This post is about Congratulations, Convergence and Content.

First off, congrats to Aaron Kahlow on his great news, I’m sure UBM TechWeb will be pleased with OMS, it’s an impressive event with a great following. Speaking of OMS, despite the wimpiest Minnesota Winter in years, February is a fine time to go somewhere warm and luckily, OMS and SES Search & Social Accelerator in San Diego are coming up fast Feb 6-9, 2012.

Online Marketing Summit has grown quickly and the annual event in San Diego boasts an impressive roster of topics, training opportunities and speakers. The conference kicks off with an Online Marketing Bootcamp, then 3 days of OMS sessions on every topic under the Online Marketing sun.

OMS is probably one of the most hands on, practical and well-rounded events you could attend as an internet marketing practitioner. When client side marketers, who are often responsible for a range of disciplines within a company from Search to Social to Email, ask me about good events to attend, the OMS Annual conference is one I recommend.

In Avinash Kaushik’s post today, “The 2015 Digital Marketing Rule Book. Change or Perish” one of his 7 Rules for Digital Marketing Revolutionaries concerns the need for marketing practitioners (applies to professionals of all types) to extend their expertise beyond core skills. “You can no longer be good at just one thing, or two. It is a 10-thing world now (and maybe a 20-thing world soon).” Events like OMS and SES Search and Social Accelerator are excellent opportunities for marketers to expand their skill sets.

You’ll get to learn from brands like: HP, Bing, General Motors, Adobe, Salesforce.com, SAP, Caterpillar, AOL, NCR, BabyCenter and many more B2C and B2B marketing experts. There’s also great group of industry experts, too many to mention but they’ll cover everything from online marketing strategy to SEO, to PPC, to Social Media to Analytics and more.

My part of all this fun will include a solo session on strategic integration of SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing. Here are the details:

Optimize THIS: Integrating Social, SEO & Content
Learn the principles and best practices of optimizing content and social media participation for better marketing performance. Customer behaviors and expectations are shifting, platforms are continuously evolving and the moving target of SEO has just put a blindfold on you. You could keep optimizing for individual keywords and pages, or you could take a step back and look at the bigger picture of how consumers Discovery, Consume and Engage with content.

Optimize THIS will reveal an entirely new way to look at the notion of Optimization by presenting a model for Attracting, Engaging and Inspiring customers through optimized and socialized content marketing.  The principles of this presentation come from my new book, Optimize, which will come out in March at SXSW.

The SES Search & Social Accelerator portion of OMS is a full day of advanced topics programmed by Andrew Goodman, aka the guy “Who wrote the book on Google AdWords” and Bill Hunt, one of the SMARTEST internet marketers on the planet. Really, he is. Sessions range from Marty Weintraub preseting on “The Art Of Data-Driven Social Marketing” to “Channel Surfing: Measuring Profit & ROI Across Channels” with Morgan Vawter. This is one of those events where you’ll definitely want to “bring your brain”.

For my part of SES Accelerator, I’ll be presenting on the convergence of social SEO and content with Arnie Keunn of Vertical Measures. Both Arnie and I have written books (Accelerate & Optimize) about this topic that is redefining what SEO really means. We’ll each provide practical ideas on how to develop a customer-centric “optimize and socialize” approach to attracting and engaging customers through search. We’ll be answering key questions about how to best leverage content as a search optimization asset as well as the role of social media and it’s impact on today’s consumer search experience.  I’m biased, but it’s going to be a kick ass session. Here are the details:

Feb 9 – 9:50 am
The Convergence of Search, Social and Content Marketing
The Google Panda update just made great content critical. Social media is grabbing all the headlines. Search gets more powerful every year. But how do they all play together? How do you increase your odds of being found both in search and social media? How will you consistently create content your a will enjoy? Join this panel as they provide case studies and walk you through a step-by-step approach that any organization can follow to grow their business online.

If you’re considering OMS and SES Accelerator, I’d highly recommend it. When you register, use the code: TOPRANK10 and get 10% off.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. | Convergence & Integration of Content Marketing with Social Media & SEO | http://www.toprankblog.com

This was the first SES for our new Marketing Manger at TopRank, Ashley Zeckman, who stepped up to the plate and liveblogged the event for us. She did a great job and her posts were well received by Online Marketing Blog readers as well as other online publications that picked up her posts. Below is a summary of her blog posts, an embedded TopRank Online Marketing presentation on Social, SEO & Content Marketing, responses on Twitter and a few of my favorite photos from the event.

• Grab Your Jacket – The Windy City Blows In Big Talent For SES Chicago 2011
• What Chicago’s Best Restaurants Can Teach Us About Search & Social Media Marketing
• Are You A Guilty Marketer? Opening Keynote at #SESCHI by Mikel Chertudi of Adobe
• 7 Principles for User Generated Content: Michael DeHaven SES Chicago 2011
• Search, Social, & Content Work Together at SES Chicago 2011
• Hello Local, Meet Social – Learning the Basics at SES Chicago
• 5 Essential Tips on Content Marketing & Optimization #SESCHI

The room was absolutely packed for the Convergence of Search, Social & Content session with Aaron Kahlow, Arnie Keunn and myself presenting. Here’s an embed of my portion of the panel presentation covering Optimization as a State of Mind and focusing on optimizing for customers as well as content discovery, consumption and engagement.

The presentation was well received by the attending audience and on Twitter:

Also, here are a few of my favorite photos from the show. You can find more on our Flickr set for SES Chicago as well.

Mike Grehan opening up the Conference

Opening keynote by Mikel Chertudi of Adobe

Technorati President Charles Black, Jonathan Allen of Incisive Media and Aaron Goldman of Kenshoo presenting on the Automating Social Media panel.

Bryan Eisenberg, Lee Odden, Aaron Kahlow, Matt McGowan & Bill Hunt

The Expert Roundtables were a bit hit throughout the conference. Here’s Bill Hunt holding court on Enterprise SEO.

TopRank Online Marketing’s Ashley Zeckman liveblogging the conference

Audience ready and waiting for smart insights on Social Media, SEO and Content Marketing

Thank you to the gang at Incisive Media that make the SES conferences possible including (but certainly not limited to) Marilyn Crafts, Laura Roth, Jonathan Allen, Mike Grehan, Matt McGowan the other members of the SES Board of Advisors and especially attendees and sponsors. Our next SES event with be SES Accelerator in San Diego Feb 2012 along with Online Marketing Summit (congrats Aaron!).

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | SES Chicago 2011 Wrap-Up – Best #SESCHI Ever | http://www.toprankblog.com

Can Customers Find Your Content?

Content creation is so much more than marketing, it is a way of engaging and enticing potential customers to take action.  Optimized content can make sure that customers interact with your brand.  There are many types of content that companies publish and many different audiences that a company should interact with.  Content creation is one of the most effective form of online marketing, it also happens to be the most difficult.

Tip 1: Popular B2B Content Tactics

If 90% of B2B marketers are using content creation as part of their tactics what are the most popular tactics for releasing this information?

• Social Media
• Articles
• Events
• eNewsletters
• Blogs

Tip 2: What Can Be Searched Can Be Optimized

Any type of content that shows up in a result from a search engine is an opportunity for optimization.  What are some examples of content that can be optimized?

• Products and Services
• Corporate Information
• News/Press Releases
• Help, FAQ
• Knowledgebase
• Job Listings
• Landing Pages
• Fulfillment
• Curated/Aggregated
• Media: Video, Audio, Images
• Blogs
• Tweets
• Status Updates
• Comments
• Tags
• MS Office Docs
• PDF files

Tip 3: Customers Use Multiple Resources

Odden asked members of the audience if they have ever asked for something such as a restaurant recommendation from their social network and then took that information and validated it using a search engine.  It was a unanimous yes!  Be aware that accuracy and multiple points of communication and information will make it much easier for customers to find and interact with your brand.

Tip 4: Identify Your Customer Segments & Personas

There is a set of questions that each company should ask themselves about their customer’s online behavior before launching a content strategy.  Those questions would include:

• What are your customers content preferences?
• How do they discover, consumer, and share content?
• What are they looking for on search engines and discussing on the social web?

Tip 5: Ideas For Creating Better Content

In addition to content planning and an implementation strategy there are six very helpful ideas for creating content as part of an online strategy.

• Engage with your community an pull from that experience
• Don’t be afraid to ask for topics
• Look at popular questions on sites such as Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Q/A for inspiration
• Mine web analytics data to determine which keywords and questions drive traffic
• Review the logged queries from your internal search engine
• Turn to your staff to see what they are being asked most often
• Monitor Journalist queries on HARO for story ideas

Key Takeaways

A holistic approach to content creation and optimization proves to be more sustainable long term.  As we saw there are many ways to optimize current content (in multiple forms) and create better content based on the information that can be collected about your customers.  Were there any other tips that members of the audience found to be useful in our journey through content creation today?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | 5 Essential Tips on Content Marketing & Optimization #SESCHI | http://www.toprankblog.com

A Best Practices Approach with Gregg Stewart

Did you know that roughly 20% of all Google searches have local intent?  When you look at mobile data that number is even higher.  These statistics alone should show us as marketers how important a online local strategy is for improving engagement.

Checking the Box Won’t Work

While website All Facebook says that 96% of small businesses are on Facebook, Mashable.com says that 64% of small businesses think that social media is unnecessary.  Part of what this data tells us that many companies are simply checking the box, but aren’t sure how to properly utilize social media marketing channels.

Caution: Mistakes Ahead

Stewart stated that the biggest mistake that advertisers trying to go local make is focusing on the wrong data.  Often advertisers will say that the number of clicks on the website are not improving, or the e-commerce on the website isn’t that great.  Consumers are looking for your business in a variety of places and they expect that information to be readily available and accurate.

Local + Social Best Practices

When implementing a local and social media strategy there are some key factors that are part of a best practices approach including:

• Accuracy
• Distribution
• Signal Strength
• Enrichment

A “SoLoMo” Strategy by Benu Aggarwal

Presenter Benu Aggarwal did a great job of highlighting the importance of of a social, local, and mobile strategy and the importance of integration between the three.  A common theme for both presenters was the emphasis on consistency across multiple channels.  In addition to remaining consistent what else should you know about a social and local strategy?

The Why, Who, & How of Social + Local

Successful local and social strategies are built upon a strong foundation.  What questions should be taken into consideration when building a strategy?

• Why should you connect with your audience?
• Who should you be connected with?
• How are you going to connect with them?
• What is your audience talking about?
• Where are they socializing?

Participate in Active Conversations

Relevant and active participation in online conversations can go a long way.  What are some examples of this interaction?

• Connect with brand evangelists in your area
• Respond to direct questions about great places to stay before your competition does
• Connect with users who have the power to influence others

Exploring Local Trends on Twitter

Twitter’s search capacity is better than you may think.  What are some ways you can better utilize twitter from a local perspective?

• Reach out to users instead of waiting for them to come to you
• Explore discussions that are happening in your target markets
• Insert yourself into existing conversations in a productive manner

5 Ways to Enhance your Foursquare Business Page 

Foursquare Business Pages can be tricky.  Aggarwal recommends the following enhancements:

• Optimize your banner
• Use keywords and bullet points
• Link to other key online channels
• Create list of local interest categories
• Leave compelling and engaging tips on local businesses

Local + Social Media Key Takeaways

• Manage your listings effectively
• Continue to place importance on UGC (user generated content)
• Users like both search and social media
• Define your goals, target audience, and know where they are
• Leverage the most popular channels
• Optimize across all channels
• Integrate social, local, offline, and online channels

If executed correctly a local and social media marketing strategy can work wonders for gaining popularity, improving brand awareness, and increasing revenue.  A main focus of this session was on consistency across channels.  Are you incorporating local and social in your online marketing mix? What are some of your best tips?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | Hello Local, Meet Social – Learning the Basics at SES Chicago | http://www.toprankblog.com

• Aaron Kahlow, Chairman & Founder, Online Marketing Summit & SES Advisory Board (@omconnect)
• Arnie Kuenn, President, Vertical Measures (@arniek)
• Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board & CEO, TopRank Online Marketing & SES Advisory Board (@leeodden)

Kahlow Presents the What, Why, How, and Who of Search, Social, and Content

Aaron Kahlow focused on some very basic but essential areas that all marketers should focus on when creating a campaign either online or offline. In regards to search, social, and content he had this to share:

What is Convergence?
According to Kahlow what convergence really means is that it’ is important to understand how these disciplines work together and how they impact each other.

Why is it Important?
If marketers are able to figure out how to leverage search, social, and content efforts the return on investment can be so much greater.

How Does Convergence Make A Difference?
By incorporating search, social, and content in multiple locations you are able to set next steps for prospects. An example would be leading users to a landing page that also allows them to like your Facebook page, follow you on twitter, get a link to a free white paper or fulfillment piece.

Who Should Be Participating?
Each and every one of us as marketers has an opportunity to participate and should take the next steps necessary to get involved.

Research & Idea Generation for Content with Arnie Kuen

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for clients is trying to come up with ideas for content that will engage customers. If a prospect is searching online one of two things will happen. They will find you, or they will find your competitors.

Why Should You Focus On Content?
A study conducted by GroupM Search found the following:

• 93% of all buyers online or in stores use search prior to making a purchase
• 86% of searchers conduct non-branded queries.
• 94% of buyers click on organic links versus 6% on paid links for branded queries.

What is the Path to Success?
Kuen provided a series of steps that will not only build foundational success but allow for killer implementation. Included were:

• Start with keyword research
• Do online research
• Determine types of content to create
• List the possibilities
• Put together a calendar

If Peanut Butter & Jelly Could Talk with Lee Odden

Marketers often get in the habit of optimizing strictly for keywords. What marketers should focus on is optimizing for customers and optimizing for outcomes. Odden went on to compare search, social, and content to a PB&J sandwich. It simply wouldn’t be the same without all of the ingredients. According to Odden Peanut Butter is the SEO, Jelly is the social media, and Bread is the content.

Optimized State of Mind
The evolution of SEO will continue to keep marketers on their toes. It is important that marketers understand that anything that can be displayed in search results can be optimized. By making sure that your content is optimized for keywords related to the audience you are trying to reach will put you on the path towards success.

Optimize For Consumer Behavior & Engagement
Knowing what it is that influences your customers is key in determining an content marketing strategy. Some examples of optimizing for consumer consumption would include determining the following:

• What devices do your consumers use?
• What format of information do they prefer?
• What different types of media can be used?
• What types of information would be useful?
• What time of day and frequency would they prefer?
• What topics and keywords are important to them?

Search, Social, and Content Takeaways

• Always know what, why, how, and who of creating a search, social, and content strategy.
• Research is essential in creating an educated marketing plan.
• Build the foundation for success.
• Take a customer centric approach
• Practice proactive optimization

Trying to find the forest through the trees can prove very difficult as it relates to marketing search, social, and content planning. However, what we learned from the speakers today was that doing your homework and building your plan the right way can produce enormous return on investment. I’m curious to know what process you as marketers have found works for creating an integrated online marketing strategy?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | Search, Social, & Content Work Together at SES Chicago 2011 | http://www.toprankblog.com

What Was the Response?
The chocolate was called everything from waxy, to too sweet, messy, and melt in your mouth goodness. In contrast the packaging created by the Ghirardelli marketers was quite different, “take time to slow down and feel yourself melt with each bite.” As you can see the professional marketers took a much different approach than the consumers.

The Marketer vs. the Consumer
According to DeHaven 80-90% of total content on many major ecommerce sites is written by end users who come to the site and give their opinions or post reviews. He then proceeded to provide a few examples of what companies believed the best keywords for their product or services were and the actual keywords consumers used to describe the business. In both of the examples listed below the keyword lists were not at all aligned.

Restaurants
Marketing Keywords: romance, fine dining, gourmet food
User Generated Keywords: great drinks, partying, view

Cosmetics
Marketing Keywords: cleanser, gentle, healthy looking
User Generated Keywords: soap, younger, looking great

7 Principles of User Generated SEO

#1: Don’t Forget SEO Fundamentals
While user generated content can be extremely powerful it is important not to forget the basics such as link building, optimization, and proper tagging.

#2: Search Engines Get Bored
When Google bots are crawling your website they are looking for fresh and relevant content. If the bots return week after week and the content has not changed they become “bored” and will be less likely to return. In order to remain competitive in the online marketplace frequent updates are a must.

#3: The Primanti Principle
A Primanti sandwich is unique because of the French fries inside the sandwich. If you add too many fries to the Primanti it can become overwhelming for the user. Similarly as a marketer you want to make sure that you aren’t overwhelming Google with too many “French fries” but a reasonable combination of foundational information and user generated content.

#4: Beware of Dilution
Typical product descriptions are optimized and written by professional marketers, user reviews are not. While user generated content is important it has it’s place. Beware of what too much user generated content can do for your SEO.

#5: Unlock the Long-Tail Vault
Marketers are constantly working to determine what keywords users are typing and which ones will drive the highest ROI. An additional challenge is determining which content should be housed on the top-level domain and which ones are better suited for microsites.

#6: Ask For Content at Relevant Times
Spending time to determine when your audience will be most willing to write a review and determining their level of qualification for submitting a review is key. If you’re promoting a concert emailing attendees the morning before the concert and asking them to share their photos on the site is a great way to entice user generated content.

#7: Convert Reviewers into Advocates
It is important that marketers set next steps for reviewers. An example provided was that of a user that wrote a laptop review and then spent the next hour (in the middle of the work day) answering over 130 laptop questions asked by other users. If that user had a great experience using the laptop think of the number of people they are reaching and advocating to on behalf of the company selling the laptop.

I really enjoyed that DeHaven’s presentation covered the ways that content can be generated by users but also what we must do as marketers to facilitate, moderate, and encourage user generated content.

I’m curious to know how much of your content you believe is generated by users? If the number is low, do you have a plan for increasing interaction? If the number is high, what have you done well that encourages users to generate content on your behalf?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | 7 Principles for User Generated Content: Michael DeHaven SES Chicago 2011 | http://www.toprankblog.com

• How the value of what marketers do is often viewed incorrectly
• Mistakes that many marketers are guilty of
• What questions marketers should ask themselves in order to invest marketing dollars appropriately

Changing the Marketing Conversation
Often times, as marketers we talk too tactically

Many marketers today still refer to marketing dollars as “spend”, “budgets”, or “cost centers”. One of the things that Chertudi urges online marketers to do is change the conversation. What does this mean?  Organizations should begin considering marketing costs as an investment and not just a cost. Instead of focusing on the “burn rate” we are urged to focus on determining if our investment is large enough to fuel the growth of the company. This will enable marketing to be properly viewed as a means of growing the organization instead of being perceived as a cost center.

Alleged Counts of Being Convinced Guilty
What we know we should do better, but don’t

Marketers often are aware of the areas within their department that require improvement but they simply don’t take the time to make adjustments. What are the different types of marketers and what are they guilty of?

• Guilty Marketers: Those knowingly operating in a suboptimal fashion and wasting budget.
• Wishful Marketers: Those hoping their efforts are positively impacting business but are lacking evidence.
• Clueless Marketers: Those that should know better, but no one has stated the obvious.

The 7 Counts of Marketing Guilt
1. Lack of clear strategy and objectives
2. Sloppy efforts to track and measure
3. Assuming Too Much
4. Too much science
5. Too much art
6. Short-term vs. long-term oriented
7. Unauthentic

Negligent Acts of Wishfulness aka Cluelessness
According to Chertudi there are 3 types of negligent acts committed by marketers on a regular basis.

Misunderstanding the Business: Organizations often invest funds into the top of the funnel without understanding how it truly impacts the bottom line. As marketers we need to really understand how it is that our business operates.

Organizational and Tactic Silos: Considering the impact that one form of marketing has on another is key in forming strategy. By properly utilizing technology we can better understand these silos and how they work together.

Improperly Attributing Attribution Models: The majority of marketers are not aware of what models they are using. If you don’t understand the difference between last click, first, all, even, and weighted models you are leaving money on the table as a result.

Investing Correctly
Questions that every CMO should Ask

1. Which words do we use? As marketers it is important to shift focus from marketing spend to ROI by quantifying results in terms of sales.
2. Do we validate what we assume to know? If we are making assumptions we should be aware of how largely these assumptions impact our bottom line.
3. Do we have a clear way to measure and track results? Proper implementation of marketing measurement tools and the diligence to de-duplicate results if needed will help us to track our results.
4. Attribute to the real results and what are the financial outcomes? Tracking the impact of marketing results and the financial outcomes is essential for proper measurement.
5. Can we attribute attribution correctly? Over 98% of marketers cannot do this correctly because they do not have the right set of tools.
6. Is your marketing department behaving like a team? Each segment of your marketing department is working towards a common goal of increased sales. Knowing how each of these marketing initiatives works and what impact they have on growth something that all marketers need to know.
7. Can you balance the left brain and the right brain? There needs to be a proper balance between art and science. Just because something works doesn’t mean that it is always the correct course of action.

Depending on the size and nature of your business there are many impacts large and small that marketing investment can have on your company. It is imperative that marketers continue to focus on accountability and real measures of attribution as they impact the bottom line.

For our readers, I’m curious to know what marketing “sin” are you most guilty of? What do you know you should be doing better but haven’t been able to? Is Marketing viewed as an “investment” or a “cost center” in your organization?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | Are You A Guilty Marketer? Opening Keynote at #SESCHI by Mikel Chertudi of Adobe | http://www.toprankblog.com

I’m going to be visiting the windy city for SES Chicago this week and have been trying to figure out where to explore if I can find some time while I’m there. I always enjoy a great meal so turning to search engines and social media platforms was an obvious answer for me to find great restaurants.

Understanding how end consumers use search and social to find and discuss your business online is key in creating an effective online marketing strategy.  The more that you study and adapt your strategy to positively impact new customers, the more successful your social media strategy will be.

What Would You Search For?

When assembling an optimized social media strategy it is important to get in the mindset of your audience. That means thinking about search as well as social since the discovery experience often involves both.  Put yourself in the mind of your customer: What search phrases would you use to find what you were looking for?

The easy choice for researching keywords is the free Google AdWords Keyword Tool. If you’re a restaurant owner in Chicago that expects online customers to find the restaurant and book reservations, it’s essential to know the most relevant and popular keywords searched on a monthly basis.

Below is an example of a keyword search that I completed as it relates to finding a great restaurant in Chicago. Many social media strategists don’t consider researching keyword phrases, but it is imperative that you are aware of the different variations of keywords that can be used to locate your business. Customers might start the process of finding a restaurant with search first, before going to their friends and asking for recommendations.

Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool will show keyword competitiveness, monthly searches per month and additional keyword ideas. Now you can use those phrases as inspiration when creating social content that is a little more search friendly (optimized) socially. Other keyword research tools include: WordTracker, Wordstream and Ubersuggest.

Takeaway #1: Know Your Audience.

By getting into the search mindset of your audience you are more equipped to develop a need based social media marketing strategy.  Customers looking for services and things like restaurants often go to their social networks and ask for recommendations and then to a search engine like Google to get more information. Other customers will start the process at Google and then ask their friends for opinions about what they found in the search results. Either way, it’s important to use the tools available to you in order to understand how customers are using search and social so your marketing can be present at the moment of need.

Provide Value To Your Followers (and prospective followers)

Twitter provides a great deal of information when it comes to seeing what users (and businesses) have to say about a phrase like the “best restaurants in Chicago.” What I typically find is a good mixture of user generated content as well as businesses that have incorporated my search term into their social keyword strategy. In fact, one of the  top 5 tweets related to my search term was published by a restaurant.

Rosebud Restaurants (@RoseBud_Chicago) is a search result created by a business as part of a social strategy. Marketers within any industry can take note of the way that RoseBud Chicago has optimized for keywords and worked to provide useful information to their followers. The content is clever, engaging, and links to their Facebook page which displays mouth watering photos of select menu items.

Takeaway #2: Provide Value.

Worthwhile content can go a long way.  Although you may not have photos of your products or services on display there are still things of great value that you can provide.  Perhaps a series of white papers or news articles that are relevant to your audience will entice them to research you further and take next steps.  If you don’t provide valuable information to your potential customers someone else will.

Don’t Sit and Wait: Be Sure to Engage Your Followers

Interaction is key when executing a social media strategy.  I think that sometimes we lose sight of the fact that social media should be a combination of sales and marketing.  Simply pushing out information will not get results.  The more that you can engage your audience and encourage them to share and act, the more willing they will be to come back for more and tell their network to do the same.  Another Chicago establishment that I think is doing a good job of this is Protein Bar Chicago (@proteinbarchi). Not only is Protein Bar Chicago responding to tweets but they are also asking engaging questions to inspire next steps.

Takeaway #3: Engagement is good for business.

Simple acknowledgment of fans and followers helps build the relationship between a customer and a service provider.  Asking engaging questions and providing timely response to questions can have a very large impact on brand loyalty and business.

User Generated Content Can Have a Large Impact

Think outside of the box when it comes to online sharing.  While it is true that some users (like myself) will turn directly to their social networks, others may not.  If someone goes to Google and searches for the “best Chicago restaurants” are the results on the first page likely to be typical social media profiles? Chances are that they wont.  By utilizing sites that allow for user generated content this opens up a whole new world of possibilities.  For review websites such as Yelp, Zagat, and UrbanSpoon, users provide detailed information about the restaurant atmosphere, price, menu, service, etc.  Remember, happy customers can equal brand advocates.

Takaway #4: Keep customers happy and encourage them to share.

Do you know what sites your target audience uses to voice their opinions about products or services such as yours?  By identifying these platforms in addition to standard social media sites that you should have an active presence on you are poised to cover bases that your competition may not have considered.

What Now?

I know that in this post I have provided a very small example of how one industry can connect and engage customers through search and social media, but I challenge you to apply it to your own company and to think about the following questions and how they relate to your target audience:

• What is your audience searching for?
• What are the problems that your product/service solves?
• What makes your product/service different from competitors?
• What can you do to differentiate your business and engage prospects and customers online?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | What Chicago’s Best Restaurants Can Teach Us About Search & Social Media Marketing | http://www.toprankblog.com

#1 – Winning! Measuring Social Media Success

While I doubt that Eli Goodman and Tami Dalley will be channelling Charlie Sheen I am still very interested to hear their take on measuring the success of social campaigns.  I would recommend having your social media metrics handy if possible ( I know I will), so that you can apply the speakers instruction on estimating the value of your fans and followers in real time.  Who knows, we may find that we score better than anticipated.

#2 – Information Architecture for the Modern Website

This session featuring Shari Thurow really caught my attention.  Why?  As marketers and SEO professionals we are mostly aware of best practices for optimizing a site and making it search friendly.  But what about the site structure and content flow?  Is it user friendly? Does it allow my audience to get to where they want to go as hassle free as possible?  As the online landscape evolves I for one intend to learn as much as I can to help my company engage our audience.

#3 – Conversion Tools of the Master Crafstman

Having the right tools in your arsenal can quantify a companies social media strategy.  However, when shopping around the question always arises: do I use the tools that are free and might have limited capabilities, or go for the Ferrari that may be outside of the current budget?  Author Bryan Eisenberg will be providing the audience with the lowdown on tools (free and paid) that assist with identifying and fixing web conversions.  Also, be sure not to miss Bryan’s guest post on the TopRank Online Blog next week which will have a preview of some of the tools he recommends.

#4 – The Convergence of Search, Social, and Content Marketing

Working with Lee Odden I’ve come to realize just how important the combination of search, social, and content really is.  I am curious to hear the methods that the panel moderated by Anne Kennedy and featuring Aaron Kahlow and Arnie Kuenn recommends for combining the three to target and engage an audience.  I am also very interested in the step-by-step case studies that will be provided as examples for compiling a list of our own successes for our clients.

#5 – Keynote – Search: Where to Next?

I have my own ideas on where search will be within the next year or two, but five to ten years?  No clue!  Thursday morning’s keynote moderated by Anne Kennedy and featuring speakers Eli Goodman, Zephrin Lasker, Alan Osetek, and Dana Todd will provide insight into the next generation of search and what it means for marketers.  I would be prepared to take great notes during this session so that you can begin dialing in your strategy for not only 2012 but what you should be on the lookout for in the years to follow.

#6 – Content Marketing Optimization

If it can be searched it can be optimized.  Makes sense right?  So much of the social web has become focused on content creation, promotion, and optimization.  What is the point of creating all of this useful content if your audience can’t find it?  This session by Lee Odden will provide strategies and tactics for executing on a successful content strategy while keeping optimization and search in mind.

And Don’t Forget To Network

As a conference attendee I’ve found that I often learn just as much while networking as I do during the sessions.  While I wouldn’t recommend charging at the presenters from across the room when you spot them I would ask that you keep a couple things in mind:

1. If you have a question that you would really like answered be sure to write it down during the session so that if you do catch the attention of a presenter you have a clear and concise question to ask.
2. Attend the conference organized meals if possible.  This is a great opportunity to get to know other people within your industry and learn from their experiences.

I hope to see all of you at SES Chicago in a few weeks.  Be sure to follow the conference buzz on twitter under hashtag #SESCHI.  Check out SES Chicago’s information page for a full schedule of sessions and training.  TopRank will also be live blogging and tweeting at the event @toprank, @leeodden, and @azeckman for those of you who don’t already follow us.

Are there some great sessions you’ll be attending that I didn’t include?  Feel free to share your top picks for SES Chicago by commenting on my post.  Also, if you’re a foodie like me and you have an opportunity to explore the city, Chicago Magazine recently released a list of the 22 best new restaurants in Chicago.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | Grab Your Jacket – The Windy City Blows In Big Talent For SES Chicago 2011 | http://www.toprankblog.com

Susan is a real pioneer when it comes to Online Marketing and media. She’s the CEO at Personal Life Media and hosted the famous DishyMix podcast since 2005 interviewing numerous digital marketing industry leaders. Besides serving on the board of several technology companies, Susan is the founder of two industry associations, the IAB and the ADM. At SES San Francisco, Susan will be talking about Conversion Triggers and Persuasion Strategies for Digital Marketers.

The power of persuasion and the role it takes within online content marketing is really a key aspect of online marketing and something that has had a lot more play in the advertising world than SEO or PPC. In this excerpt of our recent interview, Susan gives a preview of her SES keynote and talks about how she’s learned from experience the value and best practices of “getting into the psyche of your customer” to improve online marketing results.

Lee: Coming up very quickly is SES San Francisco. It’s probably one of the largest Search Marketing conferences in the world. You’ll be doing the opening keynote Tuesday, Aug 16th at 9am. The topic, Conversion Triggers: Persuasion Strategies for Digital Marketers is a really engaging, intersting and compelling topic to me because a lot of what we talk about on our blog and in our consultancy is about empathizing with customers and understanding what their pain points are, what is it that they need and what will inspire them to do what you want them to do.

I’d like to talk about the role of Persuasion Marketing. What is it? What might it mean to an audience of a couple of thousand people who are accustomed to a world of keywords, SEO and link building.

Susan: I can’t think of a better audience to present the concept of Persuasion Marketing to than a group of SESers because everybody in that audience lives and dies by choosing the right keyword phrases and reaching an audience that way. They already have a solid foundation of understanding of how important it is to “get the words right”. So, I feel really lucky to be able to do a keynote for them.

I’ll tell you what I’m really doing: Lee, you know you’re like me. Before we got on the interview today, you said “I’m a constant, a lifelong learner” and I’m with you., We’re both like that and so many of the people who follow us are. They want to know what we’re doing, because they’re lifelong learners too. Since I started the Personal Life Media business and started creating information products, all of my products are sold direct to consumers online.

In my keynote I’m actually going to be presenting a case study. I’m going to tell you what Persuasion Marketing is and then I’m going to show you how I used it. I’m literally today, right in the middle of a 4 day product launch for a brand new product. You’re going to laugh when you hear the name of it: It’s called “Revive Her Drive”. Pretty much every man who’s been in a relationship for more than a couple years is interested in taking the intimate life of his woman to the next level. And a lot of times it goes down instead of getting better. You’d think the more we do stuff the better we get, but a lot of times, life gets in the way.

So, I’ve written over 30 websites in the last 2 1/2 years of my business, selling these online information products. And they weren’t converting. I didn’t know what I was doing. But I really studied the information product marketers. Those guys know how to get someone to land on their page and make a purchase, better than anyone else that I’m aware of. Rememer how we used to say the Adult world were the leaders of information technology and if anyone could figure it out, they could? I don’t think that’s true anymore. It think it’s the information product marketers.

So, I’ve been studying how they do landing page conversion and with Google constantly changing what they want, tier one traffic sources are difficult to get, you can’t do squeeze pages and long form sales letters anymore, it’s a constantly changing landscape. These guys know how to speak to their customers. No matter what the landing page looks like, or no matter what Google’s making you do today to buy traffic from them, they know how to speak to their customer in a way that’s riveting. That connects, that grabs them by the guts and says, “I need this thing.” And that’s what I wanted to learn. That’s what I wasn’t getting right.

For the last 2 1/2 years I’ve been going to school. I’ve found my mentors and I’ve said, “Please gurus, tell me what I need to know. What should I be reading? What should I be learning?” And over the last 2 1/2 years I’ve read a ton of material, I’ve taken a ton of online training. What I did for SES, I pulled it all together and now that I look back and see all that I’ve learned, here are the 10-12 big things that I’d recommend you put your attention on, in order.

What I realized in looking back at all the things that I learned is that Persuasion Marketing is really 4 key elements. I’ve been a tech marketing chick for 30 years now, and I never knew this, I never figured this out until now. And that is, if you understand these 4 basic areas, I think this can have more impact on your conversion rate than anything else you can do. Because everything else is a short term tactic. Whether you’re learning to make Facebook pages convert, or learning the latest in search marketing strategies or whatever it is. Those are tactics that come and go. I’ve learned that from programming so many sessions at so many conferences for so many years. This year it’s search, next year it’s email, next year it’s video. It’s always something new. It’s an arms race for marketers in the technology arena.

But the fundamentals of understanding how to viscerally, emotionally connect with your customers so that they think to themselves, “This brand gets me.” That is a fundamental skill. I looked back at everything I did and it seemed that there are four key areas of knowledge that you need to know, that all fit together, that are “synergistic”, yes I’m using that word again. I’ve decided it’s a good word. I’m not back on “paradigm” yet, but I’m starting to use synergistic.

The four realms of Persuasion Marketing:

The first is Neuro-Marketing – The psychological triggers of influence, persuasion and action that we can get people to take, in a good way, to serve them, help them and not waste their time. We want them to find us and if they’re our person, we want them to know they’re our person and we want to create a relationship with them and support them with whatever it is that we do.

The second piece is Copywriting – This is where search marketers have a massive competitive advantage over any other kinds of marketers because they understand how important words are. They understand semantics, the value of all of that.

The third is Storytelling – This is where you go from, “These are features and benefits” to “Here’s a person who used my product or service and how it changed their life.” We tell a good story in dialog because you know, we all love a good story. When someone tells you, “Let me tell you a story”, your ears perk up.

Last is the notion of Structured Communication – You can think of this as a sales funnel, but it goes a lot beyond that to a series of emotions a customer goes through before they make a commitment to you. What do you need to tell them, in general order, before they’re going to be a “yes” to what you have to offer.

These four areas work together beautifully and each has their own disciplines and logic. When a customer experiences it, it’s compelling.

Lee: And it’s compelling what you just said in terms of what you just said. In terms of the model to go by, my interest is really piqued here. When you talk about storytelling, that’s something that’s been a meme, increasingly and reminds me of something I learned a long time ago: Facts Tell, Stories Sell. I really appreciate you talking about that.

And also the notion of having empathy and understanding of customers and the emotions they need to go through before they can make a commitment. That’s powerful stuff.

Susan: You have to feel your person.

Lee: In the world of SEO or search marketing at large, the ways in which those online marketers are trying to understand consumers, besides collecting data from web analytics or other data sources as part of the buying cycle, is the notion of keyword research. What words are in the mind of the searcher. What does your customer care about? Then that manifests as an action, such as a search. It’s an interesting thing to think of how powerful it would be for a search marketer to tap into the neural marketing aspect of what your talking about, copywriting and storytelling while still being keyword relevant, I think is very compelling.

Susan: What Garth (One of Susan’s Guru’s) taught me was, is that you should enter into the conversation that your prospect is having in their own mind. So when you’re writing to them, the words you should be using, would be the same words they have in their head. Using keywords is a really great start, but there are a lot of other strategies, that I’ll outline at SES. I’m going to show how I used those strategies to create Revive Her Drive.

Lee: SES San Francisco is coming up pretty quickly, August 15th-19th and actually, SES is part of Connected Marketing Week, a Mecca of learning for online marketers. I’m really looking forward to your keynote in the morning on the 16th. Any party advice or tips that you’d like to share?

Susan: The way to think about neuro marketing is to think about a human body and brain being an operating system and that it responds in certain ways to certain influences and triggers. Robert Cialdini teaches you standard sequences of human behavior. He teaches principles, like the principle of contrast: “Normally this sells for $17.95, but today and today only we’re offering it for only $7.95 and here’s why.” So it sounds like an expensive thing for cheap. Or the rule of reciprocity, or the rule of obligation, or the power of consistency which goes to trustworthiness. These are principles that you can learn that are ways humans typically behave when given these conditions. Those principles are really important to understand.

Also, Joel Sugarman’s psychological triggers like, humans’ desire to belong or to collect things. Also, objection raising or objection handling. You can’t start by overcoming people’s objections when you first connect with them, that comes later in the structured communication. You start to understand what we respond to as humans, but where it goes in the funnel of their emotional evolvement. As the relationship is evolving, you’re going to need to deal with as a marketer, these different components. Those are a few things that are important to learn. It makes sense that you start at the core understanding with neuro pshychology, then think about the pictures and the words, then tell stories instead of just bullets, and put it in a proper order. I hope that clarifies, that there’s a way to learn this and way to lay it into your work.

Lee: Yes it does. Thank you Susan!

Be sure to check out Susan Bratton’s keynote at SES San Francisco on Tuesday, August 16th ant 9am. You can also visit her deep library of podcasts on DishyMix.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | SES San Francisco Keynote Interview: Susan Bratton on Persuasion Marketing | http://www.toprankblog.com

I’ve been attending SES conferences since 2005 and while both the online marketing industry and the SES conference have changed quite a bit, that change has spurred continuous innovation to the benefit of attendees, sponsors and speakers. You’ll find many sessions at 90 minutes instead of 45 or 60, so speakers can really get in-depth with their topics. There are also a number of sessions completely programmed by specific advisory board members, an approach that is new to this SES. To Win a Free Pass to SES San Francisco, Read on!

This year I’ve been given the opportunity, no, THREE opportunities to talk about 3 topics that are near and dear: Social Media, SEO and Content Marketing.  And they all happen on the same day! Here’s the lineup:

Thursday, August 18

9:00 – 10:30am – Content Marketing Optimization
The core of any search or social media marketing program centers on content. Digital assets, rich media, web pages, MS Office and PDF docs as well as content created and shared by consumers all offer opportunities for optimization. If it can be searched, it can be optimized!

Online marketing is increasingly competitive and brand marketers world-wide are seeking real advantages that will improve the efficiency and impact of their Social Media and SEO efforts. This session provides unique insight into content based optimization strategies and processes as well as tactics for sourcing, creation and promotion of optimized content on the social web.

Speaker: Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board & CEO, TopRank Online Marketing

10:45-12:15pm – The Convergence of Search, Social & Content Marketing
The Google Panda update just made great content critical. Social media is grabbing all the headlines. Search gets more powerful every year. But how do they all play together? How do you increase your odds of being found both in search and social media? How will you consistently create content your a will enjoy? Join this panel as they provide case studies and walk you through a step-by-step approach that any organization can follow to grow their business online.

Moderator: Greg Jarboe, President & Co-founder, SEO-PR
Speakers:
Aaron Kahlow, Chairman & Founder, Online Marketing Summit
Arnie Kuenn, President, Vertical Measures
Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board & CEO, TopRank Online Marketing

1:15-2:45pm – SEO Track,  SEW Labs – Social SEO
Expanding on the popular site clinic approach, which features live web site audits from leading experts, the SEW Labs Series is a peer-group learning experience. This SEO Lab will have a special focus on Social SEO.

In each 90-minute Lab, the audience will participate with industry experts and search engine representatives in analyzing and auditing attendee web sites and in delving into the topic at hand via lively discussion. Think “crowd-sourcing consultancy” sessions in a live classroom environment.

WIN A FREE PASS: If you would like your website reviewed for Social and SEO best practices, leave a comment below with your website URL and be sure to include your email address in the appropriate form field. I’ll announce which site(s) get picked during SES liveblog coverage.  One lucky winner might even get a FREE PASS to SES San Francisco August 16-18, 2011!

Moderator: Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board & CEO, TopRank Online Marketing
Speakers:
Jonathan Allen, Director, SearchEngineWatch
Ian Lurie, Chief Marketing Curmudgeon and President, Portent
Todd Malicoat, Independent Search Engine Marketing Consultant, stuntdubl

I have to say, this will be a true test to my speaking endurance to have three 90 minute sessions back to back (although there is a lunch break in between) but I’m up to the challenge. The importance of search, social and content marketing along with the accelerating convergence is core to what we practice in our consultancy at TopRank Online Marketing and has been a focus in the writing here at Online Marketing Blog for the past 3 years.  It’s great to see this Online Marketing Trilogy of Search, Social & Content Marketing get the attention it deserves at an event as important as SES San Francisco.

But of course, SES SF isn’t all about TopRank there’s over 100 speakers at Connected Marketing Week and plenty of learning and networking opportunities. I’m looking forward to the opening keynote presentation from my friend Susan Bratton (who I’ll be interviewing here later in the week).  She’s a true pioneer in the digital marketing industry (as Mike Grehan has called her) and will be talking about getting into the psyche of your customers with “Conversion Triggers – Persuasion Strategies for Digital Marketers“.

Beyond the keynote, there are many other sessions covering the gamut of topics ranging from basics to advanced for SEO, PPC, Social Media and Analytics. There are technical topics like WordPress and HTML 5, sessions specifically for in-house Search Marketers, plus sessions on Local to Global Search Marketing.  SES really is one of those “something for everyone” types of conferences.

Be sure to check out the SES San Francisco conference agenda and info. Follow the hashtag #sessf on Twitter and watch for posts on my Google+ account as well to see photos and video from the conference.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | Socialize & Optimize with Content Marketing at SES San Francisco 2011 | http://www.toprankblog.com

The session panel consisted of 2 leaders and veterans of the mobile marketing industry, Deborah Hall and Michael J. O’Farrell.

Deborah Hall

Hall founded web2mobile 3 years ago, frustrated with the user experience when trying to access a site via a smart phone. One of the greatest challenges she noticed was the upload speed, or lack thereof, of sites.

Here are some interesting stats Hall shared regarding when users access their mobile device:

• 80% while shopping in stores
• 17% during movies
• 14% while on a plane
• 7% while in church

Maybe most interesting to mobile marketers, 17% of users have showed a store clerk an image of the product they wish to purchase! This stat is indicative of many of the fringe benefits mobile marketing offers brands. Although these 17% of users didn’t transact via their mobile device, they certainly were informed and aspired through mobile marketing.

To inspire the audience, Hall pointed out a few companies that are emerging as leaders in leveraging mobile technology and highlighted GetGlue. For those new to GetGlue, it is a social network for entertainment where users can check into locations as well as check into “things” (e.g. wine, Will Ferell movies, chess, etc.). The end result is a network where people can theoretically find people in close proximity with similar interests.

Michael J. O’Farell

O’Farrell’s professional experience with mobile predates text messaging and he is the founder of The Mobile Institute – a company that helps clients develop strategies for the mobile marketplace.

During his presentation he, similar to Hall, shared many compelling stats about the growth of mobile marketing. As the session opened for QA, O’Farrell and a crowd member pointed out an interesting benefit to mobile marketing revealed by data collected by Google on search habits: mobile use doesn’t dip. Unlike desktop search, where use on weekends, holidays and evenings drop significantly. That’s simply not the case with mobile, where users are consistent and unrelenting in their activity. These images tell the tale.

As the session continued, the next question needed to be asked. With a timid crowd, Lee thankfully stepped to the plate and asked “What are some tips for the audience on how they can get started?” Both O’Farrell and Hall agreed that the first step is research.

Google Analytics provides data on mobile traffic. Marketers should leverage these numbers to form a picture of their current mobile audience and prioritize their efforts accordingly. That is to say, a company with 3 visitors from mobile devices is not likely to invest the same resources into mobile as a company that has 30,000 mobile visitors.

The next step is understanding how your audience uses mobile. Google Analytics provides data on what Operating Systems (OS) visitors use. This is important and should have a big role in your mobile marketing approach, as different OS’s will require different specs for a mobile site.

Finally, get out there and try. O’Farell and Hall recommend a phased approach where marketers can dip their toes in the water by testing different mobile strategies. There will undoubtedly be some misses at the outset of any mobile marketing effort, but as mobile use continues to grow, there is no denying that it is time take the leap.

Canada is following the United States in adopting smart phones, with 50% of the Canadian population expected to own a smart phone in 2014 (55% is expected in the US).

To learn more, check out these top mobile marketing resources.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | SES Toronto: Smart Mobile Marketing | http://www.toprankblog.com

All kidding aside, Weintraub, CEO of aimClear, is a talented presenter that has a passion for his subject matter, Facebook.  In “Killer Facebook Targeting Tactics” at SES Toronto, Weintraub focused primarily on behavioral targeting. You know, identifying the behavior of your ideal audience and target/market accordingly. Sounds simple until you consider the millions of ways a marketer can slice and dice audience segments in Facebook.

Facebook marketing is a big topic and this presentation was specifically focused on Facebook ad targeting.

One rally cry heard throughout the session was “PPC is to SEO, as Facbook Ads are to social SEO.” Weintraub explains that much like how PPC can spike traffic and help point out opportunities (i.e. keywords that produce at a high rate) and weaknesses (i.e. pages that convert at a relatively low rate), Facebook Ads can do the same for social SEO.

The heart of the session was highlighting unique ways to use Facebook to reach target audiences. But before we get into some of Weintraub’s more creative examples of behavioral targeting, let me point you to some interesting user stats shared during the session regarding the wide dispersion of English speaking Facebook users.  Did you know that there are 13.4 million English speaking Facebook users in the Phillipines alone! The English speaking social media audience is larger than most think.

With the scope of the English speaking Facebook audience in mind, let’s look at some unique examples of how a brand can engage in Facebook Ads.

Literal/Safe Targeting

A hockey equipment company looking to increase online sales could easily turn to Facebook and target men and women who ‘like’ hockey. Or, a music and event promotion company selling Justin Bieber tickets would be wise run ads aimed at girls aged 12-15.

This may not be an groundbreaking approach, but the truth is that this is the safest and most reliable way of targeting an audience.

Lateral/Creative Targeting

Thinking beyond the obvious association, lateral targeting uses some logical assumptions.  For example, from our previous example, Facebook users who ‘like’ hockey are likely to be receptive to ads winter jackets. Hockey is primarily played areas of the world with colder climates. People in colder climates need to stay warm. Winter jackets to the rescue!

Using this approach requires creativity and a willingness to take a chance.

Negative Sentiment/General Disdain Targeting

Fans of the Facebook page I Hate My Neighbor – click the link if you don’t think it’s a real page – are certainly good prospects for a privacy fence company, if not a moat installation company. We know this because of the things that they indicated they don’t like. But let’s take it a step further. Facebook users who ‘like’ the I Hate My Neighbor page are also likely the audience that would be happy to pick up the latest Lewis Black comedy album.

Undoubtedly the least conventional and most dangerous approach to reaching audiences through Facebook Ads.  Proceed with extreme caution if you choose this road and be very transparent with the brand you represent regarding your approach.

These are just a few of the examples shared in the “Killer Facebook Targeting Tactics” session. The underlying message through it all was that Facebook is big and there are opportunities throughout this massive network.  Facebook has 700+ million users. I’m convinced that Weintraub will have figured out some way to market each and every user by the time my plane lands in Minneapolis.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | SES Toronto: Killer Facebook Targeting Tactics | http://www.toprankblog.com

Chris Boggs led a panel discussion at SES Toronto on Competitive Analysis – What tips and tools can get you the vital competitive information that every SEO needs. According to Boggs, “Competitive analysis is one of the most exciting and important tactics (SEOs) can do.

The session was segmented into 3 areas of focus: on site research,off site research and PPC research.

On Site Research

Marios Alexandrou, Rosetta

When conducting on site (i.e. within your competitor’s site) competitive analysis, start by:

1) Asking yourself, “what companies should I look at?”  Compete.com can come in handy here.  Enter a handful of competitors and look for companies with high traffic. These are the companies that will likely have characteristics that will help inform your SEO approach.

2) Assessing your competitors site.  Be sure to divide on site components into 3 categories: Content, Technical and Internal Links.  By segmenting, you can more easily identify their strengths, as well as their areas of weakness.

3) Crawling competitor sites by leveraging crawler tools like Xemu.  This will help determine:

• size of site
• links to internal pages
• popular search term pages
• Google Index

Once you have conducted your research, create a matrix to get a full picture of the competitive landscape. Do this by listing your competitors within excel on the y-axis and cross reference them against criteria (x-axis) like: Targets Long Tail, Optimized Title Tags, Internal Linking, Image Content, etc.

Off Site Research

Ross Dunn, StepForth Web Marketing

One of the most important elements to consider when performing off site research (i.e. looking at factors outside your competitor’s website) is quantity and quality of their external links.

Like on site research, off site analysis by identifying the competitors.  One way to determine your competition is to enter core phrases like “mountain bikes” as well as long tail phrases like “brand x mountain bike parts”. Survey the search engine results page (SERP) for top ranking businesses.  Be sure to weed out wikipedia and other non-competitive sites.

Now that you understand the different players, follow Ross’s tips for off site analysis.

1) Create Advanced Reports within Majestic SEO for each competitor and export the list to excel

2) Manually review top 50 links for each competitor and ask yourself:

• is their anchor text relevant?
• is their relevant on page content?
• do they have quality on page content?

3) Find and highlight shared links among 3 competitors (hub links). These links are likely attainable and have value for your search results.

4) Look for biased links (i.e. hundreds of supposed different all linking to the same page with the exact same anchor text should raise some flags)

Don’t recreate the wheel.  Learn from your competition’s link efforts to elevate your online strategy.

PPC Research

Matt Van Wagner, FindMeFaster

Start your PPC research with the mindset that to succeed you need to go beyond obvious questions like “what keywords are my competitors buying?” to ask questions like “where is the biggest area of opportunity?” Both questions are important, but the latter will help you look past competitive data to focus on the opportunities that can be gleaned from your research.

Quality PPC research tools are plenty, but before you start your research, arm yourself with questions that will help you hone in on key aspects of PPC.

How many ads are they running? How many different messages/offers do they present? Are they using best practices (i.e. do relevant keywords appear in ad titles)? How often do they present new ads? Do they react to bid changes?

With these types of question in mind, here’s a list of some of Van Wagner’s favorite tools for competitive PPC research:

• AdGooroo
• Compete
• iSpionage.com
• Keyword Competitor
• Keyword Spy
• Comscore

Walking into this session, I have to admit that I was looking for the silver-bullet.  The one tool that does EVERYTHING.  The truth, as we all know, is that although there are powerful competitive research programs, your approach to competitive analysis is truly your most powerful tool. Learn from competitors by researching their efforts with a laser-like focus.

To borrow a line from Alexanderou, “copying your competitors doesn’t make you better than them.  It makes you the same.” Determine their strengths.  Determine their weaknesses.  Incorporate these lessons to take your program to another level.

You can learn more about different competitive intelligence tools by reading the “Competitive Intelligence – Search Insider Summit” post.

Stay tuned for more posts from SES Toronto. Follow @TopRank and #sesto on Twitter for real time updates.

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TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | SES Toronto: Competitive SEO Analysis | http://www.toprankblog.com

Essentially, the key questions discussed in this panel centered around what is it that we’re doing as marketers that could be considered as SEO vs. Marketing.  Other topics included: Google +1, personalization, evolving nature of SERPs, “Trust Rank”, analytics and other technical aspects of SEO were discussed.

Moderator: What does search engine optimization mean anymore? The thing about SEO is that there are many technical considerations. What ranking factors still matter? Should we still be considering tags, H1, Titles, etc.

Terry: Title tags are one of the biggest factors.

Jim: Beyond the URL the first thing the search engine will see is the title tag. You can gain a great deal of power from your title tag.

Jim: Being a great SEO isn’t being a magician. It’s about being a great marketer that uses SEO.

Terry: I’ve always followed the Document Object Model to identify what HTML attributes are important for SEO. Then you have other formats like RDFa and microformats.

Jim: It’s important to remember we’re writing for two audiences: people and search engines.

Terry: Spiders don’t buy anything

Jim: Titles help people navigate the website

Moderator:  Is link building a SEO tactic or a marketing tactic?

Terry: Its a marketing tactic. I’ve been link building before I started doing SEO.  If you look at link building without SEO then you’re pretty safe when it comes to Google guidelines.

Audience: How does personalization and Google +1 affect SEO?

Jim: Search engines will continue to innovate and change. Just because things change doesn’t make optimization any less relevant. We may need to change how we do things and use different sets of tasks, but you’re still doing things to make it easy for search users to find your content.

There’s not a lot you can do with personalization when it comes to SEO. Localization and personalization are very close to each other. Except personalization is mostly informed by your behaviors.

Garry: Social is an area where Google wants to move into for signals, but I don’t think they want to have a high reliance on any one source. Google +1 is their attempt to mitigate reliance on external social signal. It does have some correlation between personalization and localization.

Terry: The most important part of personalization, is that when people are logged in, Twitter becomes very important.  Tweets can take up a lot of SERP screen real estate from .  People say +1 is a ranking signal, I don’t believe that.

Terry: As far as personalization, I try to use personas and optimize according to customers. You’ve got to look at audiences, not just keywords.

Garry: Personalization and +1 is still new. We’re going to have to wait a little bit to see it gain some traction and see if it will have an impact.

Moderator: With Twitter, we know Google uses the firehose of data. With +1, content posted can appear on a Google profile and can also appear in real-time search results. Is that SEO or marketing?

Audience: Now that traditional SEO is changing, what are some of the key things we need to be looking at for the “new SEO”

Jim: What’s old is new. In the beginning there was Alta Vista. Search engines of that day were just about acquiring content. Content was king before links became commoditized by Google.

Today, quality content, making your sites accessible and usable is important. Usability is polite. Accessibility is the law.

Audience:  The +1 is all user generated content.  I don’t see anyone outside of techies ever using it. What do you think the shelf life will be?  Also, what about Bing?

Garry: Buzz died pretty quickly because it was so similar to other services. With +1 it depends whether it gets traction or not.

Bing conversion rates overall have been very good with PPC. Bing is also a center of innovation and could be a real competitor.

Terry: +1 really is only known and used by techies. There’s nothing obvious about what will happen with +1 for users, whereas with other sharing buttons, you can tell it’s for Facebook or Twitter.

Moderator: +1 on PPC ads provides better demographic data for advertisers and can positively affect quality score. Google has a lot of data that shows if you integrate social, with display and PPC you get better overall lift.

Panel: Google is a bit naive about how they approach social. They have engineers deciding to make things that will be cool, but don’t really make an effort to explain to users why it’s important. Google +1 is a good example of this. There are many reasons why advertisers and Google would want people to use +1, but not many compelling reasons for people to use it.

Jim: Is SEO dead. SEO dies every day. We spell die wrong. It should be “dye”. SEO is dying, changing every day.

Audience: I’ve not seen having a mobile optimized landing page or site helps your Google ranking on a Google mobile device or search.

Terry: I’m of the opinion that “mobile” sites will be obsolete because HTML5 will improve. Mobile and website from a code perspective will converge.

Garry:  Is an optimized site on mobile a great user experience when you have to pull back on certain features to accommodate mobile limitations?

Terry: If you’re looking at your users with mobile, you’ll give them a different experience than on the web.

Audience: When you’re logged in, it seems everyone has a YouTube or Gmail account these days. How many queries happen when logged in vs. logged out?

Terry: Since caffiene you’re pretty much always logged in.

Garry: If you’ve ever logged in, the cookie will persist whether you’re logged in or not.

Terry: Google is also pulling data from Chrome and the toolbar, whether you’re logged in or not.  Keep in mind advertising networks like Google’s DoubleClick can read those cookies too.

Audience: Can you name the top 10 signals you’d advise someone to use that is a large player, software, international, high end.  That already has #1, #2 ranking positions.  What are your top 10 signals for the “uninitiated”.

Jim:  Titles, description meta tags, text and links

Terry: Title, copy and links

Garry: Agree with Jim. Quality of content is king because that’s what will attract links.

Jim: Site structure and quality of site structure is also important.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | SES Toronto: SEO is Dead. No it’s Not. | http://www.toprankblog.com

The session starts with an inspiring quote on the projector “Keyword Forensics – Exploring the Hidden User Search Behavior for Keywords That Are Often Missed by Keyword Researchers.”

I research keywords!  What am I missing?

Here are some good nuggets from the presentation:

Understand the Difference Between Keyword Research vs. Keyword Forensics

Keyword Research: Researching identified keywords to determine which phrases will provide the most search traffic.

Keyword Forensics: Discovering keyword variations associated with a root word.  According to Alexander, keyword forensics does not begin with any assumptions.  The purpose is to uncover how people search.

Exploring User Behavior

Challenge: One of the challenges one encounters when researching user behavior for most people is the need to lose the “keyword hunt mindset”.  The more you tend to guess at the most logical keywords, the less likely you are to find exactly what phrases people are actually searching.

Solution: Don’t guess or assume search phrases.  Uncover popular keyword phrases in tools like Wordtracker by entering a root word and discovering how that word is most often being used.  For example, entering the root word “buy” will produce variations like “What do people buy?”

Wordtracker 101

Wordtracker is Alexander’s weapon of choice for keyword forensics. Here’s a little Wordtracker 101.

First, enter a root word into the search query. Second, sort by KEI and consider the following:

Keyword Effectiveness (KEI):  The higher the number here, the better. Use this metric to identify popular keyword phrases with little competition.

In Anchor and Title: Count of the number of pages for which the exact keyword phrase appears in both the title tag and as anchor text on the page. This metric gives you an understanding of what kind of keyword focused content needs to be generated to achieve a quality search engine rank.

Think Laterally About Behavior

A person searching for baby names=diaper purchasing prospect. A brand doesn’t need to sell baby names (although that would be an interesting business model!)  in order to provide relevant content. Imagine a diaper company that aggregates all common and uncommon baby names on one site. People searching for baby names, i.e. likely parents to-be, will be introduced to the brand in an organic manner. The diaper brand can then provide special offers or relevant links to visitors so they can learn more about the products or receive discounted pricing.

To wrap up the session in a nutshell, Alexander takes a very creative approach to keyword discovery and encourages others to do the same.  Put even more succinctly, SEOs should discover keywords and not assume them. If you’re in need, here’s a list of keyword research tools you might find useful.

Stay tuned for more posts from SES Toronto. Follow @TopRank and #sesto on Twitter for real time updates.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | SES Toronto: Keyword Forensics | http://www.toprankblog.com

I’m a SEO Account Manager at TopRank Online Marketing – which means I have the enviable job of developing and managing SEO programs for several TopRank clients. One of the many benefits of my job is that I have the opportunity to work daily with some of the most intelligent and forward thinking companies around (you know who you are).  As I head to SES Toronto, I go with my clients’ goals and needs at the front of my mind.

Now that I’m not a complete stranger, let’s get on to the good stuff.  SES Toronto is just around the corner and it’s time to start making the difficult decisions surrounding which sessions to attend.  Here are my 4 “Can’t Miss Sessions” for this year’s SES Toronto conference:

1) Content Marketing Optimization

This is a no brainer.  Although there are numerous SEO strategies, good content marketing is the engine that drives a successful online marketing program.  TopRank CEO Lee Odden (I call him “boss”) leads a presentation on unlocking the SEO potential of a brand’s content.   In the session, Lee will offer insight into how companies can elevate their content-based optimization strategies and increase process efficiencies for content creation and promotion.

My TopRank Account Manager Take: Content development and promotion is core to our work.  The minute I stop proactively looking for ways to elevate our approach to content marketing is the minute our content begins to lose its relevancy.

If you listened to Lee speak before, you know you will walk away with a ton of ideas.  If you haven’t heard Lee speak, you really should.

2) Keyword Forensics

Cleverly titled, this session seems to have the meat to support such a promising name. John Alexander, of SearchEngineWorkshops.com and Search Engine Academy, will focus the session on uncovering keyword variations overlooked by most Webmasters. Alexander also promises to dive into the hidden behavioral trends of different search personas. Understanding these trends will help determine what search results are REALLY most valued by your target audiences.

My TopRank Account Manager Take: This session immediately piqued my interest because I personally view the selection of keywords as the make or break point for a SEO program.  Why?  Keywords dictate strategies and tactics.  Keywords also represent different persona and audience needs.

To start a program with the wrong keywords is akin to heading north to go south=it’s not going to work out well.

3) Competitive Analysis

Search strategies cannot be developed in a vacuum.  Analyzing the competitive landscape and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the competition is key to the development of a successful SEO program.  In Competitive Analysis, Chris Boggs moderates a panel discussion on assessing the competition to:

• determine link acquisition opportunities
• discover untapped types of content
• identify competitive keywords/identifying non-competitive keywords
• uncover avg. ad spend

My TopRank Account Manager Take: There are literally too many tools for surveying and analyzing online marketing competition.  The problem is that when one stops to consider all these options, it can likely turn into the classic: paralysis by analysis.

When a panel of pros meets to share the tools they use to assess the competition, I’m all ears.

4) Killer Facebook Targeting Tactics

As Facebook continues to evolve at an impressive rate, so too do the online marketing opportunities within this 700+ million member social network.  From Facebook Ads to Fan Pages, and Sponsored Stories to Groups; options to target and engages audiences are abound.   Marty Weintraub, President of aimClear, another fine Internet Marketing agency from Minnesota, hosts this Facebook targeting session, with a focus on reviewing some of the most successful Facebook marketing campaigns to identify their common characteristics.

My TopRank Account Manager Take: Too often companies view the success of their social media efforts in terms of Fans, Friends and Followers instead of affecting business outcomes.

The fatal flaw for many companies is the assumption that audiences can’t engage and transact with a brand through their social channels – that those interactions must happen on a corporate website.  Facebook may be the leader in providing companies with a variety of ways to create a rich user experience for their audience.  I can’t wait for this one.

Of course I’ll be sitting in on more sessions than 4, but these are my core.  Both Lee and I will be liveblogging sessions so be sure to watch for the #SESTO hash tag on Twitter, our Facebook page or just come back to Online Marketing Blog.

If you’re new to SES conference, I’d recommend reading this helpful post on how to get the most out of marketing conferences.

Here are the conference details:

SES Toronto
June 13-15, 2011
Hyatt Regency Toronto

There’s a 20% discount for TopRank Online Marketing Blog readers – just use the discount code: TRB20.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | 4 Must See Social Media & SEO Sessions at SES Toronto | http://www.toprankblog.com

And although there was enough Panda talk to make a passerby think we might all be zookeepers, there were other themes running through the conference as well including content, paid strategies and tools, tools, tools.

Here’s a quick recap:

Panda: The Aftermath, as it was called essentially recapped what TopRank and other content advocates have been saying along.

Create unique, quality content that is written first for the target audience and second for the search engines. It’s those who have been living dangerously – or maybe just naively – creating what’s now referred to as shallow content who likely got hit the worst.

Here are a couple items to check if your site is seeing less results than it was pre-panda:
1. Check your content and outline a content plan to create more.
Also, remember that the navigations, call-outs etc that live on each page are considered part of the content. If you don’t have enough unique content on each page to ‘out-weigh’ the navigation, you might run into trouble.
2. Google is now paying more attention to spelling and grammar. If your site is lacking in basic writing skills, fix it up.
3.  Check your internal link structure. If you have links pointing to each page on the site, Google will have trouble determining which pages are truly important.

Next, the paid strategy called retargeting also seemed to have people buzzing. Retargeting is the process of delivering ads to people on the web who have either entered a shopping cart and abandoned, or visited your site – but not entered the shopping cart process.

To get started with retargeting, think about the user action and your next action.
For example, if a visitor abandoned the home page you likely will want them to see a promotional offer featuring the brand.

If a visitor abandoned the shopping cart, you can send them a reminder to complete the purchase or a reminder with a coupon. Think through when and how often you offer the coupon, however, because it doesn’t take long to train a visitor to abandon the shopping cart because they know a coupon is coming.

Overall, if your site is experiencing a high number of exits in the shopping cart process, then retargeting might be a good option for you.

As always lists and tools are popular at a marketing conference and came together as a list of tools! Check out some of the recommended tools:

1. Crazy Egg – helps determine where people are clicking on your web pages, visually
2. Clicktale – use this tool for user session info, advanced link and form analytics
3. Cross Browser Testing – allows you to test different OS, browser, application settings
4. MockFlow – an online wireframe tool for helping when developing a website
5. AttentionWizard.com – a tool for predicting where visual attention exits on a site
6. Clicktale – use for form analytics
7. 4Q, Kample – survey tool to illicit from web visitors why they are on their website and if they are completing their intended tasks
8.  Mongoose Metrics, ifbyphone – for call tracking
9. WebsiteOptimization.com – if your site is known to load slow, this is a tool to help you check the speed
10.  Smush.it, Dynamicdrive – a tool for smushing images

If you attended SES New York 2011, feel free to comment below adding what you thought people were buzzing about this year.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | SES New York 2011 Roundup | http://www.toprankblog.com

After attending search conferences for a few years now, it seems only right that content is getting some time in the spotlight. This week at Search Engine Strategies (SES) New York, I had the great pleasure of presenting on the topic of content marketing.

For so long talk has been about how to optimize and then how to promote – but we’re circling back around to meat and potatoes of online marketing which is the content.

Without it, what are we optimizing and promoting? Oh no, please don’t say it’s your static product pages… Well, if it is (and we’ve all been there), it is most definitely time to look at content marketing and what it can do to take your brand to new levels of customer engagement and acquisition.

The 3 principles to content marketing to keep in mind are:

1. Know Your Audience
Creating content without understanding your target audience is like trying to paddle a boat with a spoon. Not effective and certainly not efficient.

The simplest way to start understanding what type of content your audience is most compelled by is looking at what content receives the most visits, shares, tweets, etc.

This can give you a baseline for both what archetypes (i.e. tips posts) and topics (i.e. content marketing) are most successful.

If you are already creating content and paying attention to what plays and what doesn’t, you might be ready for  the creation of audience profiles or personas.

A next great step in creating content, the creation of profiles will help you further segment your content strategy (see tip 2) in such a way that you appeal to different preferences.

For example, you may find that you have 3 personas to which you need to create content. Let’s call them Bob, Dan and Sherri.

Bob – Younger and engaged; he uses Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, writes a blog, writes reviews and shares photos.

Dan – Slightly older, engaged but less so; he uses Google, LinkedIn (not Facebook) reads blogs (doesn’t write one), but also writes reviews.

Sherri – Younger and engaged; uses Bing as her search engine of preference, uses Facebook (not LinkedIn), writes a blog, shares photos and videos.

Imagine with the clarity of the above 3 personas how you can augment your content strategy to better reach each one and deliver content that they are most likely to engage and share.

2. Create a Content Strategy
Once you understand your audience, you are in a much more informed position to create a content strategy.

Most content strategies start with already existing content, which is OK. But in any competitive market new content will need to be created as well.

Start outlining your content plan by understanding your objectives. i.e. inform an audience, help them with a purchase decision

Then brainstorm the topics that you can create content for and tie them into topical categories and assign each post a keyword group.

Review the content you have planned to ensure you are covering all key topics and accounting for various content archetypes.

3. Analyze & Refine
Like with any marketing, content marketing should have a measurement piece to identify successful content and inform future content creation.

Be sure to look at the basics such as what content received the most visits, shares, tweets, etc.

Then take a deeper dive to look for the unknown. For example, do a search in analytics for the inclusion of a ‘?’ in the referring search phrase to understand what types of questions people are looking to answer. Then, create content that speaks to the topic and ultimately will help drive more traffic.

Tell us below what you have found to be crucial to content marketing success!

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | SES New York: 3 Content Marketing Principles | http://www.toprankblog.com

All of the cities I’ve listed above have many great things going for them, but there’s something about New York that stands the test of time to me as the best city for a search and online marketing conference. This is a timely observation of course, since SES New York is coming up fast, March 21-25.

As a long time attendee, speaker and member of the SES Board of Advisors, I have some insight into how focused the Incisive Media team are at creating a great experience for attendees, sponsors and the media.  Based on that experience, here are 5 reasons why I think SES in New York might be one of the best marketing conference venues worth attending this year:

1. Higher Quality Presentations – The gross number of speakers has been pared down considerably. Rather than panels with 5 or six speakers competing for 10 minutes of presentation time each and just a few minutes of Q & A, there are far more panels with 2 speakers and a moderator. Plus there are many more solo presentations from insanely smart people like Bryan Eisenberg, Bill Hunt and Mike Grehan.

The great thing about fewer speakers is that it gives them more time to drill down into the details. More in-depth presentations means attendees get an opportunity to understand the high level concepts as well as the practical details to act upon once back in the office. It’s virtually impossible to do that in 10 minutes. With more time to present, there’s more time to learn the things you need to know in order to make positive changes in your online marketing.

Of course the topical mix is worth noting as well, covering the gamut of Search, Social Media, Analytics and  specialized tracks from IAB, Reaching the Latino market and in depth training opportunities.

2. Buyers Galore - In my experience, there’s something about SES New York that brings out a lot of company marketers that are not only looking to educate themselves but to source consultants and services. Maybe it’s an East Coast thing or maybe it’s a “Let’s get down to business” attitude that comes with NYC. All I know is, when I come back from SES New York, I always have a great list of new contacts. It’s not enough that there are buyers present though, there must be opportunities to meet and engage. New York provides numerous opportunities to do just that.

3. Agencies Abound - Madison Avenue and the numerous East Coast agencies from nearby cities come out in force for SES New York. Actually, agencies from all over the world attend SES New York including my own, TopRank Online Marketing (yeah, that was a plug).

This is great for a few reasons: You’re looking for an agency to hire, looking to be employed by an agency, seeking new marketing partners with expertise that your agency does not have, conducting competitive intelligence or maybe recruiting. It’s always interesting to see how other agencies package their information.

4. Full Exhibit Hall - Another great place to meet prospects, media, vendors, partners and potential new hires is the exhibit hall. Besides the exhibits themselves, there are usually sponsored happy hours or other events in the hall. SES is very good at selling out their booth space so you can count on a lot of different companies to learn about and connect with. In fact, there will be over 100 exhibitors at this year’s SES New York conference.

For companies attending SES looking for services, especially technology solutions, seeing the CEO or a subject matter expert speak about a case study using their software or online tool and then visiting the booth in the exhibit hall to get details and a demo can be a great combination.

5. It’s New York City, Fuhgeddaboudit – For many, being in New York is enough by itself, but of course the knowledge gain and networking plays a part too. It’s often said that much of the “good stuff” in terms of highly prized secrets of SEO, or other disciplines are traded over food and libations after the event. What better place to network and talk shop informally than at one of the plentitude of diverse restaurants in New York?

If you’ve attended a conference in New York, what’s your favorite thing about having an event there? What were your most memorable experiences?

Check out SES New York’s information page for a full schedule of sessions and training. Also be sure to check out the Content Marketing Optimization panel with TopRank’s Jolina Pettice on Thursday March 24 at 3:15.

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. | SES New York in 2011 – 5 Great Reasons to Get Search Smart in the Big Apple | http://www.toprankblog.com