Below is live coverage of the The Current State Of Social Search from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery of Beu Blog.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
The Current State Of Social Search
Below is live coverage of the The Current State Of Social Search from the SMX West conference.
This coverage is provided by Brian Ussery of Beu Blog.
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage, please excuse any typos. You can also interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
http://www.seroundtable.com/
Social media marketing should not be looked at any longer as a white elephant. Social media marketing is happening right now and all businesses need to understand the value and importance to incorporate it into their daily search engine marketing routine. You might think it sounds extremely difficult to slide in those efforts now but [...]
Social media marketing should not be looked at any longer as a white elephant. Social media marketing is happening right now and all businesses need to understand the value and importance to incorporate it into their daily search engine marketing routine. You might think it sounds extremely difficult to slide in those efforts now but you might be surprised as to how easy it really is.
Do you currently write in your blog at least once or twice per week? A blog is perfect way for a business to get involved in social media. As you write your blog posts do you do anything with them? If you don’t you could be missing out on some great traffic not to mention additional search engine optimization benefits for your website. Remember that the search engines see almost everything you do to promote your business so taking a robust social approach will help strengthen your websites power over time. By dropping the link to your blog post in your Twitter and Facebook page you open the door to a whole new type of audience and web user.
Does Twitter still scare you? It shouldn’t. All businesses should be using Twitter in some way. I don’t recommend spending your entire day using Twitter but 30 minutes to an hour everyday will help you get some great exposure online. Start by just following your competitor’s followers for now. This is a nice way to give them a tap on the shoulder and just let them know that you are there and that you exist. This way you can really test the waters with slowly incorporating social media into your search engine optimization efforts. Over time as you feel a bit more confident and advanced you can certainly ratchet things up quite a bit. Social media is not something to be scared of any longer. Every search engine marketing campaign requires you to take an approach that assists in targeting your online social audience. Why wouldn’t you want to be visible where your audience is already hanging out? Start by setting up the profiles completely and filling in all necessary information and over time increase the amount of efforts you incorporate from a social level and you will see your web traffic increase tremendously.
http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com
VanillaCoke, one of my fave readers, has done the honor of putting up an interview with yours truly on my fave SEO Blog, SEOBook.
VanillaCoke, one of my fave readers, has done the honor of putting up an interview with yours truly on my fave SEO Blog, SEOBook.
http://www.localseoguide.com
SEOmoz announced the launch of a new valuable tool named Open Site Explorer. I will not go over the features, every other blog did that.
The tool is extremely powerful, but it is not completely “open” or “free” as the name implies. Either way – the tool is impressive and for the most part, the SEO industry is very pleased with it. That includes Aaron Wall who called it slick, despite being Rand Fishkin’s biggest critic.
Read more about the tool at the SEOmox blog and test it out at opensiteexplorer.org.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
SEOmoz announced the launch of a new valuable tool named Open Site Explorer. I will not go over the features, every other blog did that.
The tool is extremely powerful, but it is not completely "open" or "free" as the name implies. Either way - the tool is impressive and for the most part, the SEO industry is very pleased with it. That includes Aaron Wall who called it slick, despite being Rand Fishkin's biggest critic.
Read more about the tool at the SEOmox blog and test it out at opensiteexplorer.org.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
http://www.seroundtable.com/
The Bing Search Blog announced that they have now made their search suggestions more current. Now, Bing will update the search suggestions every 15 minutes or so, to take into account breaking news and current trends.
For example, the Australian Open is going on right now and here is me typing [aus] into Bing:
Google already does this with their search suggestions, so it is nice to see Bing go this route as well. Now, Bing will have to deal with questions about censorship of trending topics.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
The Bing Search Blog announced that they have now made their search suggestions more current. Now, Bing will update the search suggestions every 15 minutes or so, to take into account breaking news and current trends.
For example, the Australian Open is going on right now and here is me typing [aus] into Bing:
Google already does this with their search suggestions, so it is nice to see Bing go this route as well. Now, Bing will have to deal with questions about censorship of trending topics.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
http://www.seroundtable.com/
Posted by Gil Reich
This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
Q&A sites are a great way to get your message across and to build your brand and reputation.
How many people use Q&A sites?
Source: Social Media Best Practices: Question & Answer Forums. Business.com, December 14, 2009, http://www.business.com/info/social-media-best-practices-q-and-a
What’s in it for me?
Providing quality answers and links to relevant pages can help you in the following ways:
How do I use these sites?
The general rules of social media apply here too:
Q&A sites work great for this, because people are already asking the questions. When I blog I hope my posts address questions that my readers want answered, but they may not. In Q&A sites, your starting point is that somebody asked the queston that you’re answering.
Specifically:
In the example below, notice how the user provided a quality answer (much of which follows a template he uses in other answers as well) and adds a relevant link to his site.
What are the leading sites and how do they differ?
How is using them like doing a guest post on SEOmoz?
Answering questions on Q&A sites is exactly like doing a guest post on SEOmoz:
Ultimately you need a win-win here. You need to serve the needs of the community with whom you’re interacting, in a way that also builds your business and reputation.
Where can I get more information on Q&A sites?
See the following excellent articles:
Or contact me (Answers.com user: Gilr)
Posted by Gil Reich
This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
Q&A sites are a great way to get your message across and to build your brand and reputation.
How many people use Q&A sites?
Source: Social Media Best Practices: Question & Answer Forums. Business.com, December 14, 2009, http://www.business.com/info/social-media-best-practices-q-and-a
What's in it for me?
Providing quality answers and links to relevant pages can help you in the following ways:
How do I use these sites?
The general rules of social media apply here too:
Q&A sites work great for this, because people are already asking the questions. When I blog I hope my posts address questions that my readers want answered, but they may not. In Q&A sites, your starting point is that somebody asked the queston that you're answering.
Specifically:
In the example below, notice how the user provided a quality answer (much of which follows a template he uses in other answers as well) and adds a relevant link to his site.
What are the leading sites and how do they differ?
How is using them like doing a guest post on SEOmoz?
Answering questions on Q&A sites is exactly like doing a guest post on SEOmoz:
Ultimately you need a win-win here. You need to serve the needs of the community with whom you're interacting, in a way that also builds your business and reputation.
Where can I get more information on Q&A sites?
See the following excellent articles:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog
The Google Lat Long Blog announced businesses can now add real time information to their business listings. How does it work? It is honestly a bit tricky.
You would think you would “Edit” your business listing in Google Local Business Center. But no, instead you click on the “View report” link under the statistics section of that page. Then you are presented with a box to add a quick real-time message to your business listing (Places Page) on Google Maps.
On the top right of the statistics page is this box where owners can add information:
Here is me adding some info that may expire soon:
And here is that information showing up on my business listing in minutes:
Clearly, if you have a very active Google Maps listing, this can come in handy.
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.
The Google Lat Long Blog announced businesses can now add real time information to their business listings. How does it work? It is honestly a bit tricky.
You would think you would "Edit" your business listing in Google Local Business Center. But no, instead you click on the "View report" link under the statistics section of that page. Then you are presented with a box to add a quick real-time message to your business listing (Places Page) on Google Maps.
On the top right of the statistics page is this box where owners can add information:
Here is me adding some info that may expire soon:
And here is that information showing up on my business listing in minutes:
Clearly, if you have a very active Google Maps listing, this can come in handy.
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.
http://www.seroundtable.com/
Posted by wrttnwrd
This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
One often-ignored part of SEO is making invisible pages visible. When I say ‘invisible’, I mean pages that have received zero clicks from organic search results.
If you can find those pages, you can decide:
Soooooo, how do you find ‘em?
Turns out, a new Google Analytics feature can make it happen: Pivot table reports
Here’s how you do it:
You’ll see a list of the most-viewed pages on your site. Not much help just yet.
That’s it! You can take a look and find the pages getting zero organic clicks.
A few cautions:
Happy Analyzing!
Posted by wrttnwrd
This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
One often-ignored part of SEO is making invisible pages visible. When I say 'invisible', I mean pages that have received zero clicks from organic search results.
If you can find those pages, you can decide:
Soooooo, how do you find 'em?
Turns out, a new Google Analytics feature can make it happen: Pivot table reports
Here's how you do it:
You'll see a list of the most-viewed pages on your site. Not much help just yet. That's it! You can take a look and find the pages getting zero organic clicks.
A few cautions:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog
How to Break Into the SEO Clique
If you are in the search engine optimization industry or you are trying to break into this incredibly saturated industry to make a name for yourself you might have a difficult time getting excepted into the circle of friends at the top of the food chain. The “elite” group that has been in the industry [...]
If you are in the search engine optimization industry or you are trying to break into this incredibly saturated industry to make a name for yourself you might have a difficult time getting excepted into the circle of friends at the top of the food chain. The “elite” group that has been in the industry since day one and think they are the all mighty of the industry. The SEO industry leaders have become a tough group of individuals to become friendly with and it doesn’t seem to be getting any easier. All the “gurus” at the top that think they know every about everything seem to feel that they run this industry like they own it. The SEO industry is kind of like an open source program that should be treated like a group effort. There is plenty of business to go around. Lots of businesses out there that need help promoting themselves in the online space. People need to participate, communicate and get involved to make it a better place for everyone. One person tries something that works well they write about and things spread leading to better online marketing efforts.
I have been actively working in the internet marketing industry for over 12 years, have built Brick Marketing for 5 years successfully and have helped hundreds of clients in the field of SEO yet my educational comments that I leave on certain search engine marketing blogs get deleted, why do you think this happens? Leaving all names aside a certain someone contacted me not too long ago and asked me to stop commenting on a certain blog. Yes, I left a comment on each blog very frequently but isn’t that the whole purpose of starting a blog. These where all well written comments that where generated with real thought process adding to the overall message the blog post was trying to convey. Isn’t the whole idea of a blog to get the community interacting in your conversation? Since when is it bad to leave an educated comment on someone’s blog? Even if the frequency was high it shouldn’t really matter. I have seen this occur with other websites as well. I have seen the tone of this click with others trying to make a name for themselves in the industry and I often see a certain nastiness resonating in the tone of a variety of online discussions. Don’t get me wrong I understand this is a tough industry and if you spend some time in it you get beat up a little but that doesn’t mean you have to be nasty to your colleagues and peers around you especially if they own and operate a successful search engine marketing firm. I apologize if I have not visited you at the trade shows and stroked your ego like many people do. Is it that I don’t kiss the asses of every individual in the “cool group”?
There is plenty of room in the school yard for everyone to get along. Is it because I am a threat to them or the industry? Sometimes I feel like this industry is a lot like high school all over again. You got your cool kids that think they are too good for everyone else and you got everyone else trying to shine in front of their eyes. I by no means want to break into the “cool” click and become one of those has to have their ass kissed by everyone else.
Why is it so hard for people in this industry to come together and work as a team? I understand that everyone is trying to grow their own business but there is no reason why so many internet marketing professionals have to have such a cold shoulder towards each other. We are all in the same game and we do the best we can to provide our clients with great service.
If you are an internet marketer or SEO person do you feel like our industry is heading in this direction as well? Please leave your comments and any related experiences or stories below!
http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com