Tool Time: Tweepi

With an estimated 50 million tweets generated across different platforms on a daily basis since its inception in 2006, Twitter remains to be one of the most dominant mass messaging service built on a social networking architecture today. And it keeps on getting stronger in terms of popularity and user registration given its [...]

With an estimated 50 million tweets generated across different platforms on a daily basis since its inception in 2006, Twitter remains to be one of the most dominant mass messaging service built on a social networking architecture today. And it keeps on getting stronger in terms of popularity and user registration given its rather limiting 140-character structure.

As revealed during its recent Chirp developer conference , the company revealed that it has a rated 300,000 number of new users signing up per day in addition to the approximate 105,779,710 currently registered. These are facts not lost among marketers, so we’ve established for their respective brands a venerable network of followers to easily broadcast their messages to the consumer, establish relationships at a much deeper level and boost SEO efforts.

The problem with keeping such a bevy of followers is the near constant need to organize your connections to make sure you are properly targeting the right people. While there are a handful of services online that would prove useful (and we’ve actually recommended some of them on this blog), Tweepi offers a handful of features to get the job done in a “geekier, faster way.”


Tweepi offers a straightforward interface and several “geeky” utilities to help you manage your network of Twitter contacts.
Click for a Closer look.

Developed by Thoughtpick , a social media developing company based in Amman, Jordan, Tweepi pushes for the “geeky” nomenclature with four utilities for organizing your Twitter network. Rows of information are presented with tables and figures for each user along with their location, number of followers, people they’re following, retweets sent and when they last tweeted, among others. So if you’re one of those spreadsheet-happy geeky types, this is just the tool for you.

While Geeky Follow lets enter a specific @username to discover Twitter users with the same field of interest based on their tweet activity patters and gives you the option to follow them, Geeky Flush lists the users you are following who are not following you back. Geeky Reciprocate, on the other hand, shows a table of users who are following you but you have yet to follow yourself. Finally, Geeky Cleanup filters out the profiles that offer no valuable content or don’t engage in actual Twitter conversations so you can easily unfollow them as you see fit.

In each utility, you can filter out the Twitter profiles through several presets like the number of tweets within the last seven days, influencers, high followers to following ratio and those who simply dispense linkless ramblings.

Tweepi is ostensibly in its beta stage and it’s pretty upfront about it, saying that continuous updates and the constant bug zapping are being conducted by its development team.

In essence, Tweepi looks to be the outcome when you put Friend or Follow and Untweeps in a blender and set it to “smoothie.” Not that Tweepi’s interface offers a gaudy candy-coated look and feel like these other tools, but its different features are seamlessly reconciled into a simple interface; straightforward enough for new users to utilize without having to leave its single domain.

To use Tweepi, like most third-party Twitter apps and services, it uses Twitter’s OAuth implementation so you can sign in using your Twitter login credentials.

http://www.socialmediamarketing.com/blog

Will Your Business Be on The SEM Train?

For years now companies have been polled regarding search engine optimization and according to eMarketer nine out of every ten companies polled have either increased their SEO budgets or left them unchanged since 2007, which just goes to show you that this industry is in store for a very interesting ride that is bound to [...]

For years now companies have been polled regarding search engine optimization and according to eMarketer nine out of every ten companies polled have either increased their SEO budgets or left them unchanged since 2007, which just goes to show you that this industry is in store for a very interesting ride that is bound to bring in heaping amounts of changes in the not so distant future.

The report that was recently produced by SEMPO was a combination of 1,500 marketers and agencies. Paid search was up as well which maybe leads us all to believe that we might be inching away from the dreaded recession that has plagued us all. I’m not the surprised how a great deal of the shift comes from the print industry. Businesses that have spent many years relying on the print industry are starting to shift over to digital marketing which is very important to realize. Print is a very expensive form of communication and many businesses are starting to realize that being online is where it is at. Technology is only growing and more and more companies are trying to lay their path in the online space. As younger generations come into their own and increase in corporate rankings over the next decade or so what do you think is going to occur in the online space again? Another boom is likely.

The report indicates that the budget for social marketing is much smaller than SEO and paid search but is still growing. As young entrepreneurs keep pumping out these new savvy online tech start ups this shift will continue to occur even more. Social media might be a bit slower to get adopted by big businesses but that is only because it is very early in its lifecycle. SEO and paid search have been occurring ever since search was born so it is widely accepted now by companies but there is still a very large learning curve when it comes to search engine optimization. Social media is still a very young child in the search marketing game but has made a very large splash in the search industry. The ripple effects from social media have been felt far and wide and it is only a matter of time before most companies introduce it into their daily marketing routine.

http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com

Is Your Competitor Calling You?

This can really cater towards any type of industry but right now I am writing this specifically for the search engine optimization industry. For all you search engine marketers out there who might have their own business that over laps their competition in similarities you might know and understand where I am coming from with [...]

This can really cater towards any type of industry but right now I am writing this specifically for the search engine optimization industry. For all you search engine marketers out there who might have their own business that over laps their competition in similarities you might know and understand where I am coming from with this blog post. Every once in a while we get these very strange calls. A person will call from an undisclosed phone number or a cell phone and they come off like they have no idea what SEO is but slowly their verbiage changes and they get highly technical towards the end of the call. These calls are almost always combined with very basic websites or splash pages with virtually no address, content or contact information which leads me to believe this can only be the work of a competitor digging for information on our business specifically.

Here are few things that could be your competitor calling:

Phone Numbers: I always find it strange when all the phone numbers given to me just don’t add up at all. The phone number on the caller ID is different from the phone number given to me. Both numbers reach a very generic voice mail greeting, very strange if you ask me. Whenever I get the gut feeling I am speaking with a competitor the phone number situation always occurs like this. The phone numbers never match up and they always get dumped into generic voicemails. The phone number is usually the first giveaway that something is fishy. I have been doing this long enough to realize when this is happening and I can usually pick up on it early the sales call.

Person’s Name: I like to also do a quick search online for the person’s name to see what comes up and ironically that is also a mystery. The caller’s name never appears in search results and if I combine the name and the phone number it gets even foggier. Nothing visible anywhere. At this point I have almost always confirmed my gut feeling that the caller I just spent a half hour with was most likely a competitor fishing around to find out how it is that we do business.

No Address: After making the prior observations I find that there is no address located anywhere on the website. No address visible anywhere on any site leads me to believe it is a micro site that belongs to the competitor that is most likely just used for phishing around with competitor sales departments to find out pricing along with approaches and techniques. Plugging in the name of the website into a search engine typically pulls up close to zero amount of information cementing my intuition even deeper into the reality of the situation.

Verbiage: This is usually a dead giveaway as well. The call almost always starts off like a very new comer to the SEO industry but after a few minutes of speaking all of a sudden the verbiage being used gets very advanced and highly technical. How does a person who has a very unSEO’d website and basic bare bones information all of a sudden speak like they are in the industry? When I get to this point in the conversation I always raise an eyebrow a bit because it kind of sounds funny to hear this person who just didn’t know what a meta tag was all of a sudden talking about advanced link bait and conversion optimization efforts and techniques.

Are there any SEO or search marketing industry professionals out there that have ever fallen into this trap by their competitors? Competitive analysis is good to have and important to run a business but this type of approach is shady in my opinion. In the SEO industry there are absolutely no standards or benchmarks. Prices and approaches are all over the board and almost impossible to predict. Pricing is usually constructed according to the project being presented at that time. My price shouldn’t mean anything to a competitor.

http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com

On Running Games & Contests on Twitter

Image by akanesio
We all grew up listening to FM radio with all its genre bending music, morning and rush hour talk shows, varied programming, frequent advertisements and, of course, on-air contests. All these obviously entertained us listeners as they pushed brand promotions that deliver both the radio and their sponsors’ messages.

This type of varying pattern [...]


Image by akanesio

We all grew up listening to FM radio with all its genre bending music, morning and rush hour talk shows, varied programming, frequent advertisements and, of course, on-air contests. All these obviously entertained us listeners as they pushed brand promotions that deliver both the radio and their sponsors’ messages.

This type of varying pattern has always been proven effective from a marketing standpoint as it also rewarded listeners not only with the hourly dishing of current top rating music, but also allowed the station and its sponsors a platform to thank their patrons and potential followers as well as rewarding us with chances of actually winning something in return for our loyalty.

Proven as it is for traditional media like radio (and television and publishing as well, for that matter), it has also made a crossover to the Internet, as you may have noticed from tech and lifestyle portals. Marketers have effectively utilized it for their companies’ own Web site’s SEO strategy which. We’ll pick apart elements to plan a good contest to properly employ them over to our social media campaign through Twitter . We’ll start off with the planning stage.

Planning Carefully
Running a successful contest or game on Twitter entails sitting down and thoughtfully mapping out a clever set of steps and detailing them one by one. The top of the list should always be your objective; why are running such a promo and what do intend to achieve by doing so? Now, the answer to these can vary from simply getting more Twitter followers or gaining a significant boost to your site traffic, to simply improving on your brand awareness campaign while spreading the word about your brand’s new products or services.

While your intended contest can obviously hit more of these in one go, make sure to detail which one your prioritize is. This will definitely help keep you focused on your goal and you can craft a good contest aligned with it.

The Reward
From your followers’ vantage point, the prize you’re rewarding them for their efforts should be…well, rewarding. Needless to say, something that can easily be bought from the neighborhood dollar store, no matter how useful it is, just isn’t as attractive as the latest mouse launched recently by a well-known IT manufacturer, for instance.

Depending on the budget you, your clients or sponsors are willing to shell out, you can get valuable items or services up for grabs. “Valuable” is such a subjective term; it doesn’t mean you have to go all-out, sometimes, little tokens like a signed baseball, gift cards for an online store like iTunes , Amazon or Audible and items carrying your brand’s logo would also prove attractive.

As an option, a quick way to choose a prize is by aligning it with your brand. Needless to say, it would be logical to give away copies of an album from the band, tickets to a ballgame or a concert being sponsored by your company or services to create a personalized blog or site from a Web developer you’re representing.

The Mechanics
As with most games, there has to be a set of mechanics your followers need to follow to successfully win and these should tie directly to your game’s objective and the prize you’re giving away. A common practice on Twitter would have people to simply follow your tweets, another is by having them retweet a specific tweet you’ve sent out. These easily grows your Twitter followers which, in turn, gives you a boost in the site traffic and comments on your actual site, amplifies repeat visits and increases potential clients.

One way of going about it on Twitter is by running a sweepstakes type of contest by employing a simple randomizing application for drawing out a winner. Another is by actually giving your followers a fun activity, like providing a funny photo or drawing and then asking them to supply a funny caption or title. Maybe you can even target specific groups in your followers by setting a theme and then asking them to Photoshop a certain graphic to follow it. However, as mentioned, your prize’s value should also determine the mechanics of your contest and gauge the lengths at which your audience would go to attain them.

On Your Own Site
To integrate both the contest details and its mechanics while aiming to drive more traffic to your own domain, it’s best to set aside a specific landing page on your Web site. As the contest’s home on your domain, make sure that the page’s layout is clean and easy to navigate through for your readers. Since it is on your own site or blog, , it will not only allow your readers to read up on what else you have to offer, but it also affords them the security that what they are engaging in is a legitimate promotion and not some scam aiming to sponge off their details and links.

While this makes your readers focused and engaged on the contest details, it also catches the attention of your other readers and those who have stumbled upon your site who don’t necessarily follow you on Twitter. As a good measure, also include a small but easily seen splash graphic on your site’s homepage and a smaller one at the top of your sidebar announcing the contest with the necessary links.

Should the contest revolve around submissions, provide a separate tab on the same page where your users and others can view them. This works great if you’ve also allowed your readers to vote for the winner as this also increases social mentions across Twitterverse.

http://www.socialmediamarketing.com/blog

SEO Industry Trust is Very Complicated

The truth about SEO and who to trust in the industry is very complicated. That is why so many people are so confused when they are ready to pull the trigger and decide where and how they need assistance. Every company has a different approach and no two pricing models are alike. How do you [...]

The truth about SEO and who to trust in the industry is very complicated. That is why so many people are so confused when they are ready to pull the trigger and decide where and how they need assistance. Every company has a different approach and no two pricing models are alike. How do you know where to turn to? The reality is that things have changed over the last few years and they are even changing as we write this blog post.

Let’s look at some of the biggest factors and industry changes that have occurred just over the last few years that have changed the SEO industry and will most likely continue to change the industry as time goes on:

1. Social Media: Social media came in like a ferocious wave and just hit the entire world with an entirely new form of communication. Everything changed, how business communicate, how people communicate, where people go to seek information, how people meet, how people purchase, all this is just scratching the surface. All of a sudden marketers focus was not just around the search engines. All of a sudden their clients and their own audience were hanging out in this giant wave of chatter. SEO people had no choice but to get involved in this type of communication. Suddenly a quality communication approach was needed. You couldn’t just throw sub par press releases at these people otherwise you would be stoned in the town square.

2. Video Sharing: You can try to mash up a video using a generic movie maker software but chances are you will not benefit a great deal from it. Video sharing has created a new form of expression. Creativity combined with SEO makes for very powerful marketing efforts that could actually make an impact on a client’s bottom line.

3. Content Marketing: All of a sudden having a blog on a website and regularly writing and pushing the material out to the community were more important than ever. Creating link schemes and science projects to increase rankings are no longer the right approach. Content creates credibility and if a marketer can put out great writing in the right places their SEO can grow tenfold.

4. SEO Industry Trust – Practice What You Preach: It amazes me when I see so many sub par SEO consultants and firms that don’t know how to market themselves. The reality is SEO is so much more than just search engine rankings; it’s about marketing and building an online presence and reputation. The way I see it is if an SEO professional has no online presence then they should try another profession. If they can’t build it for themselves, how can they be trusted to build it for a potential client?

It is important to acknowledge that the SEO industry is changing very quickly and those who neglect to adopt that change will find themselves wondering what happened.

http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com

New Twitter Ad Platforms Open Up Opportunities

In the last few days we’ve had two announcements about advertising platforms based on Twitter in TweetUp and Promoted Tweets, even though Twitter is claiming their “Promoted Tweets” aren’t actually ads.

While it’s still way too early to know how either of these platforms will play out, it’s extremely exciting to see some new advertising opportunities [...]

In the last few days we’ve had two announcements about advertising platforms based on Twitter in TweetUp and Promoted Tweets, even though Twitter is claiming their “Promoted Tweets” aren’t actually ads.

While it’s still way too early to know how either of these platforms will play out, it’s extremely exciting to see some new advertising opportunities that will have some scale to them. After search advertising took hold, it took a while before the Facebook and Myspace ad platforms started having enough scale to really get people’s attention. Of course, display advertising has been chugging along through all of this, but it looks like TweetUp and potentially Promoted Tweets will have the ability for anyone to eventually go in and start buying ads.

Not only is this interesting for marketers, but will this create a new type of ad network or new types of tools that are developed on this? Will there be Twitter focused ad networks who will optimize campaigns for you on the Twitter ad platforms? If you’re a larger advertiser, do you now need to optimize budget across search, display, Facebook, and Twitter options? Is there any ad network or agency that can do that? Is there any tool or service? There will be.

http://www.conversionrater.com

Interview with Mark Bole, CEO of BigMouthMedia

Last week I spoke with Mark Bole from BigMouthMedia, about the recent merger of LBi and Obtineo (BigMouthMedia’s holding company) and €40m more capital. I wanted to get a bit more detail about what the deal means for search marketers and get a sense of whether this was a strategic or reactive response to changes in the market.

Click to read the rest of this post…

Last week I spoke with Mark Bole from BigMouthMedia, about the recent merger of LBi and Obtineo (BigMouthMedia's holding company) and €40m more capital. I wanted to get a bit more detail about what the deal means for search marketers and get a sense of whether this was a strategic or reactive response to changes in the market.

Click to read the rest of this post...

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/

An SEO Recipe is a Recipe for Disaster

I saw a funny forum post this morning about a person asking the community in a an online marketing for the best SEO recipe. That person is already dead in the water right from the start. Let’s take a step back and emphasize how important taking a marketing approach really is when conducting a search [...]

I saw a funny forum post this morning about a person asking the community in a an online marketing for the best SEO recipe. That person is already dead in the water right from the start. Let’s take a step back and emphasize how important taking a marketing approach really is when conducting a search engine optimization campaign for your business or website. When you start off asking for a recipe for your search engine optimization program, you are really setting yourself up for disaster. Your search engine optimization should never look like a science project.

The search engines have been evolving since their birth many years ago. When they first came on the scene, instantly many highly technical “marketers” started manipulating the algorithm to get web pages to appear high up in search results. Search engines really dislike it when people do this. Over time they have consistently tweaked and changed their algorithm to get these people to stop manipulating the system to get their bogus web pages to rank. Some have disappeared and some have evolved to find new loop holes in the system. Remember that rankings alone do not generate business. Rankings are just one factor out of a basket filled with other marketing factors that should be utilized as well. Online shoppers are changing drastically. Over the last few years during the economic down turn many people have realized that they need to change their shopping behaviors. Many have already made the change in slowing down spending affecting the way people market their businesses. Making many technical sweeping changes to get your website to rank is not the answer you need. Online customers want to bump in your pay per click ad, they want to see you communicating with your audience online, they want to see you branding yourself and making at attempt to be visible in front of them in many different ways before they decide to call you or pull out their credit card to make a purchase on your website.

The evolution of the search engine and the relationship it has with online customers is rapidly evolving. You should not be looking for an SEO “recipe” but rather an SEO internet marketing plan to help grow your business. SEO and marketing together are very powerful. They create many multiple quality pathways and links pointing to your website that can really generate a great deal of targeted traffic to any website.

http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com

Real Time Search: good or bad for your brand?

Earlier this week, I wrote a guest post on the Social Media Examiner about real time search and it’s affect on businesses. Now that Google and other search engines are displaying real time feeds from Twitter and Facebook in the search results, brands need to understand the implications. I would suggest reading the full article; but here is a quick synopsis.
Here is real time search can drive business results:

Increased reach of your messages
Growth in social equity
Potential customer acquisition

.. and here are some challenges that brands will now half to come to terms with:

Marketers need to be empowered and willing to participate on the social web
Technology today is still not fast enough to monitor live conversations. Real-time search requires “real-time” monitoring which translates to “boots on the ground” brand participation. If a brand is highly engaged and savvy with Twitter, it will be ready to respond [...]

Earlier this week, I wrote a guest post on the Social Media Examiner about real time search and it’s affect on businesses. Now that Google and other search engines are displaying real time feeds from Twitter and Facebook in the search results, brands need to understand the implications. I would suggest reading the full article; but here is a quick synopsis.

Here is real time search can drive business results:

  • Increased reach of your messages
  • Growth in social equity
  • Potential customer acquisition

.. and here are some challenges that brands will now half to come to terms with:

  • Marketers need to be empowered and willing to participate on the social web
  • Technology today is still not fast enough to monitor live conversations. Real-time search requires “real-time” monitoring which translates to “boots on the ground” brand participation. If a brand is highly engaged and savvy with Twitter, it will be ready to respond when issues arise on the fly
  • Brands must be more strategic when posting updates on facebook and consider what keywords to use

The article is timely, since I wrote about how brands should be living in the conversational stream earlier this week.

http://www.britopian.com

Launching the SEOmoz Free API and Enough Power to Build Open Site Explorer

Posted by Nick Gerner

The launch of Open Site Explorer last week opens up a lot of link data, filters, and anchor text to a much wider audience than we’ve ever had before.  In that same vein, today we’re announcing our new and improved SEOmoz Free API.

Any registered (it’s free) SEOmoz member can visit our API Portal and get an API key that gives you access to:

  • Data for any URL in our index including
    • Domain and Page Authority
    • mozRank
    • total link count
    • external, followed link count
  • The first 500 links to any page, sub domain or domain
  • Filtering on those links: 301s, Follows, External, etc.
  • The first 3 domains linking to any page, sub domain or domain
  • The first 3 anchor text terms or phrases in links to any page, sub domain or domain

You’re welcome to use this data for private or publicly-facing purposes. We already have a variety of partners integrating this data including:

Check out some sample code and applications on the wiki.

Our idea is that getting this data into the hands of webmasters makes everyone better off: we’re excited about our new authority scores, marketers are thirsty for metrics, and users of all kinds of tools are better off with a deeper look at real data.  The free package will keep you covered up to a million links per month that you’re free to use for any purpose from consulting to building an SEO campaign management suite.

API Cartoon

In addition to the free API (which I think is quite powerful already), we’re expanding our paid API offering. The paid API includes everything above, but also includes:

  • Additional metrics:
    • number of domains that link to you
    • mozTrust
    • number of links to all pages on your domain
    • and more
  • A deeper look at links, way beyond the first 500 (first 100k for each sort per page, domain or sub domain)
  • Plenty of sorts on links:
    • domain authority
    • page authority
    • linking root domains
  • Way more anchor text terms and phrases (up to 100k per page, domain or sub domain if you’ve got that many)

This is exactly the same API powering Open Site Explorer.  So if you think OSE missed a feature, or should include other data sources, you can build it over again and do an even better job :)   If you do, drop me a line and I’ll take a look. We’d love to share partner apps on our wiki, Twitter, the blog, and elsewhere.

We don’t even have an attribution requirement. Although, we have a tasty 15% discount if you do cite us as a source ;)

To sign up, just contact us, and we’ll start the process.

EDIT: The paid API is available outside of a PRO membership.  A PRO membership buys the tools, and content, and sweet sweet badge.  The paid API is extra.  Of course, the free API is both free and full of awesome.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by Nick Gerner

The launch of Open Site Explorer last week opens up a lot of link data, filters, and anchor text to a much wider audience than we've ever had before.  In that same vein, today we're announcing our new and improved SEOmoz Free API.

Any registered (it's free) SEOmoz member can visit our API Portal and get an API key that gives you access to:
  • Data for any URL in our index including
    • Domain and Page Authority
    • mozRank
    • total link count
    • external, followed link count
  • The first 500 links to any page, sub domain or domain
  • Filtering on those links: 301s, Follows, External, etc.
  • The first 3 domains linking to any page, sub domain or domain
  • The first 3 anchor text terms or phrases in links to any page, sub domain or domain
You're welcome to use this data for private or publicly-facing purposes. We already have a variety of partners integrating this data including:
Check out some sample code and applications on the wiki.

Our idea is that getting this data into the hands of webmasters makes everyone better off: we're excited about our new authority scores, marketers are thirsty for metrics, and users of all kinds of tools are better off with a deeper look at real data.  The free package will keep you covered up to a million links per month that you're free to use for any purpose from consulting to building an SEO campaign management suite.

API Cartoon

In addition to the free API (which I think is quite powerful already), we're expanding our paid API offering. The paid API includes everything above, but also includes:
  • Additional metrics:
    • number of domains that link to you
    • mozTrust
    • number of links to all pages on your domain
    • and more
  • A deeper look at links, way beyond the first 500 (first 100k for each sort per page, domain or sub domain)
  • Plenty of sorts on links:
    • domain authority
    • page authority
    • linking root domains
  • Way more anchor text terms and phrases (up to 100k per page, domain or sub domain if you've got that many)
This is exactly the same API powering Open Site Explorer.  So if you think OSE missed a feature, or should include other data sources, you can build it over again and do an even better job :)  If you do, drop me a line and I'll take a look. We'd love to share partner apps on our wiki, Twitter, the blog, and elsewhere.

We don't even have an attribution requirement. Although, we have a tasty 15% discount if you do cite us as a source ;)

To sign up, just contact us, and we'll start the process.

EDIT: The paid API is available outside of a PRO membership.  A PRO membership buys the tools, and content, and sweet sweet badge.  The paid API is extra.  Of course, the free API is both free and full of awesome.

Do you like this post? Yes No

http://www.seomoz.org/blog

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