Let me preface this by saying that I am a blogger and I’m also an SEO.  I have been blogging ‘professionally’ for years and my blogs easily reach 100,000 unique visitors every month.  In fact blogging is what lead me into the SEO field.  So if you are around me for a few minutes throughout the day, especially in the search marketing department at LeapFrog Interactive, you will no doubt hear me espouse the benefits of bloggers.  This post is going to discuss why SEO’s should build relationships and not one-night-stands with bloggers and will touch on how bloggers can be beneficial to a client or brand’s SEO.

Bloggers are new.  They are exciting.  They are trendy, but most of all, they are real people.  To really blog requires effort and heart.  And when I say EFFORT that means writing 1,000 words plus daily.  Try writing 1,000 words every day and getting paid almost nothing for the first year as you build your audience; it takes a lot of effort. Bloggers LOVE what they blog about, or at least they better!  Good bloggers care.  They post constantly and deliver good consistent content to their readers who joyfully read.  On top of those thousand word witty posts, they field comments (both positive and negative) from complete strangers, they get, sometimes annoying, emails from marketers and try to put food on the table for their families.  It’s not easy.  So when PR and SEO professionals send a form letter that says, ‘Dear Sir or Madam’ it gets deleted without a second thought. 

So why do I believe in bloggers?  Why do I believe that bloggers can transform an online presence for a brand? Why do I believe that bloggers can work effectively with a digital agency? Because I have done it.  For years I have worked on campaigns for national brands.  I have even painted my face with chocolate pudding and exposed my audience to Cottonelle moist towelets.  (Yes they are awesome and yes I used chocolate pudding for a reason!)

Build a relationship

Bloggers can be the gift that keeps on giving.  Treat them right, care about their success and they will care about yours.  Bloggers are creative people, they will help brainstorm with you, help generate ideas for your client or brand, GOOD ideas.  We all know that older SEO’s wanted links.  Links will make you popular; links will get you on the first page they cried from the rooftops.  Boys and girls it isn’t 2008 anymore.  While links are important, building an online relationship that doesn’t involve paying e-harmony can be extremely meaningful.  ONE quality link from a good blog or website will have more impact than 1,000 junk links. 

So why a relationship?  Let’s step back a minute.  A blogger isn’t just a link, they are someone with influence, like a pro-athlete.  In the real world, pro-athletes promote  products.  In the online world, bloggers are just like pro-athletes except they usually blog in their pajamas on the couch.  They influence people.  So instead of begging a blogger for a semi-influential link to your site, take the time and build a relationship with someone influential. 

Here is why: when you build a relationship with a blogger, that blogger becomes an advocate with an AUDIENCE.  Unlike old school link building where no one cares about audience or influence, we NEED to care.  Traffic is important, time on page is important, and blogger advocates are the closest point to your website, a click away.  Unlike pro-athletes that promote a product, wear the product etc, the consumer must actively remember to visit your website.  While athletes can build brand awareness and brand visibility and have other great benefits, Peyton Manning is unlikely to consistently bring thousands of visits to your brand website, a blogger can.  Bloggers I know have more Facebook fans, Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram followers than many famous people.  So let’s be real, bloggers are online rock-stars.  You would never go up to Peyton and say, ‘Hey give me a link man’.  So why do that to a blogger?

How to Reach Out to Bloggers?

So now I’ve convinced you that bloggers are important to your brand and it’s time to starting building those relationships. So how do I find them and reach them? Of course there is email, but let me clue you in, I work full time and get a lot of email.  But it doesn’t touch the amount of email I get from blogging.  Some days I get THOUSANDS of emails.  I have form responses I send back to readers but I honestly delete most of the emails.  With Gmail I use filters constantly.  If you’re a marketer, contacting me about a link or in a non-personal way, it is likely that as soon as you email me you are given a filter and you will never again show up in my email inbox.  Don’t be that guy.  When I contact bloggers for brands that we work with, I usually get creative.  I use Instagram, Twitter, even Facebook to contact them.  By being different I stand out.  I get noticed, and believe it or not they respond. 

I hope my zeal for bloggers persuaded you that bloggers are worth the effort.  Happy SEOing.

[Contributed by Nathan Engels, SEO Specialist & Blogger]

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Imagine a world where you say to your phone or glasses, “Restaurants in Downtown Cincinnati” and your device displays almost immediately the most popular restaurants, with the best reviews in downtown Cincinnati.  Wait, that day is here already on some devices, using Siri or Google Voice on the Android!  But what will happen with Google Glass as it enters the arena of search marketing?

While Google Instant changed search forever, it tries to make an educated guess and displays results as you are typing. I believe Google Glass and voice search will be another revolution. 

Imagine a device that doesn’t care about your webpage, but about the information contained within it.  Mobile search is growing increasingly more important for consumer based products and services.  A car dealership, for example, would be very interested in mobile searches because they have a physical location.  If you said to your Google Glass, ‘Okay glass, Google Kia dealerships in Cincinnati’ glass would not bring up a website, it would bring up locations on a map and direct you to them.  With the movement away from traditional websites and the immergence of mobile applications, SEO’s and marketing professionals know one thing for sure: everything constantly changes. 

While mobile devices like the Android are meant to browse the web, Google Glass is not.  It’s really meant for information.  Where is something, who is someone, text someone etc.   We all know that this is the first edition of Google Glass, and it’s just going to get better and better.  My guess is that it’s the future, and here is why.  It’s wearable.  While some creepy guys may wear Glass in the bathroom, for the most part I believe that Glass will become just as common as tablets.  I remember, years ago, when I was skeptical of the tablet.  Why would anyone want a small version of a computer that is difficult to type with, can do limited functions, is expensive and really isn’t much better than a small laptop computer.  I was wrong in a fantastic way.  Tablets have really taken hold because they filled a different niche that we didn’t know existed.   Sales people present with them, service professionals use them to stay in contact with headquarters and dads like me use them to entertain my 3 year old with powerful learning apps and the occasional Yo Gabba Gabba on Netflix. 

So what should you do to continue to help your website rank high?  The one word that many love to hate: content.  No matter what happens, Google will always value good content.  Google’s overall goal is to connect people to what they are searching for on the Internet, whichever device they are using.  If you speak it, type it or in the future think it, the goal is to help Google’s users FIND IT.  Making content that people want is key.  If you are a car dealership in Cincinnati, make sure to focus on SEO efforts and the more good quality content you create that is relevant, the more your efforts will pay off.  Pay attention to Google+ as we see it will continue to integrate into other Google devices and services, like Google Glass. 

Even with voice search emerging, let’s not forget the overall goal of a search engine and it’s products: to connect you, the searcher, with what you are truly looking for.  When you, the business or marketer, create the content a searcher is looking for, and its high quality, valuable, and optimized for search, you will be found. 

[Contributed by Nathan Engels, SEO specialist]

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Google’s Penguin update went live last night. According to Matt Cutts, the update will affect approximately 2.3% of searches worldwide.  The goal of the update: cut down on spam and sites using black hat link building techniques.

We have seen mixed results in the SEO forums on the impact. Some sites are no longer showing up for their brand terms whereas others have not been affected. 

At LFI, we have been researching our SEO clients and understanding the impact of Penguin 2.0. To date, we cannot find evidence our clients were impacted by the update. This is great news for not only our clients but also our Search Marketing team.

Our Search Marketing team works tirelessly to perform white hat SEO tactics via content marketing, social sharing, on-page metrics and more. Time and time again, our work weathers the storms of the Google’s algorithm changes and validates the work we are doing for our clients.

Below we have culled some of the leading SEO resources and their take on the Penguin update.

• Penguin 4, With Penguin 2.0 Generation Spam-Fighting, Is Now Live, Search Engine Land

• Google Penguin 2.0 Update is Live, Search Engine Watch

• Google Penguin 2013: How to Evolve Link Building into Real SEO, Search Engine Watch

• Penguin 2.0: PANIIIIIIIIC!!!…(or not), Search Engine Journal

• Penguin 2.0 rolled out today, Matt Cutts

• How about a discussion on Penguin 2.0?, SEOmoz

Content is King. For those in digital marketing, specifically organic or natural search marketing (or SEO) this has been the go-to message since the Panda update in 2011. That’s great. We need more content. But why is content so important for search engines and searches, and how do we know what type of content is best for our company or brand?

Let’s start with understanding why content on a website is important and why building content should matter to your company or brand.

Why Content?

Following the Google Panda algorithm update in 2011, quality content on websites became substantially more important. The Panda update, and its subsequent 25 additional updates, aimed to identify spam-like content and give greater authority to those sites producing high-quality content. Recently, the trend toward content marketing and search marketing has increased with the realization that content marketing is, and should be, part of an overall SEO strategy.

In the 2012 Search Marketing Benchmark Report – SEO Edition from MarketingSherpa, it was reported that 65% of marketers deemed content creation as a very effective strategic SEO tactic. According to Interconnected World, 44% of online shoppers begin by using a search engine, and 61% of global Internet users research products online. In 2011, 92% of marketers saw content creation as either “very effective” or “somewhat effective”, with 50% viewing web pages as “very effective” for SEO. Additionally, 76% of marketers have content creation in place as part of their strategic SEO campaigns, 61% of consumers are more likely to purchase goods from businesses that offer custom content and 60% of business decision makers say branded content helps them make better product decisions.

In addition to the new emphasis on quality content, there are hundreds of additional factors that Google and other search engines use as part of their algorithms to determine search results and site authority. One of those is time on site. Engaging onsite content offers opportunities for increased time on site as site visitors explore your service and offerings for a longer period of time. Secondly, search engines crawl brand sites looking for information that is relevant to the keywords that have been searched by a user. With increased content, you are able to influence at least those two additional algorithm factors due to the keywords driving the site visit and the length of time that user is on your site, which helps drive the relevancy of your site to the keyword or key term the user searched.

Content offers an outlet for brands to provide additional brand presence and product information. By generating content, your brand is increasing the relevancy of targeted keywords for search engines, increasing sharable content which impacts search authority and improving the “freshness” of the site on a regular basis. By developing, publishing and sharing engaging content, your brand will be able to increase their SEO value, keyword relevancy and social authority. 

Types of Content

Once a brand or company understands why content is important and what impact content can have on its SEO strategy, the next hurdle to cross is deciding what content is right for your brand. Building a content strategy allows your company to determine the types of content best suited for your audience - think, “what information does my audience care about?” And “what content is my consumer most likely to share?” Being able to answer those two questions will help determine the type of content best suited for your brand. Content can range from blogs, landing pages for SEO, articles, whitepapers, press releases, photo galleries, product photos, videos and more. Anything that you can create that will increase the number of pages indexed from your site by search engines and that encourages sharing among site visitors will help boost your SEO strategy results. Sharable and engaging content should be top of mind when developing content for your site. If your audience responds best and is more likely to share photos of your products, then promote product photos and continually add new ones to galleries.

Content, specifically quality content is the moving needle in today’s SEO environment. Content not only improves the information and pages available on a site to be crawled and indexed, but quality, engaging content provides additional opportunities to share your site. Content sharability is important now, and will continue to increase in the future as social search becomes more prominent within search algorithms and user experience. After all, the goal of a search engine is to provide the best user search experience possible.

Numerous articles, even Matt Cutts himself, have indicated that a “major” search engine algorithm update, Penguin 4.0, is coming. The impact of which will be the largest yet of the Penguin updates. Google has made some interesting moves recently from shutting down Google Affiliate Network and penalizing Mozilla which would indicate Penguin could be very aggressive and shutting down small publishers who using spammy techniques to help drive traffic.

If you have been performing SEO marketing for any length of time, or you have had an agency performing SEO work, now is a good time to start evaluating the link building work, which has been done. Mostly likely, the biggest impact of the Penguin updates will be in the area of links coming back to your site. In the past it has been the easiest to game and thus many sites, including many reputable sites, most likely have “spammy links” on them. As a SEO or webmaster, take the time to start disavowing spammy links in an effort to improve your link profile.

SEO specialists, developers, research analysts, brand managers and CEO’s need to change their definition of links. A link = link is no longer the case. Modus operandi in the past was to acquire the most links you can the fastest. The result is a lot of bad links, which could be detrimental to your site. The focus of link building now must be on quality links. One link to a website with PR 6 yields much better traffic and results than 100 links from PR 2 websites. Link building is hard work. It is more in line with lead nurturing,  

The upcoming Penguin update will most likely impact everyone. Diligence will need to be had to minimize the impact to search rankings and traffic when it occurs.

Current hot topics in search marketing include content marketing, social search optimization and Google’s Penguin effects on your link building strategy. And while those are critical search items for businesses to keep in mind as they continue to build SEO programs, sometimes it is good to remember the basics. In this case, optimizing the PDFs on your site.

Google can, and does, index PDFs as you may notice when you conduct searches and PDF documents appear as related to your search. While PDFs are not as prevalent on sites as they once were and may appear only in search on occasion, that is no reason to ignore the ones that you have, especially if they can provide critical information about a topic a search is requesting. So, I present to you my top 5 tips for increasing the searchability of your PDF documents.

1. Create a text based PDF document. Because Google, and other search engines, can crawl text-based documents creating your PDF in Word or Adobe Acrobat, you are increasing the likelihood of it being indexed by search engines.
2. Give your document an optimized file name that tells searchers what the document contains. For example, if your document were about Search Marketing for Mobile Websites, the file name would then be Search-Marketing-Mobile-Websites.pdf. This provides clear guidance to search engines as to what information your document contains.
3. Complete all of the document properties including the Title, Author, Subject and Keywords. The Title field works much like the title tag or meta title field for a webpage and is shown in search results. The author field should most likely be the brand name, as brand names are more relevant to searchers than individual authors. The Subject field should be treated the same way you would treat a meta description field for a webpage. Keywords should include the top 3-5 key terms or phrases you are targeting with your PDF.
4. Use SEO best practices for copy optimization. This means including optimized H1 and H2 tags, optimized copy with keywords and links with anchor text. Yes, that’s right, Google and other search bots can crawl those links.
5. On Site Placement. Think about popular pages on your site where your PDFs content would be relevant. Additionally, those frequently visited pages are crawled more often, making PDFs located on those pages more likely to be found and indexed by search engines.

And as with all your digital content, share it and integrate your PDFs into other digital marketing mediums as appropriate. PDFs offer a great call to action for within a PPC ad, as well as an additional resource to accompany a blog post or a digital response to an RFP. Links to PDFs can also be shared via social media to improve social search optimization (SSO) and provide additional insights for your fans and followers.

Don’t clog your site with PDFs, as search engines and searchers prefer HTML webpages. But for those occasions when a PDF article or other resource is appropriate, optimize it for maximum searchability and usability.

Precision and efficiency meets branding and reach when brands decide to engage in search retargeting. Search retargeting allows brands to continue the conversation outside of the search engine results page (SERP) and reach an audience who has yet to visit your site. This form of digital marketing creates additional awareness with customers who have already searched your key terms by showing display ads to users based on the search terms entered into their search engine – Google, Bing, Yahoo.

So, what does that mean, exactly?

When a user searches a keyword or phrase and then moves away from the search engine, the display ads the user is shown are targeted toward the search previously completed. This method of advertising allows brands an additional avenue to reach highly-targeted, motivated searchers who have already shown an interest in the company’s products or services.

While search retargeting is considered to be a marketing channel all its own, it is important to keep in mind that this marketing channel works more effectively when integrated with additional channels. In fact, according to Chango, a top media-buying platform, 84.4% of brands and agencies use social media while using search retargeting, 72.7% use mobile marketing and 48.5% use email marketing.

Once a brand has a good grasp on the concept of search retargeting, the next question becomes, where and how can I use this revolutionary technology? The answer is simple… Google, Facebook and Yahoo. All have search retargeting functionality. Additionally, there are many third party ad networks and media buying platforms that offer search retargeting. 

If you are considering adding search retargeting to your marketing mix, there a few things to keep in mind:

• Know your keywords. Create your keyword list from four sources: (1) current PPC list, (2) terms that have been optimized out of PPC due to cost, (3) SEO wish list, & (4) competitor brand and product terms.

• Understand that retargeting is its own marketing channel. It requires unique banner ads, custom landing pages, ongoing optimization and continuous management. It is not a “set it and forget it” marketing channel. 

• Too much retargeting is a bad thing. Find the balance between retargeting and bombarding consumers is crucial. Ideally, consumer should see a brand’s ads 7-12 times over the course of 30 days, but not the same ad over and over.

• Be ready to commit. Search retargeting becomes more effective after it is up and running, giving the program time to grow your audience and seeing three months of impressions is more effective than one month.

• Use PPC accounts to start. For brands that have an active paid search marketing program, retargeting should begin within the paid search account. It provides a familiar platform while exploring this new marketing channel.

As more brands become more aware of the benefits of this medium, the higher the likelihood of increased usage to reach consumers on a targeted level. For brands already leveraging and investing in paid search marketing (PPC), search retargeting presents a secondary avenue to reach consumers through keyword targeting. Search retargeting companies and platforms that offer a specialized focus, services, features and insights are poised to drive performance and ROI for brands.

Arriving where reach and branding meet precision and efficiency, you’ll find the sweet spot of search retargeting. And in the world of new age display advertising and search marketing, that is where you want to be found.

On the surface, it would seem that there might be subtle differences between SEO implementation for e-commerce vs. non-ecommerce sites, as basic SEO tactics are the same. However, there are several key points of difference when implementing an SEO plan for an ecommerce vs. a non-ecomerce site. Those differences include the importance of an internal search engine, rich snippets & additional micro data, social media integration, unique product content & image optimization, customer reviews, and pagination.

When an internal search engine is developed, it is critical that the search is able to produce results based on a variety of search term types including product names, models, SKUs or relative keywords. Nothing is more frustrating for a user when he or she tries to search for a product using a keyword, is delivered zero results and then discovers that the product does exist but, the search feature is just not as optimal as it could be. Internal search engines also provide keyword data to help refine your SEO & keyword strategy.

Rich snippets and micro data are prime opportunities for additional SEO on e-commerce websites. Rich snippets create better descriptions of a page and improve the presentation of products in search results, thus leading to higher click through rates and improved user experience. In a similar fashion, additional micro data such as those provided via Schema.org, webmasters can help search engine better understand the website. When using Schema.org to add additional markup to product pages, be sure to only choose properties relevant to the attributes your products have. One thing that Google notes, however, is to use either Schema.org or rich snippet markup, but not both together on the same web page.

Micro data can also come in the form of customer reviews for online retailers. Reviews can be marked with micro data and give search engines more context about the content of your site, allow reviews to appear with product pages in search results and give the chance to improve click through rate. Additionally, reviews provide great feedback on products and also equal a source of unique content for your site.

Social media integration can exist in two different ways on e-commerce sites. Of course, there is your standard brand page links to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other properties, but there is also an opportunity to add “like” and “share” buttons to specific products. There are two schools of thought for integrating social media. One, which is the most common, is to add the “like” and “share” icons to all product pages for users to share products they like or are planning to purchase. The second option is to include the “share” or “like” features for products on the confirmation or Thank You Page following the purchase or review, allowing a users to share what was purchased or reviewed on your site. Either way, having the opportunity for users to use social media on your site will help with social search integration and will benefit your site position overall.

Content is king…not only on all sites, but especially on e-commerce sites. Developing unique product descriptions, product details, including optimized images and product videos sets your site apart from the competition. Using the manufacturers’ description is least effective because it is the most used by retailers, creating unique product descriptions will differentiate your site from other retailers selling the same product. It also helps not create duplicate content across the web. Optimizing your images is also a critical part of your product pages. Develop descriptive file names and alt tags for your images, show photos of your product in use and not just the standard white background image and create & submit an image sitemap to Google to improve your likelihood of having your images appear in search results.

Pagination refers to markup that Google and other search engines see that allows a better understanding of the order of product pages and pass link equity to key pages. There are three primary tactics for pagination – (1) classic / noindex; (2) view all method and (3) rel prev/next method.

Implementing SEO for e-commerce can be a time consuming and overwhelming process. The world of e-commerce is competitive and constantly evolving making the basics of SEO critical for success. Thus having well developed site architecture complete with an on site sitemap and clear navigation, SEO friendly URLs, well defined HTML head tags (title, meta description, keywords, H1 tag), and company details, including the phone number, for each page on the site helps create trust, confidence and relevancy for search engines.

In mid-November, Bing released its Webmaster Guidelines. Similar to Google’s guidelines, Bing’s guidelines focus on technical aspects, indexing, content and general SEO. There are, however, two elements Bing highlights in their guidelines, that are either hard to find or do not exist. One is social media and the impact of social media signals and social media authority. And the other is about links.

One major difference in the search engines’ guidelines is any reference about links, specifically external linking. While Google mentions linking, on and offsite, in techniques to avoid (hidden links, link schemes), their guidelines do not provide detail about correct or beneficial linking tactics. Bing, on the other hand, tells webmasters the importance of links - links help Bing find new content and establish a vote of confidence between websites.  The site linking to your content is essentially telling us they trust your content – as well as what not to do – link buying, participating in link schemas, similar to Google.

Now…let’s talk impact of social media – or as we at LFI like to call it, social search optimization. Bing’s guidelines specifically state the importance of social media as a signal and factor in search results - Social media plays a role in today’s effort to rank well in search results. The most obvious part it plays is via influence. If you are influential socially, this leads to your followers sharing your information widely, which in turn results in Bing seeing these positive signals.  These positive signals can have an impact on how you rank organically in the long run. We have known for sometime the influence social has had in search results with the release of Facebook Likes in search results and the social sidebar released earlier this year. This statement showcases the “why social is important” to companies looking to improve their search results positions in Bing. Unlike Bing, Google has yet to create guidelines specifically around social media and the impact of a company’s social media participation on search ranking. However, due to the release of Search Plus Your World, Google Authorship + AuthorRank and the emphasis of the search engine on Google+, we know that social search optimization is also a ranking factor considered by Google when determining the rank of search results.

Bing’s Webmaster Guidelines are a step in the right direction as the search engine continues to compete against Google for the market share of searchers. And from a company that has been so secret in the past, even more so than Google, about its ranking factors and signals, this look into the search engine’s “thinking” is a benefit to SEOs and digital marketers looking to impact their company’s search results in Google and Bing.

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the Google Authorship concept since its release earlier this year. It seemed simple enough, add a tag to your code on your blogs and done…instant authorship in the eyes of Google. However, it was not quite that easy and in the beginning I’m pretty sure I wasn’t 100% aware of the importance of getting it right for myself, as blogger and for LFI, as the blog host.

Google Authorship is a verification code that connects an online author’s Google+ profile and their blogs or articles. Thanks to a great article from Search Engine Journal, I now understand the steps for the perfect implementation of the code and what it can mean for me as a blog author and LFI as the content host. The “why” is by far more important than the “how” as once you understand it, the how to implement is the easy part. It’s the why you need to implement it and how to use it to its fullest potential that are the big questions to answer.

Let’s start with why you need it. First, Google authorship serves as a signal to Google of expertise on a particular subject area. This snippet of code signals to Google that you are an author and because you have been published (hopefully by quality and authoritative sites), you have knowledge in a specific area. The more you write, the greater your signal to Google. Secondly, Google authorship also contributes to one of Google’s new algorithms – AuthorRank. AuthorRank is used to determine how authoritative you are about a subject. Because you can connect your Google+ page with the sites, blogs and articles you author, you are increasing your social authority and thus your personal SEO. This also allows you to increase your followers on Google+ and helps users and readers find quality content on the web. Third, and finally, you can use Google Webmaster Tools to view analytics and monitor your content in search via Author Stats. This information can better help you understand your reach and impression of your content. As you can see, implementing Google authorship has great benefit for you as an author, but what about your company blog. Can you use Google authorship to help improve your company SEO as well?

Sure! While Google Authorship is highly recommended for individual authors, it can also be applied to business blogs – that is if your company is writing a blog as the company and not as individual authors. The implementation and benefits discussed for an individual then apply for the company blog and Google+ profile.

So how do you use it to its fullest potential? First, implement it for all authors on your blog – whether that is one author, the company, or many authors such as the experts on the LFI blog. Implementing it correctly is the first step to success. Start with verifying your domain email address, and then verify your content (this is the code piece). Secondly, start writing. Not about anything and everything, but about content that you are an expert, content and subjects that will help increase your authority to search engines, in particular Google.

Understanding how Google Authorship works and why it is important, is a critical step as digital marketing and SEO further curves down the path of social search optimization and the integration of your social authority and your search authority. Google authorship increases visibility and trustworthiness of the content you are creating and publishing. The more signals of authority you exude, the higher your chances of increasing your rank and authority level with Google and other search engines.

The integration of search and social media has been developing over the past year and has created major buzz as Google introduced Search Plus Your World and Bing added the social sidebar, which includes information from friends, experts and enthusiasts that relate to your search. It’s only appropriate that there is new news on the social search front. Enter Bing’s inclusion of the Klout score for those results in the social sidebar. Klout was founded in 2008 and is social media scoring platform. Klout uses more than 400 variables to give a social media user (individuals and companies) a social media influence score. This partnership between Bing and Klout also includes Bing providing search data to Klout for Klout to use in its scoring algorithm. This new partnership, according the Bing Blog, is to “help enrich the discovery and recognition of influencers across our platforms.” Meaning…social influence is going to impact search – in a way.

But, what does this mean for your brand, your company or even yourself being found in search? While it does not directly impact traditional search results, it impacts those people (experts & influencers) who appear on your sidebar for a Bing search. As searchers become more accustomed to this addition to Bing search, they will begin to rely on those experts and trust those points of view over the general search. This is where a brand or expert’s social postings and influence start to come into play. Wouldn’t it be great if your website appeared at the top of the search results page AND your internal expert also appeared in the search side bar? Searchers would take notice and relate your brand or company with being an expert in that field, industry or search term.

Social search is a fasting moving target and without the right strategy you might not be able to take aim, let alone hit a bulls-eye.

Last week Apple unveiled the new iPhone 5 and during that announcement was discussion around the new iOS6. While most of the information was also presented during Apple’s announcement in June, re-reading about the features via various blogs and CNET’s live stream from the Apple event, it became even more apparent that Apple is moving to help consumers integrate their mobile, social and search.

While iOS6 offers some improved technical features overall, as a search marketer I continue to be most intrigued by the increased Yelp integration with Apple Maps. While Yelp reviews already appear with Siri voice search results on the iPhone 4S, the new Apple Maps appear to showcase Yelp reviews --- that correspond to the place selected. This integration brings the need for reviews to a new level … and increases the need to encourage businesses to encourage clients to write those reviews. In terms of search, reviews matter. As we have seen with Siri and Google+ Local changes, those reviews are becoming determining factors in search results and those review “stars” appearing as part of the search results snippets. 

So, what does this mean for your SEO strategy? As we had mentioned before in our voice search blogs, make sure your locations all listed in Yelp with an optimized description and are included in the categories most closely related to your business. Additionally, encourage Yelp reviews by customers. Implementing these, or similar strategies, drives your SEO strategy from a broad approach to a more focused approach – local search. As Apple Maps continue to develop and Google Maps + Google+ Local continue to evolve, your local SEO efforts and customer engagement will become more important to your overall search marketing strategy. This in turn results in the opportunity to integrate your local search strategy with your other local marketing tactics from traditional media to social media.

Can you imagine if Google, and other search engines, were faced with the reality of every site having a separate experience for desktop and mobile users? Which site would be worthy of an inbound link? How would site rank be determined? Would mobile sites ever be ranked in search? And if so, what would be weight be? With all those hypothetical questions, it was important for developers and the web site design world to create a platform that could encompass desktop + mobile site needs.

Enter responsive web design.

Responsive web design (RWD) enables web designers to create one layout for a site that responds & adapts to the screen size and platform of the site visitor. This type of design is generally a good fit for designing desktop + mobile friendly sites. In fact, RWD is Google’s official recommendation for mobile development and enhanced mobile SEO.

So now that you know a little more about RWD, why is it a good idea from the eyes of search marketers? One reason is the URL. With a consistent URL for desktop and mobile users and desktop and mobile search bots, your site has uniformity making for better user interaction, easier for Google’s link algorithms to work with and, along with the same HTML, increased crawler efficiency.

As we discussed as a benefit for social media, links with RWD sites also benefit SEO. As mentioned before, the alternative method to RWD is to develop separate sites to meet a variety of device needs. From an SEO perspective, multiple sites presents a link building challenge of dedicating efforts for each sites or using redirects to point site visitors to the correct version of the site – mobile, desktop, tablet. Enter the benefit of RWD – one site, means one set of links and no redirects. An additional linking benefit it maintaining the link equity for your site. With multiple sites, you are in affect spreading out the link equity across multiple sites rather than increasing the link value of one site. By using RWD for your site, you establish link equity to a single version of your site, which produces stronger signals and better page rank than separate sites would have alone.

While responsive web design provides many benefits for designing a site for easy transition from desktop to mobile, it is critical to evaluate your project to ensure that a RWD site is the best fit. For example, if you know your clients or consumers are looking for specific items on your site when using their mobile device, it might be a best fit to have a separate mobile site highlighting those features. However, developing a responsive web designed site will benefit those customers who click “view full site” from the mobile view. Additional benefits of a RWD site include improved landing pages PPC ads and display ads, as well as mobile friendly pages for email links and social media posts that users click through on mobile devices.

For a brand maintaining a digital presence through a blog, website or other digital properties, it is generally a good idea to create a strong presence on the Internet. Communication on the web, either written or as video media means that information travels unaffected by barriers such as geography or even time itself. This allows one entity, such as a small business owner or your local medical center the opportunity to reach a vast amount of potential customers relatively easily. Two specific techniques that are generally easy to implement and execute are social media and link building.

Social media in today’s online environment is a household term and rather recently has managed to amass a bit of a bad rep because of the shower of bad ads and ill-advised marketing ventures. In short, it seems as if everybody is doing it. And they might be. But not necessarily the right way. The truth is that social media is actually that, social. This means it appeals to the need for people to stay connected and interact, be “social” with each other. They upload their lives (pictures, video, written content, opinions, interests and much, much more), digitizing them then sharing them and interacting with other’s lives, interests and, yes, even businesses. People also browse and surf random user and business generated content. A sweepstakes, special offer, coupon or other promotion that might excite the impulse to interact within prospective customers could equal a successful increase in traffic, exposure and most importantly, sales.

Another way to spread the word and distribute content across the web is through link building. Link building is the act of increasing or building inbound links to a specific site. Link building has two specific purposes. For one, it operates on the premise that the more links there are around the Internet to a specific piece of content, the larger the probability that users will click and follow the link, increasing the traffic to that linked content or page. The other aspect is for the sake of search engine optimization or “SEO”. SEO refers to an act that makes the elements of a website more efficient at being properly detected, catalogued and relayed by various search engines and their web crawling algorithms. These special pieces of code pick up and organize content on the Internet. SEO takes on various forms but generally it is all about keywords and clear, concise labeling and organizing of content within a website. A website should have a focused theme that repeats and is clearly visible throughout all parts of the site. Clear, often simple and specific keywords that label images and other media will ensure that search engine bots or “web crawlers” will identify a specific site as belonging to the correct category of keywords or key phrases. This in turn increases the probability that if a potential customer types “hardware store in [city, state]” in Google your hardware store will pop up in the first few search results.

Social media and link building can complement each other and it is a good idea to use both techniques, as they are cost effective and often simple to implement. Using these techniques together creates an element of social search optimization for the brand. The trick is that the content must be original and interactive. A simple blog post about a store within a franchise opening is informative but not very engaging; it more closely resembles a not-so-interactive press release. However, if a brand can create a campaign that gives incentives to people who attend the grand opening and post the information throughout various social media outlets, the exposure creates more public interest. Additionally, rather than posting a flyer on the blog, it would be a better idea to post a news feed on the company blog to supplement the event and the experience. This way people will be more inclined to interact, as they are being engaged through multiple outlets and offered plenty of relevant content.

The modern day Internet is a very, very crowded environment. The breadth and variety of available information online is difficult to imagine. It’s for this reason that pages are grouped and ordered by similarities of content and theme. But even with this grouping the shear amount of groups that are created can be dizzying. In order to have a website that stands out in this environment one must increase its visibility. And that is where link building comes into play. The act of link building increases the exposure rate of your website link by increasing the number of locations a user can access it. Online directories are services that use a grouping system based on various kinds of categories that organize the many links that are listed within them. The more places a link is available the higher the likelihood that users will click on it and help increase the websites reputation.

However, the act of link building is more efficient if paired with optimization. SEO techniques ensure the information comprising a webpage is easily readable and comprehendible for both mechanisms, which scour and index the Internet’s riches, as well as the users who are constantly scouring the Internet themselves. A website has two sides to it: one faces the consumer and the other faces the person(s) that function as developers (webmasters). SEO makes sure that elements like meta tags and other webpage specific elements are labeled correctly and most importantly, relevant to the overall subject matter of the entire webpage.

The general purpose of SEO is to make sure that every page, image and other elements are properly labeled and carry a relevance to the greater theme or purpose of the web project. This ensures that search engine parameters properly scan and catalog your sites’ content.

[Contributed by Boris Polan, marketing coordinator]

When we discussed 2012 digital trends back in November and December, one of the areas we highlighted was voice search. In particular, we felt Apple’s Siri was a game changer in this field and would help propel this form of technology forward. Google’s Android system had some voice search capability but it was relative to information on your phone and/or location-based. The Siri voice application made major advancements in the ability to find information by search.

We have been surprised that in only 3-4 months the number of inquiries surrounding Siri and voice search have increased dramatically. Many businesses are wondering why Siri pulls certain businesses over another and how they can take advantage of this new technology.

Much as Google holds proprietary information like their algorithm secret, Apple has not explicitly said how Siri forms and answers search queries. However, based on testing done internally and by others, we have formed recommendations to best have Siri serve up your business during voice search.

• Build and optimize a mobile site for your business.
• Make sure you have claimed your business in Google Maps and the information is up-to-date.
• If the industry your business/service receives ratings and reviews through popular apps (ie: Yelp and UrbanSpoon for restaurants) make sure your business/service is claimed in those app features and the listing is optimized

Social Search has been a term around for a couple of years in an attempt to understand and capitalize on the nature of social media and volume of search activity that occurs on those sites. The struggle has been Twitter and Facebook, the two leaders in the space, have walled-off most of their content from being searched by the major search engines.

Google has tried to rectify the issues around social search with Search Plus Your World.  Search Plus Your World is intended to pull content from social sites – including Google+ and Picasa – to show you the content you most want to see in the search engine results pages. Google has been expanding their search results to move beyond blue text links for several years now (originally called Universal Search). However, this is one of Google’s biggest forays into altering the search landscape by using the power of social media.

How does this impact your SEO campaigns? Over the last 8 months, we have seen a noticeable change in how the search engines rank your pages. Our clients who have incorporated a Search + Social Optimization (SSO) strategy have seen much larger gains of organic and referral traffic to their website than those using traditional SEO practices. I wrote an article about the need to combine your SEO and Social Media back in August.

We highly recommend a coordinated, concerted effort between both your Search and Social campaigns. Does this mean the Social Media campaigns you are embarking on are for naught? No, but when you are speaking in Social Media, you need to have a key eye on the how you are saying it (with keywords) and where are you directing engagement (back to the website). Clients who have tried to separate the Search and Social functions (For example, the agency performs the SEO and an in-house team performs Social Media) do not see the same gains when a strategic plan coordinating the two elements live under the same roof.

As we begin 2012, make sure to tweak your existing strategies to accommodate Search Plus Your World and the other updates, Panda and Freshness, which have helped propel the combination of Search and Social to the forefront in digital marketing strategies. 

For more information on Search Plus World and Social Search see more links to articles below.

The End of Link Building as We’ve Known and Loved It by Search Engine Watch

Search Plus: Five Changes You Need to Make to Your SEO Campaigns by eConsultancy Blog

”Search Plus Your World” Indexing Content Faster? by Web Pro News

How Google’s Social Search Shift Will Impact Your Brand’s SEO by Mashable

Google’s Results Get More Personal with “Search Plus Your World” by Search Engine Land

On November 3, Google rolled out its newest algorithm change which they say is an extension to the “Caffeine” update launched mid 2010. The goal of the “freshness” update is to bring searchers the most up-to-date, or freshest, information possible in areas where new information really matters like current events, frequently changing technologies, and regularly reoccurring events. Along with the focus on fresh content, Google can now execute AJAX and JavaScript to index comments on pages like Facebook and Twitter. This means comments made on social media pages could very well pop up on search engine results pages (SERP) – especially if they are in reference to a subject in one of the affected categories.

What This Means for Digital Marketing

Obviously fresh content is going to become more important. While this will have a bigger impact on some websites than others, if the site you’re managing happens to be among those considered to be one in the “freshness” category, then you’ll need to constantly crank out the new content while remaining relevant and unique. In this respect, SEO will become more difficult and time consuming, but hopefully rewarding you for the time spent producing the content with higher SERP rankings and traffic.

Social media can now be considered to be a tool for SEO. With Google indexing comments from social media pages, it stands to reason that relevant, keyword dense comments could achieve high rankings on search results pages. This means more thought and planning will need to go into coordinating our social media campaigns with SEO efforts to incorporate keywords.

On the surface it seems that Google has made it easier to achieve high rankings for sites that constantly publish new content and are active in social media marketing, but as with all Google updates there are winners and losers. The categories considered in this update will become more competitive, and require increased efforts to maintain rankings. However, with a well-planned and executed digital marketing strategy these changes can certainly be used to your advantage.

[Contributed by Sean Matthis, Marketing Coordinator]

In hindsight, random connections can seem like destiny. A chance encounter in an elevator leads to a 40-year marriage. A random dorm room assignment becomes a lifelong friendship. Two moms meet at a soccer game, and two years later they’re co-owners of a wildly successful chain of cupcake bakeries. It’s tempting to think such chance encounters weren’t chance at all, but instead were meant to be.
 
That’s because the idea of destiny is comforting. It protects us emotionally from the unpleasant reality that when we succeed or fail in life, love or business, it is often because of the random connections we make with other people. But while believing in destiny may make us feel better, it also limits us.
 
When we assign fate to the connections that lead to success, we fail to appreciate all the connections that were never made — all the missed opportunities. How many would-be spouses have shared a fleeting glance in the grocery store aisle, but never spoke to each other? How many would-be business partners have screamed at each other in a traffic jam? How many would-be fortune 500 companies have gone bankrupt despite offering a product or service for which people would have gladly paid had they only known it existed?
 
Fortunately, new technologies can help us make these important connections. These days, there are infinite ways for couples to meet through the Web, from online dating services to social media. There are even more opportunities for businesses. But to take advantage of them takes expertise in both these new technologies and the cultures built around them.
 
If you don’t have this expertise, you need a partner who does. You need a partner who knows how to use websites, mobile apps, Facebook pages, and Twitter feeds to not just push messages, but to build communities. You need a partner who knows how to build an effective and flexible SEO strategy, so that not only can you find your target, but they can also find you. You need a partner to help you quit relying on chance and instead take control of your destiny.

(Contributed by Mike Brown, senior writer)