EQUTE — Everyone is chomping at the bit to dominate the social networks, but in reality, it shouldn’t be the number one priority for online advertisers.

The number one thing marketers should know about social media users is that they are fickle. The more time and work you put into social media doesn’t mean results. While a new Nielson report shows that people are finding more and more content from social networks, it may not work for you or your client.

Search engine optimization, however, always means results. It’s more work, it takes longer and there are a lot of factors involved in ranking number one, but it’s work ten times any re-Tweet or Facebook fan.

Well duh, right?

Yeah, this is no secret, but marketers aren’t the only people hearing about social media 500 times a day. Your clients are going to ask about and ask for social media help. But marketers need to know when to say “no.” Sure, you can show them a big page of all their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn profiles and say “look what I can do!” And they will look at it for a little while then figure out that it hasn’t helped them make a sale.

Don’t be afraid to say, “why don’t you spend an hour and do it yourself while I make you some money.” OK, maybe not in those words, but you have to help them realize that that is not where the priority lies.

Tell them making the best of their online ad dollars means time, have a case study ready and show them how SEO helps over social media. Demonstrable results are the marketer’s friend, your site will thank you, your clients will thank you and your time (and their money) will be well spent.

EQUTE — John McCarthy has an interesting article over at Adotas, and it makes one think about what SEO has become — a buzzword for cheap traffic.

McCarthy provides an interesting anecdote about a client of his who sought to use SEO to drive more leads to his technology company. A few competitors said they were getting good results with organic SEO, so he thought of trying it himself. He hired McCarthy and asked him to get the SEO train going.

But instead of leading him on with false promises, McCarthy told his client that SEO was not right because of the sparse content on his site and the long road to organic rankings.

So when should marketers tell their clients (or themselves) to try something else?

Simple, when time and money is of the essence and there is nothing for the search spiders to crawl.

Unless you or a client is prepared for a long wait for results, paid search rankings are a much better way to get things moving — while getting the SEO train moving as well, McCarthy said.

Ideally, sites are created and build up SEO either naturally or by design, but many sites are simply better designed for paid search. But with SEO becoming the buzzword it is, there is a slew of people looking to capitalize with little investment in the down economy. Site owners and business owners should think about whether or not they really need SEO help. With some examination, many people will find that SEO isn’t worth the money, and paid search or other tactics could get them over the recession hump without all the mess.

EQUTE — While trolling along through the vast field of search engine optimization blogs, I came across FathomSEO’s Keyword Mixer.

At first I thought it would be just another gimmicky tool that I could use twice then have to pay $500 a month, but no — it is really, actually, completely free!

It works a bit like the Google as it gives you keyword suggestions, but for people who know basically what their readers or customers are searching for, the Keyword Mixer is a whole lot better.

I decided to test it out for a hypothetical yoga studio in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area. With Google’s tool, I put it “SEO company Minneapolis” “SEO St. Paul” and “SEO.” It gave me a couple longtails that I hadn’t thought of, but beyond that I still had to tweak all my keywords so that all my search bases were covered.

With the handy-dandy Keyword Mixer, I got a great list of all the keywords I would likely need, with plurals included.

I dropped similar keywords into the mixer and bam, I have a huge list of the keywords I would have had to type out manually.

seo company in minneapolis
seo company in saint paul
seo company in st paul
seo company in eagan
seo company in woodbury
seo expert in minneapolis
seo expert in saint paul
seo expert in st paul
seo expert in eagan
seo expert in woodbury
seo companies in minneapolis
seo companies in saint paul
seo companies in st paul
seo companies in eagan
seo companies in woodbury
seo experts in minneapolis
seo experts in saint paul
seo experts in st paul
seo experts in eagan
seo experts in woodbury

This is really handy if you need to help your content writers along with keywords to use. Try it out, the tool has found a spot next to the Google keyword generator in my Firefox link bar.

Try out the Keyword Mixer over on Fathom SEO’s site.

EQUTE — Once you understand how to create search engine friendly text for your site, it’s time to use SEO tactics on your video — any video.

1. Create a Keyword Rich Headline:
   Headlines are the first thing search engines see, put all the information into your headline without making it too long. If it’s a video about Mayor Patty McMahon’s drinking problem, call it something like “Does Mayor Patty McMahon Have A Drinking Problem?”

   If it’s a commercial or snippet about your restaurant’s great omelets, call it “Debby’s Diner Omelet: Best Breakfast In Denver.” Think of what people are searching for, do some keyword research, the more matches in your video headline, the more traffic.



2. Make a Good Blurb/Summary:
   Search spiders will find any summary attached to your video. It’s essential to put good keywords here too, and the longer format allows longer “long tail keywords” — common searches or phrases people look for.

   Research here is ideal too. Use Google’s keyword tool to do some quick research to see what people are looking for.

   Your restaurant shouldn’t use best omelets in the summary since people aren’t looking for the best omelets; they’re looking for the best breakfast more. Something like “Try Debby’s delightful omelets at the best Denver breakfast spot. Debby’s Denver Diner — open all night and all day: 24 hours every day.”

   Here you’re hitting some extra keywords that you couldn’t in your headline. Namely the longtail “best Denver breakfast” and “open all night.” You can also hit some incidental keywords like “Denver diner,” “24 hours,” “omelets.” Google will also squeeze combinations out of searches like “24 hour diner Denver.”

3. Provide a Transcript:
   A transcript will give search spiders something to read without a lot of work. If you don’t have a script for your video just type one up, copy in your notes about the video or use cheap/free speech recognition software to turn it into text for you. It’s an easy way to get good keywords connected to your video or the page on which your video resides.
4. Link in the Blurb:
   Put a link in the blurb that directs watchers to read more, or in Debby’s case, find the menu, pictures or directions. It might not seem like SEO in itself, but if people take the video, embed it elsewhere or send it to friends on Facebook, Twitter etc., you’ll get the benefit of a link to your site.
   Even if the link is no follow, an inbound link means traffic.

Of course, look at high-ranking videos when you search in Google, see how videos in your own industry rank higher than others. Most importantly, pay attention to what people are searching for; if your video text is keyword rich, but the keywords are wrong, you’ve wasted your time.

EQUTE — The key to any search engine optimization is keywords and links, but finding new, helpful links gets harder and harder as the SEO goes on.

Government sites give a lot of Google link juice, so just get a link on there, how hard could it be?

OK, so maybe it’s harder than just calling them up and saying, “Hey, can you link to my site, I’ll link to yours.” They don’t need your links and don’t want to go giving links to just everyone. But baiting them into providing one — and possibly many — high value links really isn’t that difficult, just play to the vanity of politicians.

Schedule a short interview with your local lawmaker, it doesn’t matter if it’s a Senator, your mayor or a city councilor — even the head of the water services subcommittee is a politician. Take that interview and put it on your site and tell them it’s up, more than likely they will use it to fill space on their blog, their Twitter account or their Facebook page.

The interview doesn’t have to be the be-all-end all of interviews, nor should it be. If you go into a politicians office with loaded questions and controversial topics, they will be less likely to put it up on their site for everyone to see. Toss them a whole bucket of softballs.

Your interview doesn’t even need to be completely industry specific, especially if you work in a specialized field. Ask them to explain local business development projects that affect your business or new highway projects near your office. If you run a brick-and-mortar business — let’s say a local sub shop — you can ask them what their favorite sandwich is. Or if you run a yoga studio, ask them if they’ve ever tried yoga. Getting the mayor into a downward-facing dog position on video could make your video go viral locally. And if you run an online business ask them their favorite Web sites or how much time they spend on Facebook.

Keep it short, keep it simple and keep it incredibly positive. Ask them questions that get them laughing or telling a personal story rather than droning on about laws. It’ll make the video more appealing to viewers and will further entice them to link to you. If you make them look like a folksy and funny instead of like a stodgy politician, they’ll be eager to share the video.

Afterward, do your own SEO on the interview, politicians are good, steady local searches. People and possibly the media will naturally link to interviews like this because these people affect local communities. And if they put it on their site, even more people will find it and link away.

Remember the bigger, the better as far as politicians, but if you can’t get a Senator, you might still get a great .gov link. If your chosen politico happens to do something sensational in a bathroom stall or with their Argentinean mistress, you’ve got a goldmine.

An afternoon getting in touch with local legislatures is also the ideal break from the typical dull link building campaign.

EQUTE — John McCarthy has an interesting case study over at Adotas about a company that was about to get hit with an “SEO bomb.”

McCarthy said that he got a call from a public relations agency at the end of the day Friday, and had to deliver them some bad news.

The agency told him that a very negative and very true story about fraud at a local company was about to hit the local press — they needed some SEO reputation management immediately.

The public relations agency asked how fast we could implement an SEO reputation management campaign to suppress the pending negative news stories in the search engines. I responded that technically we could start today but the reality is it was too late – as the damage was already done.
– McCarthy wrote

He said all they could do now was try to push the bad press down far enough that people wouldn’t see it right away.

He wrote about creating a three-tiered approach to getting the company ranked high in search engines.

• Tier 1 consists of the company’s own web sites and content. These would be SEO optimized like none other with a keyword pushing and link building campaign. Ideally, these sites would be easy to get to the top spots on Google since the company has complete control over the properties.
• Tier 2 consists of third parties that paint the company in a positive light. This might consist of past press, TV web site write-ups, press releases, etc. These would be more difficult to rank since the SEO optimizers wouldn’t have control over the content, but they could still be part of a link building campaign and could be well placed in the organic rankings.
• Tier 3 consists of Web assets that don’t yet exist. These basically are used as filler to fill in the top 10 on Google or Yahoo (Bing). These are just as easy as Tier 1 sites to optimize, but there is significant work just getting it on the Internet and indexed.

McCarthy’s example had three client-owned sites and five positive third-party sites; which meant that they had to create two Tier 3 sites/articles to fill out the rankings.

His first step was to take inventory of the Web assets, second was optimizing. But the public relations company was surprised how long it would take.

“Months?” cried out the representative from the public relations agency.
“Yes, months,” I responded. “Depending upon the number and intensity of the negative mentions.”
“Worse yet,” I stated “it will be expensive. My team will need to drop what they are doing today and spend the weekend performing the inventory analysis. Once they find positive mention assets, they need to immediately start promoting those assets while simultaneously developing the actual SEO reputation management campaign in parallel.”

McCarthy said it would have been much easier to deal with the fallout had the company thought about their online reputation beforehand — especially before proceeding with illegal practices worth an article in the press.

If the company already had the top 10 rankings on Google, they could simply spot optimize and push the bad press off the front page. But starting from scratch is a Promethean task when going up against the Internet media from the get go.

McCarthy’s ill-fated client said it best.

“I guess the old idiom applies to SEO reputation management. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

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