Posts tagged ‘seo’

LiBeck Integrated Marketing Free Webcast

Written June 15th, 2011 by

You are invited to a free Webcast today at 1pm EST.

How User Centered Web Design Techniques Enhance Online Marketing

How User Centered Web Design Techniques Enhance Online Marketing is completely free. I’ll do a 40 minute training with slides that contain how-to, checklists and book recommendations, followed by Q&A.

Wed, Jun 15, 1 -2 pm EST

This is a virtual event. You can listen in from the comfort of your own home. If you can’t make it, slides will be made available later on Slideshare.

Signup: (FREE!)

Sign-In via Linked-In Events

or Sign up at the Webcast site.

Speakers:

Kim Krause Berg, Search Marketing and UX Manager, Da Li Social Integrated Marketing

News Reporter Complains About Keywords

Written June 12th, 2011 by

Many major news agencies train their reporters in the basics of search engine optimization so their stories are competitive in search results. But what happens when they’re asked to overdo it?

Reliable Sources, CNN

In the Sunday, June 11, CNN morning show hosted by Howard Kurtz, Reliable Sources, Kurtz asked several guest journalists their opinions on the reporting of Anthony Weiner’s wife’s pregnancy, and whether or not this was an invasion of her privacy and necessary in lieu of the already exploding news about her husband’s sleazy online behavior.

 

One of the journalists admitted that he’d received an email at work that listed a slew of keywords he was expected to use in his story, such as “Anthony Weiner’s Wife Pregnant”, “Pregnant wife of Anthony Weiner”, ‘Pregnant wife out of the country“,etc. The main keyword had to be “pregnant”, which he found distasteful, not to mention a bit invasive. His personal feelings were being “sad” that he and other journalists had to run the story at all.

The reason I watch Howard Kurtz every Sunday is because he’s a journalist who’s not afraid to force his profession to look at itself and study its practices. Are they hurting or helping society, for example? Did they screw up, get the facts, run a story with no proof, or forcefully turn a weak story into something sensational? This was the first time I saw search engine optimization (SEO) or the practice of adding keywords mentioned by professional journalists, although it’s routinely taught to them. They and their editing staffs are trained to make their stories rank in leading news outlets such as Google News, stay on top and become known as reputable sources by search engines.

So what happens when their editors force them to slant a story a certain way just to get rank? Has link equity now become a goal for journalists? If journalists are unhappy with the reasons behind choosing certain keywords suggested for usage by their editors and publishers, should they have the right to decline and on what grounds?

Li Evans, Rebecca Ryan Interview – Integrating Your Marketing Cohesively

Written April 21st, 2011 by

We’ve all heard cautionary tales about avoiding the Internet marketer who promises the cure-all of top Search rankings. How can there be solid guarantees, when marketers do not control competitors or search engine algorithms? The real answer is that it depends. Influence must be applied intelligently, strategically and taking into consideration exactly what is going on that effects that particular client.

Then there is the joke that a SEO can always get you to #1 in Google for some ridiculous term like “left-handed green screwdrivers for sale in Pasadena” – no problem there, right? I love that one, because it hits the nail on the head so nicely. Without sensible targeting there may be results, but they probably won’t be useful results.

Da Li SocialIM is very research-based. We don’t just tell clients what we do. We look at what clients need. We look at where their customers are. We look at how and where their customers interact online. We look at usability and engagement. We don’t need to bother with meaningless statistics about left handed green screwdrivers.

Here is a mini case study:

Example: Medical doctor, was told they had to be in Twitter, in Facebook and so on. He was communicating the typical list of “stuff” companies are putting on marketing slicks these days saying they know how to do this and that. The problem is that none of it was working for the client (along with a host of optimization problems). Through our research, we found that the conversations he needed to be a part of weren’t happening on Twitter or Facebook. So the client was wasting valuable time and money. We found certain forums worked for them.

Results: And now, the leads are coming in 5x the rate they were before we took over.

That’s what intelligently applied research can do.

This excerpt is from part one of a two-part interview, published Tuesday on enquirer.com – Integrating your marketing cohesively: an interview with two national experts. Check it out!

WordCamp Finds – WordPress Plugins for Security, SEO and Content Management

Written April 19th, 2011 by

Do you need to check a WordPress theme for hidden links? There’s a plugin for that. Want help managing a group blog’s editorial and scheduling needs? There’s a plugin for that, too. Da Li SocialIM sent me to Seattle’s recent sold-out WordCamp, where I learned about a lot of promising WordPressy things.

What an experience. I don’t get out much, so besides the marvelous shell shock of being in my element with 370 others who do WordPress, I was more than your average woo-woo over all that walking and talking eye contact. This won’t be my last WordCamp.

Theme Check Plugin

Theme Check Plugin is probably getting more buzz right now than any of the rest. Though it was not central to one of the talks, it came up several times. Theme Check bills itself as checking to make sure a theme is up to spec with the latest official WordPress standards, but it’s not just for theme developers. Theme Check can find encrypted code that can hide hidden affiliate links or malicious code. Never again wonder if there is something bad hidden in that free theme by an unfamiliar author.

EditFlow

EditFlow Screen Shot

EditFlow's Custom Statuses

The EditFlow Plugin was introduced in an Ignite talk at the end of WordCamp. It sounds like a blog manager’s dream. With EditFlow, a post can have any number of custom statuses, including “Waiting for Feedback” and “Assigned.” Users can cut down on those back-and-forth emails that can get lost, instead discussing a post’s development using threaded commenting in WordPress’s back end. Email notice is sent to admins, authors and any other included users when there are new editorial comments, or when a post changes status. This sounds like an absolute delight.

JetPack

jetpack logoJetPack came up in the very first presentation at WordCamp Seattle, “How is WordPress.com Made?” by Scot Berkun. The JetPack Plugin is shiny new, debuting just last month. It’s envisioned as a way to let WordPress.org style users enjoy popular features previously only available to WordPress.com blogs. The way Scott put it, WordPress.com is WordPress’s proving ground, so it gets the new goodies first. Plus, JetPack components can be cloud hosted via WordPress.com, so they won’t put an additional load on your server. Right now, JetPack includes WordPress.com stats, a Twitter Widget, neato Gravatar Hovercards, WP.me Shortlinks, LaTex markup language, After the Deadline grammar and spellchecker, Shortcode Embeds for sites like YouTube and SlideShare, and last but not least, Sharedaddy, a Social Networking sharing tool complete with stats. But wait! There’s more! Or at least WordPress.com will be adding more. Tell them what you want.

If you use plugins that do even one of the things JetPack can, install JetPack instead. Down the line, if the equivalent of anything else you use becomes available in JetPack, change to the JetPack version. Because JetPack plugins are wired into the frequently tested offerings of WordPress.org, they will be updated regularly and they won’t conflict with each other.

WordPress SEO by Yoast

Have you tried Yoast’s SEO plugin yet? It’s in beta, but it’s a good beta and the buzz among WordPress fans is positive. In addition to the Post titles and meta description tweaks included in other popular SEO plugins, Yoast SEO can add breadcrumbs, edit your robots.txt and .htaccess, produce an xml sitemap and more. WordPress SEO by Yoast is several coordinated plugins in one. Fewer separate plugins means fewer plugins to update, fewer plugins that may one day not be supported. Besides, anything by Yoast has a high probability of being awesome.

p.s. Here I am – the farthest left in Justin Sainton’s Group Deals session, wearing a black turtleneck and gold scarf.

Web Site Design Strategy Ideas

Written March 14th, 2011 by

It takes a team of people to build a web site in today’s Internet environment.  The most costly mistakes are not understanding what web site ownership is really about.  Where do you go to find out?

Below is a listing of discussion points which are helpful when deciding on a budget, strategy, skills, team members, web site needs and especially, your goals and priorities. It’s a place to start.

Business Requirements

  • Decide the lead goal(s) for the web site (i.e. provide information, online sales, sales leads, product sales, travel reservations, general information, etc.)
  • Who is the target market/user/customer?

Functional Requirements

  • Discuss the types of applications required, such as shopping cart, reservations, contact forms, sales lead forms, etc.
  • Research vendors for third-party applications.
  • Discuss platform, server, programming, database needs

Web Site Design

  • Requirements include type of programming (html, xhtml, php, etc.)
  • Will Flash be used and if so, what are the pros and cons?
  • Is accessibility a requirement?
  • Is usability and user experience design a requirement?
  • Is search engine marketing a requirement?
  • Is mobile design a requirement?
  • Is social media marketing a requirement?
  • Information architecture – taxonomies, keywords, language, navigation and sub-requirements such as search engine optimization and usability
  • User interaction requirements such as product feedback, ratings, blog comments, etc.
  • Discuss video and images usage, format, inclusion.
  • Content writing

*Note that functional requirements should support business goals.
Read the rest of this entry »

Search Engine and Social Marketing Strategies Help Tourism Industry

Written March 12th, 2011 by

We all long for vacation. Everybody dreams about it.  They want to have it where they can and when they can. Sadly, we all have jobs that prevent us from being on a permanent vacation. Lately, we are finding ourselves more and more longing for something as close to that idea as possible.   These days travel destinations, no matter their size,  are resorting to hiring tech-savvy “Heads of Tourism” or in the case of a resort, “Head of Special Events”.  They’ve learned the value of expert Search Engine Marketers.  Since word of mouth advertising is limited, online travel search and social media marketing creates new strategies for any travel destination hoping to reach out to those who dream of a chance to relax and escape.

Beach

Travel Search Marketing Pays Off

Let me give you an example. Home for me for many years was the small island of Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles. Ever heard of it? No? But I am sure you’ve heard of our sister island, Aruba. The reason was simple.  While for many years Aruba embraced the American tourist, Curaçao decided to sit back and complain about how Aruba had sold it’s soul. We didn’t even had a legitimate tourism bureau till about 1988. Read the rest of this entry »

Integrated Marketing: Stop Segmenting & Start Integrating

Written December 29th, 2010 by

"There's a lot of Hype out there"There’s been a lot of hype about Social Media over the past two years.  Before that, it was Pay Per Click Marketing (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and before that eMail marketing was all the rage.  This next coming year is supposed to be the “year of mobile” (although I’ve been hearing that for the last 5 years, so I’m not quite convinced we’re entering the year of mobile marketing).  The funny thing is, otherwise conservative companies can be quick to jump on the latest band approach because it’s the newest, shiniest thing without a solid, research-based strategy.   They have to have a “Director of This” or a “Manager of That,” and one doesn’t coordinate with the other. By being so quick to jump on the latest fads and pouring a ton of money into that new channel and siphoning away from others, companies segregate and segment their marketing efforts. Segmenting your marketing channels into silos that don’t communicate with one another really isn’t the answer.

There Are Ways to Market More Efficiently

Integrated marketing takes into account all of your available marketing channels.  Smart companies are increasingly seeing the value of budgeting for integrated marketing efforts, rather than dolling out dollars to segmented marketing channels, especially Social Media.  No longer can Social Media, SEO, Public Relations, Offline Marketing and even eMail marketing act like solitary beacons flashing messages to customers or audience members and still be efficient and successful.  Each acting on its own will have limited success.  It might be powerful for a few months, and you’ll see spikes, but for the long haul, each of these marketing channels being segregated on their own, will soon fall into the same trap each of its predecessors have, where the marketing team is waiting for the next “big thing” to come along.

While I’m a huge proponent of Social Media and using it wisely, I’m more an evangelist of Read the rest of this entry »

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