All about the intersection of search engine & social media marketing, optimization and online public relations.
The Wonder Twins Track at SMX West: SEO and Blogging, provided the audience with information on how to best launch and promote a blog.
Here are 8 tips, from Aaron Wall of SEOBook, on how to gain traction for your blog.
Own a Niche
Make Formatting a Priority
When talking with TopRank or M&O Account Teams about new clients, it is inevitable that I will ask if there is a blog involved. There are simply too many advantages to enabling a web site with fresh, themed content that is well structured for SEO benefits and that also offers a great platform for creative promotion, not to consider it in the online marketing mix. However, the mis-perceptions about what a blog is and is not abound, even with self-described “blogging experts”.
What a week! With most of my time spent at the DM Days conference or sitting in a plane (not flying of course, just sitting on the runway waiting for the stars to line up or whatever control towers are using these days to give the OK for takeoff) I had little time to poke around for new SEM and SEO blogs for our list.
Regardless, we have six additions for this week’s update including two from the UK, two from my home state of Minnesota and one from Massachusetts:
As part of a blog optimization panel I participated in during a recent conference in Australia, I decided to forgo the bulleted list of blog plugins and recommendations that you typically see on such sessions in favor of something more personal.
The presentation focused on 3 of the biggest mistakes we’ve made with Online Marketing Blog in the past 3 years, why we made them (and why others do too), what we learned, what you can do to avoid them and the expected outcomes.
This format was well received, so I thought I’d share them here.
Blogs are useful for many marketing and communication purposes. They’re also useful simply as software that manages content. Businesses can use blogs to communicate a corporate vision, to build thought leadership corporate-wide or for subject matter experts. Blogs can be very useful in support of public and media relations efforts and they are certainly excellent tools for making a site more search friendly with fresh content that attracts incoming links.
When you attend conferences, read blogs or popular search marketing sites you’ll find plenty of subject matter experts in search marketing tactics ranging from search engine optimization to pay per click to local marketing and social media. It’s great to get those specific perspectives, but I get a lot of feedback from businesses that appreciate a more holistic approach to marketing online.
Recently, I was able to do an interview on the online radio show, Online Marketing with RSS Ray talking about an overall approach to using social media, blogs and online public relations.
Guide to link buying - Search Engine Journal
Is Google the dog wagging the search news tail? - Search Day - Search Engine Watch
17 most common PPC mistakes web marketers make - Igor M. at SEOMoz
30 tips for creating blog traffic - Daily blog tips
Complete guide to online video - Read/WriteWeb via Andy
Is blog optimization part of search marketing? Absolutely! Blogs are web site content management systems with additional functionality such as comments, trackbacks and RSS. Blogs are really no different than web sites.
If you can optimize a document and that document gets indexed, categorized and ranked by a search engine, it’s part of search marketing in my book. As such, marketers should be aware of how these kinds of channels can be used within the overall online marketing mix. Blogs are one of many platforms that benefit from optimization.
Blogs have been one of the big buzz items in 2006 along with social media. It seems companies are still trying to figure out whether blogging is worthwhile for their business and where social media fits in within overall marketing strategy. The number of “blog consultants” also appears to be growing at a much faster rate than business blog adoption.
For our clients, we use blogs extensively in both our public relations practice as well as for search engine optimization. One of the most productive uses of blog software as a content management system is for an online media room.
Spotlight on Search Interview with Lawrence Coburn
I first met Lawrence Coburn when we presented together on a Public Relations panel during a WebmasterWorld Pubcon conference in Boston. Lawrence told a great story about being at the right place at the right time and taking proper advantage to build publicity for his web site, RateItAll.com.
At the recent Pubcon conference in Las Vegas, Lawrence presented on a panel about viral marketing where he focused on using widgets as a way to drive traffic and links. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend this session since I was presentingon a different panel at the same time, but Karen and Jolina did and they came back with excellent feedback. Multiple people mentioned this session to me actually, including Rand Fishkin in this video interview.
As you can see from the graph above, the number of RSS and RSS to email subscribers of Online Marketing Blog has grown substantially since we moved over to WordPress and updated the design. Participating in a little social media optimization hasn’t hurt either. 
One of the metrics we look at with client blogs as well as our own are the most popular RSS feed readers and aggregators used. This influences the RSS chicklets or buttons used to promote the feed.
Later today I’ll be presenting here at DMA-06 on a panel called, Blogs, RSS and Podcasting with Amanda Watlington from Searching for Profit and Stephan Spencer from Netconcepts. Basically, my presentation will cover how blogs can be used as public relations tools in the context of “Push and Pull PR”. The presentation is broken up into:
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