I normally don’t like to write about these hot topics right when they happen.  But this one is just too tempting.  Facebook spending $1 Billion to purchase Instagram, a company with no ad revenue.  This is obviously great for the Instagram team.  It can also be a great investment for Facebook as well.  First, I don’t know where Facebook came up with the $1  Billion mark, but if that’s what they feel it is worth, than so be it.

This was clearly a move by Facebook to buy out the competition.  You can take a picture with your iPhone (and now Android) and post it directly to Facebook, but the picture may be boring and not vintage.  Or, you can take a picture with Instagram and make it look vintage, or like a Polaroid image to be nostalgic and then post it to Facebook for all your friends to see.  But wait, if you want to see your friends entire Instagram photo album, you had to leave Facebook and no longer be bound to the rules of Facebook.  This is why Facebook spent the money they did.  Who knows what the costs would have been for Facebook to create an image taking service like Instagram, then market it, then roll it out.

Just like with everything that Facebook has done, or whenever they make changes, people are going to complain.  And they have the right to.  Facebook could potentially take an awesome app and service like Instagram and screw it up.  Plenty of companies have done this before.  There’s one example that stands out as one of the biggest success stories and that is Google and YouTube.

Facebook should learn from what Google did and make sure that they handle this process the right way.  The way Instagram works now is obviously working pretty well.  Screwing with the team and processes could be very damaging.  I hate having to log into Facebook to use an app when I don’t want to.  I have Facebook friends, but I also have Twitter friends.  The Instagram photos that I currently share on Twitter, I do not always want to share on Facebook, so please do not make me do that.  I think that this is where most people are going to get turned off by this purchase.

Well, this deal is still young, so we can only see where Facebook will take it.  Let’s hope they do the right thing!

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Recently, there has been a lot of talk about Google penalizing websites for being “over-optimized” or having too much SEO on their site. Barry Schwartz from Search Engine Land has posted a transcript and audio of the presentation.  Here is the quote from Matt Cutts:

“All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO – versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect.”

What does this all mean? Does this mean that SEO is going to die like all the critics always say? Should you be worried about this? Well, if you have been doing SEO the right way, then no, you shouldn’t be worried.

Content is king. You have heard it before and you will hear it a million times again. If you create great content that people want to read, they will share it, and you will gain natural links that way. It will become more social, and people will link back to you because your content has made you an authority in this field. The search engines will do the same!

If you have been a believer that, “it doesn’t matter what content is on the page, as long as I get enough links, I will rank higher,” then you may be in trouble from these updates whenever Google rolls them out. I have never been able to understand that mentality, but it exists. You may have been able to rank in the top position for certain keywords because you had a lot of links pointing to you with that anchor text, but if you don’t gain a single conversion from that top spot, then what was it all for?

At the end of the day, who is reading this content? Human beings. Who is purchasing your products or filling out a lead form based on the content they are reading? Human beings. Keyword stuffing could get you to the top of the rankings, but when human being comes to the site and it just doesn’t make any sense, so they just leave, what did that get you? Another visit in Google Analytics?

Going back to where I started this post, great content. That is what SEO is all about, content, content, content.  Great content leads to links.  It always has been and it always will be. If your content sucks, nobody will share it. If your content sucks, nobody will convert. If your content sucks, but you performed magical SEO, you ranked well, but according to Google, those days are limited.

So, ask yourself, how good is your content?

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When performing an SEO audit, there are a lot of different tools that are used.  You may use Google’s free keyword tool to determine the amount of monthly search volume and competition for the keywords that the site is currently attempting to optimize for.  If you want to get a scan of the site to determine the full amount of URL’s, you may use a tool like Xenu’s Link Sleuth.  When it comes to link metrics for a site, one tool cannot be forgotten.  That tool is Open Site Explorer from SEOmoz.  You can gather some basic information from the free version of the tool, but I would recommend at least the PRO membership, which is about $49/month.

You can sign up for a free trial with SEOmoz. (affiliate link)

This tool is not just great for an SEO audit, but on-going monthly maintenance and link reports as well.

Let’s touch base on a few of the sections from within Open Site Explorer that can be of great use to you and your business.

Inbound Links

This section of the tool is going to list out for you the inbound links that your site is currently receiving.  That means, the sites that are linking to you, the anchor text that is being used, along with the page and domain authority that SEOmoz has given that site.  This section is great because it gives you a look at the referring sites that you may have seen in your Google Analytics reporting, but it also gives you the corresponding anchor text that goes along with it.  OSE will also show you the exact page that the link is on and also if it is a no-follow link.  Going through this list of links can provide you with an opportunity to reach out to these sites for additional links and help build that link building campaign as well.  OSE allows the option to compare up to 5 sites at once, so you can compare your amount of inbound links to competitors to see where you stand.  This may be a rude awakening to you for the need for a link building campaign.

Top Pages

The top pages section of Open Site Explorer provides some great page specific details that you may have been searching for in multiple different locations.  Using this for an SEO audit provides details on what the current top pages are and how they have been shared and viewed in the social media world as well.  The OSE tool provides social metrics for top pages such as Facebook Likes, Tweets, and Google +1′s.  This is great information to include in not only the audit, but on-going monthly maintenance as well.  Seeing what type of content is currently being viewed a lot on the site provides opportunities to further optimize for those keywords and variations of it.  It is allows you to see content that has not been viewed or shared as much.  Does this mean that the content is not as good?  No, not necessarily.  It could mean that you did not optimize well and nobody is seeing the content.  Comparing pages that are not viewed as much with your keyword research will allow you to determine whether or not the opportunity exists to further optimized.

The top pages tool also provides you with page specific link details, meaning, how many links are pointing directly to that page.  If there are certain pages that you are looking to have rank higher in the search engines, you are going to need the links to help back that cause up.  This shows you what pages the inbound links are pointing to.  If there is a certain page that you would like to rank higher, creating some sort of link building campaign around that page to increase the amount of inbound links to it could help increase those odds of higher rankings.

Moving on to the next tool.

Linking Domains

This tool gives you a great snapshot of what domains are linking to you.  The first graph that it gives you is a breakdown of how many .com, .org, .net, and dot any other extension that is linking to you.  The next bit of information that is given to you during this part of the tool is the actual domains that are linking to you.  It is also provides the domain authority of that site that is given to it by SEOmoz.  Knowing this information allows you to see how many domains are linking to you and how authoritative they are.  Using the site comparison tool that OSE provides can provide you additional domains that are linking to your competitors, but not linking to you.  Great for link building.

Anchor Text

This, to me, is one of the best parts of the OSE tool.  Knowing what anchor text is being used to link back to your site is pure awesomeness.  If performing an SEO audit, this provides you great detail on how linking domains are currently linking to the site.  Using this information to prepare a link building campaign for your company or your client is a must.  First, you can see who is linking to your site using a URL.  Knowing this will allow you to reach out to that webmaster or site manager and ask them to update that anchor text for a keyword that you are optimizing for.  We all know, more links with optimized anchor text, the better chance of ranking for that keyword.  It is important to have anchor text linking to you that is not all branded or including your company name.  Providing this information in an SEO audit, should help your client or boss see the need to engage in an extensive link building campaign.

Compare Link Metrics

This tool is best used when you are comparing competitors or other sites in general.  This metrics summarize most of the other items that you already learned from the previous sections of OSE, but in an easier, more visual way.  Use this part of the tool in an SEO audit to compare your site or client’s site to competition.  This will provide a good viewpoint of where the site currently is and what you need to do in order to get the site performing better in search engines.

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A question that I hear a lot is, “What should we be blocking in our robots.txt file?”  This is a very good question.  There are a few things that you want to make sure that are definitely blocking in the file.  These pages include any login or admin pages that you do not want the crawlers to get access to.  There is no reason for these pages to be indexed or others to find, so it is best practice to have these pages blocked.  In addition to the admin pages that you don’t want others to have access to, you may have pages within your site that contain customer specific information.  It is necessary to block these pages from being crawled in order to help maintain the privacy of your customers.  Not a good look if a customer’s order information makes it into a Google search results page.

On some e-commerce sites, there are session ID’s that are set within the URL and create a new URL on every visit.  You do not want these URL’s to be indexed, so blocking the session ID’s within the Robots.txt file is another way of doing this.

There are some precautions that you must take into considerations when creating this file.  If there is doubt on whether or not you should add something to the file, you may want to just leave it out.  It is better to allow parts of the site to be crawled, than to have parts blocked that are important and should not be blocked.

Remember, the robots.txt is an easy way to block access to private pages or sections of the site that you do not want to be indexed or crawled by search engines.

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How many times have you said to yourself, “I’m going to start a blog to help get more customers.”  I’m sure you have said it plenty of times, because that’s what all of the blogs out there say to do.  Blog and create great content and share it and traffic will come to your site.  That’s the truth.  So, after all of that, have you actually started your blog yet?  If not, what are you waiting for?

If you want to start a blog, than you must already have something that you want to talk about, or else you wouldn’t be starting one of these.  To get yourself started, don’t worry about having the perfect post or the perfect content.  Just start writing.  Eventually, your content will begin to get better, and you can even do a little keyword research before sitting down to write your blog posts.  I’ll say it again, just start your blog today!

What if you don’t know how to start or blog or where to even begin?  There’s plenty of people out here that do, just ask.  Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask somebody for help.  Sure, some of them may charge you some blog consulting fees.  Maybe you have a friend that’s started one and you can ask them.  Once again, just start your blog today!

Wait, so you’re a horrible writer?  No problem, hire somebody to write content for you.  They are called copywriters and they can be found in a lot of different places.  Having a professional copywriter create content for you can help you good, quality content to get started.  It would be wise to have them (or yourself) conduct some sort of keyword research before writing.

So, now you have a way to get your blog started, a way you can write the content, and a way to get somebody else, a professional, to write the content.  What other excuses do you have for not getting your blog started?

In fact, here are an additional 6 easy steps to create a WordPress site or blog.

It can be just that easy.  Don’t worry about all the fancy design, and the linking, and image optimizations, and meta data, etc.  Just start small and start by writing.

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Last night’s Super Bowl may have not turned out the way that you were hoping.  For those that were cheering for the Giants, congrats, and for those that were cheering for the Pats, sorry.  I have been hearing people talk all day about how boring the game was.  The ending of the game sure wasn’t boring, even if most of the rest of the game was.  One thing that a lot of people were interested in this year were the Super Bowl commercials.  Being the technology and social nerd that I am, I was extremely interested in how social media was going to play into all of the ads and commercials.  One thing was for sure after watching just the first set of commercials….social media is for real.

Can you believe that there are still some social media doubters out there?

Most of the commercials last night ended with a hashtag if you did not notice.  I was hooked, I was searching for those hashtags after every commercial.  My TweetDeck had about 10-12 different tabs open.  What’s better than having your customers talking about you on a social platform so all of their friends and family can see what they are talking about.

Sure, you may not have the multi-million dollar budgets as these large corporations that advertise during the Super Bowl, but don’t worry, most people don’t.  How can you leverage some of the same advantages they do by using some of the same tactics?

First, if you do any sort of direct marketing, local TV or radio ads, add a hashtag that you may want your customers to start using.  Creating a hashtag for them can help you keep track easier as opposed to your customer base creating their own hashtag.  Either way, you create or they create, it’s still a win.

Second, you may not be able to reach the masses with your direct mailings or local tv ads, but you can reach anywhere you want with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.  Driving that conversation online can help spread your brand without having to spend the additional marketing expenses.

Third, use this opportunity to monitor your social media outlets and find out what your customers are saying about your company.  Your brand is what your customers and people say, not what you want it to be.

If you are a small business and you still are not active in social media, this should be a sign that you should be.  If you don’t have an in-house person to do it, look to outsource it.  If you have an in-house person to do, but need some help, look for consulting.  Best case scenario, you have somebody in house that knows how to get started, then get it started today.

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Press releases have multiple different purposes when it comes to online marketing.  We all know that a press release is a great idea when you have an announcement to make.  Whether it is a new product launch, or a new service, or possibly even a new partnership.  There are other opportunities out there for press releases if they are done correctly and syndicated properly.  Let’s take a look at just a few of them.

Links

When writing a press release, it is extremely important to not just have a link back to your home page, but also to include some links to a top page or two within your site.  This is the perfect opportunity for you to choose what anchor text that you want to use and then drop the link in.  Once the press release begins to be syndicated and posted across the interwebs, you will be increasing your total amount of links for that particular keyword.  This is not only good for link building purposes, but it will also help drive initial traffic to those top, targeted pages.

Brand Awareness

Press releases are an easy way to help spread awareness of your brand.  If you are not constantly in front of your customers, others will be.  Along with the links as mentioned above, press releases help increase your branded organic traffic as well.  If increases your organic traffic is a big goal for you, than press releases can help with this.  For example, you own a company which sells a lot of other third party branded items.  If you do not rank for these third party items, then it is essential for you to get traffic from your brand, knowing that people are coming to your brand to buy the other brands.  However, if your brand awareness is not strong, people may begin to forget about your brand and go directly to the other third parties.  Press releases get people talkin again and searching for your brand once again.

Social Media

When I say social media here, I mean, how do you get your press release to spread faster.  Think about it, when a press release lands in your inbox, what do you do?  Do you forward it in e-mail along to friends?  Do you create and write your own tweet or Facebook post?  What if, within the press release the company already created a short blurb for you, that all you have to do is copy and paste into all your social media accounts?  Getting your press release to reach the most amount of people possible can be the hardest part.  Make it easy on those that would like to help share for you.

There are plenty of other tips about writing press releases, but these are three quick tips to help you get more out of your press release.

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Search engine optimization tends to get a bad rep with clients at times.  There can be multiple reasons for this.  For one, they may have had a bad experience with a previous  company that just left them feeling that SEO is just a snake oil sales pitch.  Another reason could be that there is not a full budget dedicated to SEO.  When this happens, you are left with only being able to do a few things that will make a successful SEO campaign.  Unfortunately, when it comes to SEO, you can’t just pick and choose which action items you want to do with your budget and then forget the rest of them.  Sure, it is great to have a site that has meta data across the board, but if you are not investing in link building, social outreach, content creation, proper site navigation, site technical issues (301 re-directs, canonical tagging, 404 error pages, etc.), then your efforts are just being wasted.

SEO is an all or nothing game.  You may want to debate this, but it’s the truth.  Think of SEO as building a house.  You start with framing out the house, but do you just decide not to put up all the walls or insulation or move in furniture or paint the walls?  Absolutely not.  That is the same with SEO.

SEO must also be seen as an investment like a house as well.  Building a house is a lot of money upfront and for the beginning of the project it seems like you have nothing.  But, the longer the project goes on, and the more work and effort that is put into it, you now have your beautiful dream home and the investment has paid off.  If you don’t want that investment or you want your results up front, then throw in some pay-per-click advertising as well.

So whats the moral of the story?  You must set realistic expectations when beginning an SEO program.  Do not think that you are going to create meta data and add a few keywords here and there within the site and then all of a sudden you are going to be ranked in the first position for these keywords.  If you have an in-house SEO team, be sure that your goals are set out from the beginning with a realistic timeframe.  If you are working with an SEO agency or contracter, than be sure to do the same with them.  Establish what your business goals are and be on the same page with them on a timeline.

Good luck and optimize away.

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I have heard from a lot of people over the last year or so that SEO is dead.  Or, SEO is dying, or this “thing” is going to kill SEO.  I’ve said this in the past, and I will say it again, “Shut up!”

Let’s look at what SEO stands for, Search Engine Optimization.  So what does that mean.  It means that you are optimizing your website, your content, your brand for the search engines.  In the past, social media “stuff” didn’t show up in the search results.  Your tweets or Facebook comments or YouTube videos were not in the Google search results when you searched for “steakhouses in Miami”.  Well, guess what shows up in the search results now?  Social freaking media!

Social is part of SEO.  Think about it, I’ll say it again.  Social is part of search engine optimization.  Why?  Because social statuses, profiles, tweets, videos, comments, statuses, they all show up in the search engines, and therefore should be optimized.  So how is SEO dead or dying?

Is the way an SEO, whether in-house or agency, creates a strategy different than what it was just last year?  Absolutely.  It is not just all about meta descriptions and titles and obviously not keywords.  It’s also not just about an XML sitemap, an HTML sitemap, 301 re-directs, canonical tags.  Although all of these items are still extremely important and are must haves, social media is now part of an overall SEO program.

If you are doing both SEO and social in house currently, than these two departments or employees should be holding regular and frequent meetings to make sure that all tweets are optimized, all YouTube videos are optimized and that all social media has a purpose.  Same thing goes to those that work at an agency.  Your SEO and social media teams should be working hand in hand creating overall search engine strategies.

So please tell me, is SEO really dead?  Or has it just evolved and is now bigger and more important than ever?

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“Should I do Pay-Per-Click or SEO?”  I get asked this question a lot and my answer is always the same.  Both.  By doing both of these forms of search marketing, you are allowing yourself to own the search results for your keywords.  Search engine saturation occurs when your pages are showing up within the paid, organic and image results.  There could potentially be some negatives to this, but let’s explore the whole picture.

The case for SEO.  Other than the costs of paying either an in-house search engine specialist or outsourcing it to an SEO consultant, it is free.  You are not paying every time somebody clicks, purchases, or bidding on a position.  Studies have shown that people are becoming smarter searchers and do not click on paid ads as much as as an organic listing.  They feel that the organic listings are more trustworthy as opposed to somebody who can just pay a higher amount to be listed in the paid ads.  Creating great content, which is a large portion of your SEO work, will also create something more for your visitors or customer based, as opposed to just having a great ad copy in a paid listing.  This does not make PPC campaigns bad either.

There are certain terms that are either so generic or have such a high powered brand attempting to rank for them that no matter how much SEO you put in, you may not be able to get to the top of the search results.  That is fine.  You may not want some of that organic traffic anyway, especially if it is highly untargetted.  One way to get your ad copy to be shown and to be clicked on by a targeted visitor is to utilize pay-per-click campaigns.  If you want to completely own the search results page and gain search engine saturation for a specific keyword or phrase, then you may decide to bid on keywords that you currently own the top few spots in the organic listings for.  This is a way to totally drive out your competition.  They do not show up in the paid search and they don’t show up in the organic search.

As you can see, there should not be a one or the other decision to be made.  They both can be helpful.  If you know that you cannot afford both, then it may be best to start with some SEO foundational work to make sure that your website is search engine friendly from the very beginning, so that if you decide to do SEO in the future, you do not have to go backwards.  If you are not looking for long term results, then a PPC campaign may be best for you.

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