It is not common for Google to release any information on their upcoming algorithm changes before they go live; in fact Matt Cutts did just that during his SXSW panel in March.  Cutts explained that Google will update their algorithm to target websites over doing their SEO and penalize their search engine rankings.  This will not come as a surprise to many in the industry, especially to those who use the proper SEO techniques against competitors who abuse SEO practices.

Many might ask what does Google consider “over optimization” or what makes a website “overly SEO’d”?  According to Cutts, they will be looking at websites which have “too many keywords on the page or exchange way too many links or go beyond what you normally expect.”

The “too many keywords on the page” penalty refers to the page content and the frequency of keyword mentions also referred to as keyword stuffing.  Google has always stressed the importance of well written and relevant content.   This change further strengthens Google’s algorithms to detect good content versus poor content written to improve keyword rankings.  Webmasters should continue to perform keyword research and optimize their content with highly relevant terms with the primary goal being to develop engaging content for the user.

Linking was also mentioned as a contributing indicator of overly SEO’d sites.  For years, search engine ranking algorithms placed an importance on linking, and in turn, linking strategies were developed to improve the authority of websites. However the rules of the game have changed throughout the years.  Initially, every external link was a good link; then, Google began to recognize bad links or irrelevant links and ignore them.  The latest change that Cutts refers to says that Google will no longer ignore bad links but, rather, penalize a website with bad links.

One might wonder how a webmaster can control all of their external links and regulate who might link to their site.  In reality, Google recognizes that not all external links are controlled by the webmaster and will not penalize a website if it has one or two bad links.  This change will, however, apply to websites which only have two way links, links from link farms, or websites which employ other non organic link building strategies.

Overall, the “over optimization” algorithm change is not a new concept for Google; the only difference is the fact that previously Google ignored these SEO tactics, and now it will penalize websites for utilizing them.  Cutts hinted that the release date would be in the next couple of weeks or month.  So stay alert, and monitor your website performance.

Many research and measurement tools exist to help businesses make better decisions, but using social media monitoring tools can nicely complement those research and measurement tools to expand their use and effectiveness.  We discuss a few examples below:

Keyword Research:

Keyword research tools allow businesses to uncover specific keyword data such as search volume and competitive levels. Some keyword analysis tools even help businesses discover new keyword opportunities based on numerical data. However, using a social media monitoring tool offers qualitative keyword suggestions by monitoring real-life and real-time conversations. Social media monitoring is a great way to examine how and why customers talk about brands.  After identifying new keywords integrate them into your SEO efforts, paid search campaigns and other digital marketing channels.

Lead Generation:

Many users engage in social media when making a decision to solicit feedback from their peers in the social-sphere. When companies monitor service-related keywords that allows them to observe or “listen” to conversations that could become potential lead opportunities. For example, if an auto dent repair company monitors keywords like “hail damage.” They can observe, listen and even communicate with potential customers that might need dent repair services.  See the example below:

Take opportunities like these to start conversations with online communities. Let them know your company is on the web and here to help. Many social media monitoring tools offer demographic user data such as location, gender and interests. Take the time to get to know your potential customers, so you can reach out to them with a targeted message.

Industry Trends:

Discussion threads and forums have huge potential to affect your brand. Following the trends can provide a better understanding of current sentiment surrounding a certain topic and help companies identify advocates or opinion leaders.  This would become a daunting task without the use of social media monitoring tools.  Using social media monitoring tools to track keywords may help companies identify important topics to monitor going forward. Tracking a topic’s viral nature and how long it lives can give insight about its relative importance.

Competitor Tracking:

Along with your own brand, it is imperative to monitor competitors’ brands as well. Tracking competitor brand names can inform social strategy, communicate how competitors respond to users (and vice versa) and help companies forecast future moves.  By monitoring the conversations around your competitor’s brand companies can find other interested and engaged industry advocates who discuss similar services online. These users may be interested in knowing more about your offering and advocating for your brand. Finally, social media monitoring can highlight future opportunities from dissatisfied users who mention another brand in a negative light and may potentially seek a new service, company or brand.

These are just a few ways to integrate social media monitoring into your overall marketing plan. How is your brand using social media monitoring to benefit your entire marketing strategy?

Learn more about how The Net Impact can help with social media monitoring and other social media services.

Let’s start this post with a minor clarification.  The relevance attribute or “rel” tag basically defines the relationship between the current document and a linked document.  For example, say I have two html pages, cookies.html and milk.html.  I decide to link the cookies.html page to the milk.html page, hence fulfilling the current document and linked document requirement.  When linking the cookies page to the milk page the code on the cookies page will traditionally look something like this in standard html:

<a href=/milk.html>Milk</a>

Milk is the word that displays to the web user.  Just as “href” is an attribute the same is true for the “rel” attribute.  Href tells “Milk” where to go when the user clicks on the link and Rel describes the relationship between milk and cookies, which we can all agree is pretty darn good.  With a “rel” tag, the same link may look like this:

<a rel=”friend” href=/milk.html>Milk</a>

This makes the assumption that Cookies and Milk are friends.  Why include a “rel” tag?  For one, it’s great for classifying content and styling links.  Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! will refer to rel tags to get more information about a link for search engine optimization or SEO.  Browsers support rel tags but do not use the attribute in any way.

Below is a list of different relevance tag values and what they do.  Each can impact SEO in its own way.

Almost twenty additional rel tag options exist, but the rel tags listed above will make the biggest impact on search engine optimization or SEO.

If you have more questions about relevance tags or search engine optimization, visit us at www.thenetimpact.com.

 Worth a Look

• Facebook advertising is rapidly growing due to its ability to target users based on their “likes”, behaviors, and interests. This article from Dave Williams discusses the depth of data companies can find and how brands can use Facebook data for targeted advertising.
• Though Google plus mania may have cooled since its buzz-worthy “private” release in June, there has remained a strong undercurrent of interest in the social media and developer community. This week the Google plus API for public data was released, allowing web developers to build third party tools implementing data from the fast-rising social network.
• For B2B marketing, SEO is essential for building and maintaining a strong presence on the web. Search Engine Watch offers a great article pinpointing 10 concepts that every organization should understand when aligning SEO with B2B marketing
  

Trending Searches

Rising Searches from Google Insights

This past week saw a rise in traffic concerning the 10^th anniversary of 9/11, the beginning of the NFL season, and the Miss Universe pageant. Certainly, this was a week of diverse results.

1. 1. miss universe 2011 (+1,850%)
2. 2. miss universe (+1,700%)
3. 3. scarlett johansson (+1,300%)
4. 4. missoni (+1,100%)
5. 5. 9/11 (+450%)
6. 6. twin towers (+450%)
7. 7. 9 11 (+400%)
8. 8. 911 (+300%)
9. 9. obama (+80%)
10. 10. nfl (+70%)

TNI Partner Spotlight

• Custom jewelry e-commerce partner Jenny Present (@JennyPresent) was recently featured in a popular industry blog, papernstitch. The post offers a tour of the Jenny Present studios and insights into the design process.
• Sandberg, Phoenix & Von Gontard, P.C. (@sandbergphoenix) has been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America 2012, an annual publication based on peer-review surveys of over 40,000 lawyers nationwide. Congratulations to the 5 Sandberg Phoenix attorneys selected for such a great distinction!

Stay up to date on industry news and commentary, TNI happenings, and events with web experts. Sign up for The Impact Update today!

 Worth a Look

• Search Engine Optimization is an important investment for any company with a presence on the web. However, the SEO process is not as simple as many think. In an article this week for Business Insider, Lisa Barone (@LisaBarone) addresses company-wide SEO guidelines for modern businesses. She asserts that for optimal effectiveness and efficiency, everyone in an organization needs a basic familiarity with SEO.

• Hootsuite, the popular social media management tool, received some big updates this week. This article highlights some of the upgrades to Hootsuite’s Facebook integration functionality. As fans and users of the service, we were excited to see Event and Group tools, Photo Uploading, and search capabilities added. (via @InmanNext)

• The holiday weekend is almost upon us! Before finishing at work for the week and taking a well-deserved break from the computer screen, check out this Labor Day Infographic from Credit Donkey. It contains interesting statistics about the history of the holiday and the US Labor Force as it stands today.

Trending Searches

Rising Searches from Google Insights

Hurricane Irene and Steve Jobs’ resignation were both responsible for a lot of searches on Google in the past week, but buzz surrounding MTV’s Video Music Awards and its performers beat them both on social media and in search this week.

1. 1. vma 2011 (+4,550%)
2. 2. vma (+3,750%)
3. 3. beyonce (+650%)
4. 4. irene (+550%)
5. 5. hurricane irene (+500%)
6. 6. hurricane irene path (+400%)
7. 7. steve jobs (+400%)
8. 8. hurricane (+350%)
9. 9. irene path (+350%)
10. 10. lady gaga (+200%)

 TNI Partner Spotlight

• Sandberg Phoenix & von Gontard P.C. (@SandbergPhoenix) has been named a top law firm in St. Louis, as voted on by readers of Small Business Monthly. They will be featured as one of the “Best Businesses in St. Louis” in SBM’s upcoming Business Owners’ Guide. Congratulations!
• Our friends at The ROHO Group (@TheROHOGroup) are title sponsors of the US Open USTA Wheelchair Tennis Championships for the third year running. They’ll be helping out at the tournament in Forest Park this holiday weekend.

Stay up to date on industry news and commentary, TNI happenings, and events with web experts. Sign up for The Impact Update today!

 Worth a Look

• Of course, the major news in the tech industry today is the resignation of Steve Jobs as CEO of Apple. While he is stepping down, Mr. Jobs remains involved in Apple operations as Chairman of the Board. Still, it is a clear time of transition for Apple. This article on AdAge takes a look at Steve Job’s major contributions to Apple and the profound impact his work has had on the consumer electronics world.

• Google Panda, the major update to Google’s search algorithm, had its six month anniversary earlier this week. Since its inception, Panda has been a source of contention among the SEO community. Focusing on the user experience more than ever, the algorithm change has caused some traditional search powerhouses to lose traffic, while many competitors are adapting quickly to rise in the rankings. This post from Search Engine Watch highlights some of the challenges that Panda presents to the dynamic field of search engine optimization.

Trending Searches

Rising Searches from Google Insights – Computers and Electronics

Tech searches this week have been dominated by the HP touchpad. HP announced its decision to end its support of their tablet, leading retailers to slash prices as low as $99. Many consumers saw this as an opportunity to enter the tablet market at a low price. Demand for the touchpad is high, as many retailers online and off are selling out.

1. 1. best buy touchpad (Breakout)
2. 2. hp touchpad  (Breakout)
3. 3. hp touchpad android (Breakout)
4. 4. hp touchpad sale (Breakout)
5. 5. hp touchpad (+2,850%)
6. 6. hp touch pad (+2,000%)
7. 7. touchpad (+2,000%)
8. 8. hp tablet (+1,250%)
9. 9. hp touchpad review (+1,000%)
10. 10. webos (+750%)

TNI Partner Spotlight

• Nawgan Products (@DrinkNawgan) announced a major international investment this week from Japanese brewer Kirin Holdings. Congratulations to Nawgan for continuing to grow. We love to see clients making waves globally!
• This weekend Belleville, IL nonprofit the Karla Smith Foundation (@KSF_Hope) hosts the Erase the Stigma conference. This two day event will feature speakers and presentations on the challenges of mental illness and mental health advocacy. Good luck this weekend!
  Here’s a great feature from a local news network on Linq 360 and their mission to bring new firms to the growing tech industry in Las Vegas. Unidev was eager to be part of this movement, opening Las Vegas offices earlier this summer.

Stay up to date on industry news and commentary, TNI happenings, and events with web experts. Sign up for The Impact Update today!

Information architecture is not something that you can do quickly. This post recaps Omni Marketing’s presentation from Shari Thurow.

Information architecture and SEO
Challenge:
First, consider organization and labeling. It must be easy to use and your information must be easier to find.  If people cannot find what they want to find, they will leave your website and you will lose customers. Only an average of 12% of web visitors will return to a website that was unhelpful before.

Solutions:
Wireframes helps reduce lost customers, reduce development costs, increase crawlability, increase indexation, increase rankings and build brand value.  Tech teams often don’t think like your customer.  A technique to try is to take a website screenshot and remove design and content and individually quiz people about what page they are viewing.

Content MUST contain words and phrases that people type into search engines. Reduce  number of ”WTF” moments.

You do not want the technical model of your tech team. Accommodate navigational, informational, and question search types.

Understanding information architecture
Challenge:
Return to the idea of organization and labeling think about categorization, hierarchical taxonomy. Avoid practices like siloing and page rank sculpting.

Solution:
To have successful blogs and social media networks, use categorization. If you have different types of visitors or industries, versioning pages to include relevant keywords in the content is important.  Give multimedia a separate area in addition to their native locations. To test, make sure you’re observing the user target that you want to reach.  Pages should be unique, distinguishable and well-labeled. Think in terms of navigation labels over keywords.  Yup, SEO and information architecture are related.

For blogs, titles and headings SHOULD contain keywords. Use embedded text links to other previously written blogs and…categorize, categorize, categorize. This helps your articles and posts maintain traffic as they age.

A few resources:
Taxonomy Warehouse provides taxonomy structures by industry.
Use a tilde ”~” search to find keyword synonyms.

Check out The Huffington Post for a great author page structure.

Navigation Labels:
Only children and programmers “minesweep”, don’t require users to search for links. Make them obvious.

Spell out abbreviations.

Give people choices, but not too many. Drop downs give too many choices, one button makes people feel they’re being forced into a sales funnel.

Review Tips for Getting Valuable User Generated Content
Challenge:
How do you get good website, product and service reviews?

Solution:
Monitor and reward good reviews.

That’s it! Great presentation!

1. Your brand is not a logo, advertising, your mission statement, etc. Your brand is a gut feeling (as articulated by Robert Brunner, Ammunition Group). Or you could say, a brand is the intangible sum of your assets (Tom Schmittdiel, PSG Marketing).

2. It is important to identify every touchpoint of your brand and then deliver on the brand promise that you’ve made AT EACH touchpoint.

3. You cannot tell people what to believe about your brand, but you can be consistent with your branding efforts. Words create a challenge you must live up to, actions give you the opportunity deliver on that challenge.

4. Communicate your brand consistently online through your navigation, social media, search engine optimization (SEO) and beyond.

5. For EVERYTHING you do, ask yourself, “Does this follow the brand that I’ve created?” If this brand were a person, would it do that? Here? In this way?

Download Powerpoint Slides

The Yellow Pages are pretty much dead, TV advertising is pricey and sometimes print advertising just doesn’t really get the job done. With more and more people searching for local businesses online, search engine optimization has become the most effective way for local businesses to bring back existing customers and draw in new ones. 

Local search marketing focuses on elevating the visibility of a local business in the search engines so that it can be found (and clicked) earlier and more often in the search results by consumers who search online for local businesses. The goal of executing a local SEO Internet marketing campaign is to let the search engines know that you’re one of the 10 best resources on the Internet for users in these localities, who are interested in topics that are relevant to your website. Create high quality content that is good enough to rank in the top ten search results, and facilitate the kind of link connectivity that the search engines expect to see around that type of resource. The result will be a website that provides a better user experience based on targeted content and one that ranks well in popular search engines for relevant keywords.

More and more local businesses are becoming aware that consumers are using the Internet to find out information about their products or services before making a purchase. This information is confirmed in study after study such as that done by The Kelsey Group which has discovered that the amount of consumers doing online research for local products or services has reached 97%. 

• 90% use search engines
• 48% use the Internet Yellow Pages
• 42% use comparison shopping sites
• 24% use vertical sites 

People who use search engines to find local businesses and local business information do not search just for the sake of searching. They search for the sake of finding. And when they find, they take action, as the Nielsen/WebVisible study cited: 

• 70% will call the phone number on a website
• 60% have referred a business they found on the Internet to a friend
• 52% always or often research online first, then follow up with an offline purchase from a local business
• 14% will send a business they found online an email
• 11% will fill out an online form 

With numbers like these, the rate of conversion for people searching for local businesses means that local search marketing doesn’t just expose a business to a large crowd; it exposes a business to the right crowd - people that are ready to take action. Search engines are well aware of the importance of search engine marketing at the local business level. For example: Google recently announced that 20% of all Google searches have a local intent behind them (that number climbed to about 33% for Google searches via mobile devices). 

Whether your business is a major corporation with locations in cities all across the country or all over the world or it’s a small business with a single location, local search marketing is essential to online marketing success if it depends at all on local clientele. Local Internet marketing is still on the cutting edge, and those local business owners who act fast have the potential to increase their market share dramatically. 

Here are six tips from The Net Impact to boost your website rankings in local search:
 

1. Claim your local business listing at the various local listing websites ( Ex: Google, Bing, Yahoo..) 

2. Update your local business listing with information about your business, product and services. Include all of the information you can (photos, videos, coupons, discounts, offers and promotions are great!) 

3. Maintain and manage your local business listing regularly to keep up to day with changes such as the relocation of your office. 

4. Get customers to post reviews about your business, products and services on your local business listing. You can suggest they post their review at one or multiple local listing websites, however, the local consumer will ultimately be the one to decide which and how many of the local listing websites they are will to submit their reviews. A great site to check out reviews is Yelp! 

5. Don’t forget to add your businesses on local Maps.  As Google, Yahoo and Bing start showing Map listings above organic searches it’s important to at least list your business in Local Business Centers. Many other factors encourage more and more users to add their business in local listings. – plus it is usually free to add businesses in local maps and directories ( some search engines like Yahoo charge a fee for Enhanced features). 

6. Spread the world about your business around the web – outside of your local business listing (such as Social Media Sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter). Social factors can influence standard search results, as well as queries made specifically on social search engines.  

In conclusion – Optimizing for local search is a great way to Geo-target your search traffic and drive customers to your brick and mortar location, while placing your company a step ahead of your competition. Leverage search to show clients where you are and how to get there. This is the perfect way to tie your online presence to your actual location.

Local customers are looking for your services online and The Net Impact can help you be found in search engines. Our services provide local businesses and professionals a presence on popular search engines that, when setup properly, will lead to top of search result placement. Contact The Net Impact today to boost your local business!

Sundeep Kapur hosted a session that gave us some great insights on how to create content that is worth reading.

*Create content you can use for interaction.
Publishing content with no intent to create conversation will leave your online presence stale.

* Keep it authentic.
Your computer is a machine, you’re not – the interaction should be real.

* Only push your content to channels that are relevant to your target market.
Don’t just throw spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks; place your message where your target market is.

* Give your readers simple nuggets of information that they can share.
A tweet is 140 characters, make sure your information is re-tweetable.

*Do not tell people to “Follow You” or “Like You”
Give them a reason to want to.

*When creating print collateral, think of sending readers on an online scavenger hunt.
Direct them to your “hub” with an offer.

*When posting content on Facebook, consider what you would share with your friends.
If you wouldn’t – don’t post it.

Stay tuned for more updates on SES Chicago 2010!

What effective tactics has your company used when creating and posting content?