall more into a gray area.

Let’s look at two real world ORM examples from shopping experiences I’ve had in the last month and learn what tips can keep you from the same Online Reputation Management nightmares. I categorize both of these as reactions that probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but now…

The Pizza Story

I don’t get pizza often, but when I do, I find myself going with the familiar. I tend to get the same pizza from the same place. It’s simple, straightforward, and requires no thought or effort. And let’s face it, if I’m ordering pizza, I obviously don’t want to put in effort.

However, in a recent discussion with a colleague, we weighed the pros, cons, and benefits of stepping out of our safe, normal, routines and trying something different. Only by trying something different could we find something new. I think he was talking about business or something, but I was hungry so that’s what I got out of our conversation. Try a new pizza place.

Now there’s this little pizza shop not too terribly far from my house that I drove by all the time but had never tried. Me, being the adventurous sort, decided that finding their phone number online and calling them really wasn’t that much effort so I did the deed and typed their name into Google and whammo — universal search result.

The number was right there on the SERP. I didn’t even need to visit their site, but I was intrigued and compelled to click on a link, right under their name, to two reviews. If I was going to try something new and it moved people enough to review it multiple times online, then I definitely wanted a glimpse of what was in store for me.

Here’s what I found:

Pizza Reviews

Ummm… What?

It turned out that on April 1, 2009, an attempted robbery took place at this pizza place. The shop owner turned the tables on the would-be robber by drawing a gun, shooting and killing him. This was an unfortunate incident that made the local paper.

Obviously, afraid that this might deter business, someone named John (the shop owner’s name is John, but I’ll just leave that there) left the above review the next day.

Even the best of intentions don’t always transfer into good sustainable ideas. Perhaps, at the time, it really was a good idea. Maybe that one review made people feel safe and he was able to avert an ongoing crisis and keep his business going.

I seriously hope that’s the case. Because now, it’s well over one year later. It’s not a bad neighborhood. The people around town likely had forgotten most, if not all of the details, if they even knew of it at all. Now that review is sitting out there and as a first time customer I can see how that review might actually deter business.

If I’m going to pick up a pizza, safety is something that doesn’t ever come to mind. I want to think about toppings, not gun violence.

The Car Stereo Installer Story

So, I’ve got this car right? And I love it. But it’s got this stock head unit that’s been kinda driving me crazy since before I even bought it.

I remember going for a test drive and the salesperson trying to sell me on the radio features. The thought that ran through my mind before we even left the parking lot was that the stereo needed to go.

That was about three years ago and still here I am with the crappy radio. Well no more! As a reward to myself for being awesome, I was finally ready to replace my stereo.

The difference between this one and the 20 or so aftermarket purchases from my past would be that I wasn’t going to install it myself. Oh no. I’ve done it myself now so many times, but each time you pull on a piece of the dash and feel that tab of plastic holding on just so, you worry you’re going to break something.

Not this time. Not this car.

I have zero experience picking out a shop to do this, so I was hoping that Google would show me some options as far as installers, plus some reviews or experiences from other people.

One store in particular interested me, as I’ve driven by it for at least 20 years and I figured that for a car stereo place that longevity has to say something. I looked them up on Google and was saddened to see a dated Web site and zero reviews.

Zero reviews? For a 20-plus-year-old store that appeals to younger people throwing money around on expensive toys? That seemed odd to me.

I decided to look at some other options. Lo and behold, what did I find? A place not too far from where I work that has four reviews! Sweet. Let’s see what they say:

Car Stereo Installer Reviews

Ouch! Here we have a classic case of “Greg is going to take his business elsewhere.”

Why? First, you have someone giving a negative review in 2008. That’s fine. People have bad experiences and they like to share. One bad review won’t keep me away.

However, then we have the business owner (apparently “Alex”) replying to that review more than two years later and actually attacking the person who left it. I’m sure that to the owner, with undoubtedly a bruised ego, that seemed like a good idea at the time, but attacking your customers publically won’t win you new ones.

The Moral of These Stories

Your online reputation is a sensitive and fluid thing. Think before you speak and don’t let your emotions get the best of you. It is, after all, only business.

Do you have a similar story to share? Do you think these people could have handled these situations better? Leave your comments below or send me your story.

Filed Under: Featured, SEO, Social Media Tagged With: online reputation management, orm
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