Online Marketing Blog

You don’t have to look far to find social media roundup posts this time of year. But what about the most effective one-two marketing punch for building community AND delivering conversions and ROI?  Social Media and Search Engine Optimization – or “Social SEO” as we like to call it.

Out of the 300 or so posts published in 2009, I’ve picked the best of the year based on a mix of my own opinion and metrics such as comments, inbound links, pageviews and social engagement off the blog through social news, bookmarking, Twitter and similar services using PostRank.

Here are TopRank’s Top 10 Social SEO Posts of 2009. Enjoy!

Our recent reader poll of 14 books either focused on, or with significant content dedicated to, Search Engine Optimization has concluded with 174 votes. And the winner by one vote and 27% of the total votes is….

Art of SEO (Theory in Practice) by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin and Jessie C. Stricchiola.

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Published by O’Reilly, this phone book sized bundle of SEO wisdom is chock-full of advice for marketers that want to leverage search engine optimization as a marketing channel. Congratulations on winning our Reader Poll!

Here are several reviews of Art of SEO to consider or you can take up O’Reilly’s offer to write one yourself.

Runners up for Best SEO book of 2009 were:

After a much deserved blogging vacation last week, I thought I’d start this final week of 2009 with wishes of appreciation for the readers of TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog and the fantastic team of writers we have. It was 6 years ago today, that TopRank started an agency blog as a way to publicly save and comment on industry news.

We’ve been through and observed many, many changes in the internet marketing industry over the past 6 years. Of course, Online Marketing Blog isn’t the only internet and SEO focused blog celebrating a 6 year birthday this year. There are several others listed here including a few that are still very active: Search Engine Roundtable, Search Engine Journal and SEO Book.

Have you ever wanted to have the ability to better organize your uploads folder in WordPress?

By default, WordPress organizes all uploaded media by year and month. Where this works well for some bloggers, others want to organize their uploads into things like pdfs, downloads, videos and so on. This is especially important when using WordPress as a CMS.

That’s where the Relocate Upload plugin comes in handy.

Relocate Upload allows a blog admin to setup custom folders inside the uploads folder, or anywhere on the web server, for better file organization.

Relocate Upload Settings

When uploading media, Relocate Upload is integrated into the upload window with a drop down menu that allows the user to select the folder for the item to be uploaded to.

Social Media Monitoring Services

When it comes to businesses leveraging the social web to communicate with customers and improve brand awareness, there’s some good news and there’s some bad news.

The good news: 86% of professionals have adopted social media in some way, according to a recent survey by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education.

The bad news: A whopping 84% of survey respondents who’ve adopted social media don’t measure their social media programs.

Even worse: 40% weren’t even sure they could monitor social media ROI.

Thankfully, there are a host of free or low cost tools available to help companies and organizations track social media success. Use one or more of these 5 social media monitoring tools to gauge how well your efforts are working.

eMarketer is one of the most cited resources for internet marketing trends, so when I received some tasty predictions for 2010, I thought they were too useful to keep to myself. These insights include future monetization models, the effect of transparency on advertising, social and search, mobile, social commerce, public relations, social advertising, Twitter, video and mom/pop internet usage. Enjoy!

Hybrid Plans that Combine Subscription Fees with Advertising
More marketers will increasingly embrace online video advertising, supported by the twin boom of video streams and video ad networks.

Further support for video ad growth will come from sites that offer a deeper catalog of professional video content—such as whole seasons of TV shows (both present and past), exclusives of entire sports events and other premium content. Such offerings will attract larger audiences. But in order to maintain the costs of deep-catalog video, the sites and their studio and TV network partners will need to introduce hybrid plans that combine subscription fees with advertising.

The next in our series of interviews with Minnesota based, social media savvy marketing and public relations professionals is Greg Swan, Digital Account Group Manager at Weber Shandwick Digital.

Greg manages and executes interactive public relations programs for Weber Shandwick clients across consumer, technology and public affairs industries. As the social media team lead, Greg oversees the U.S. Army’s social media efforts, including pioneering instant messaging and mobile programs and the launch of the Army’s first-ever Soldier blog. Greg has helped clients, such as The Coca-Cola Company, Snickers, Verizon and Chevrolet, take the big leap into the social mediasphere to influence consumer behavior online and create authentic engagement.

You’re in an elevator going to the 45th floor (NYC) and you’re asked what you do. What’s your reply? If that happened in any other city, would your answer be different?

With all the hubub about personalized and real time search and the potential impact on the SEO work that can influence search visibility, the question about relevance comes to mind when considering books about search engine optimization. Search engines like Google change often (38 new search products in 70 days) so one could argue that a book published in print would become outdated.  For those books that outline very specific tactics and even tricks/loopholes, that indeed is the case.

However, there are many SEO books that focus on strategy and tactics worth considering.  Well understood principles of information retrieval, content optimization & promotion, consumer search behaviors and analytics are timeless.

For many companies, an ideal world involving Search Engine Optimization would be simple, quick and a one-time task to check off a list. An organization would create a website, optimize its content for target keywords and promote the site. Soon, the website would acquire a strong number of inbound links and start ranking for those target keywords. End of story.

Unfortunately, that’s just not the case. In reality, SEO isn’t just about adding keywords and linking. SEO is increasingly social and sits at the intersection of multiple business functions outside of marketing including public relations, customer service, recuitment and branding.

Ongoing SEO consulting is an important part of any internet marketing mix. Truly good consultants save companies significant expenses and contribute to increased leads and sales by providing unique expertise and insight into the technical, creative and increasingly social sides of internet marketing.

If MacGyver has taught us anything, it’s that you don’t need big expensive tools to get the job done. The same goes for blogging.

There are plenty of free blogging tools and resources to do everything from creating SEO friendly sites to keyword research and analytics. Why spend the money on a tool when you could use that money on internet marketing services or to grow your company?

Here are 13 free blogging tools and resources that MacGyver would be proud of.

WordPress

MacGyver would surly use the most popular, customizable, powerful, and completely free, blogging software on the internet. WordPress offers a large number of feature and hundreds of plugins that will make any blog successful. From newbies to web design professionals, WordPress is a great choice for ease of use, search engine optimization and price.

Online Marketing Blog continues sharing Minnesota-based social media expertise with the next installment of our MiNterview series.

Connie Bensen is a key voice amongst online Community Managers. Her blog is recognized as a leading resource for cultivating online communities and providing best practices for this emerging role. She also provides mentorship and inspires individuals to explore this new career. Connie is the Director of Social Media and Community Strategy at Alterian, which provides leading marketing products for the enterprise.

Please describe your personal evolution in becoming a community strategist and explain what that role is?

Here we are near the end of 2009 and at the last Search Engine Strategies conference of the year.  While many conferences are down in attendance, SES Chicago actually beat last year’s numbers by about 100, according to Matt McGowan, VP, Publisher & Head of US at Incisive Media, the company that owns SES.

There are many ways to get value from attending a conference but one that is especially important, and often overlooked, is the ability to connect with industry thought leaders and ask important questions.

While roaming the sessions, exhibit hall and networking events at SES Chicago, I did just that and decided to use my trusty iPhone 3GS to capture some insights on what marketers should be focusing on or considering in 2010.