Search Engine Strategies (SES) Conferences are the largest global conferences focusing around Search and Social Marketing, touching on topics ranging from SEO to Video Optimization to PPC Management. The conference, since its start in 1999, has been held in major cities across the world and brings together professionals from a variety of different industries. The extensive, three-day event encompasses over 70 sessions, within tracks such as SEO, Paid Search and Social Media, along with interactive workshops led by Marketers and SEO professionals from major companies.

SES recently hosted one of their conferences here in Chicago. Rise Interactive’s CEO and Founder, Jon Morris, was featured on Day 1 during the SEO track. Morris participated on a panel focusing on Metrics for SEO. He later went into more detail on the topic with his presentation entitled “SEO: How Understanding Your Analytics Gives You the Edge,” which emphasized the importance of Web Analytics when looking to generate the highest return for your interactive investment. Following the event, Morris participated in an interview hosted by WebmasterRadio.FM where he further discussed the concept and practice of Interactive Investment Management.

SES Chicago presentation: http://www.riseinteractive.com/webinars/understanding-seo-analytics/get-the-analytics-edge.pdf

SES Chicago interview: http://www2.webmasterradio.fm/search-engine-strategies-conference/2011/interactive-investment-management

Step 1:  Evaluate Your Existing Content

Take a look at what you have on your site. If you didn’t work on the site or have an interest in buying the products listed on the site, would there be any reason to visit? If you answered no, than why would anyone link to your site (without payment or reciprocal linking)? At this point, your next step is to create content that people would actually find interesting! In other words, you need to differentiate your product! However, if you answered yes to that first question, than…

Step 2: Research

So you have great content that you think people would link to, but who are those people? Where is the best opportunity, so that you’re not wasting your time and effort reaching out to sites that will never link to yours? Researching your link target market allows you to allocate link building time more efficiently. There are two great ways to do this: social media monitoring and competitor analysis. Competitor analysis involves investigating who’s linking to similar content (i.e. the content on your competitor’s sites) to find opportunities. Social media monitoring allows you to find people who are participating in relevant conversations online, segment them based on the topic of conversation, and then either reach out to them with your existing content or…

Step 3: Create New Content

After you’ve done your research, identified relevant opportunities, and reached out to them to gain links, you may make an unfortunate discovery: you’re not getting any links because your content is subpar. Fear not, all is not lost. By re-thinking the content you’re putting out on your blog (or creating a blog if you don’t have one), putting company resources in an online database, or building out new informative/entertaining content, you can better serve your content market, and get links!

Step 4: The Pitch

The pitch is the key to any good sales push. In link building, the initial email is the first, and often times only, chance you have to pitch your target. The challenge is to reach a large number of opportunities, while still maintaining a personalized feel that will encourage your target to respond positively. The best way to do this is to create multiple templates for the multiple target markets you identified in your research. This will allow you to send out a large mass of emails, but still easily add one or two sentences about the site you’re reaching out to for personalization (Rule #1 of outreach: if you’re not personalizing your email outreach, you’re wasting your time).

Step 5: Rolling in a big pile of money (links)

Finally, after three and a half months of waiting, businesses can create Google+ pages.  If they were allowed to do so from the start, it’s possible G+ would not have lost all the momentum it started with, but that’s neither here nor there.  The point is that now businesses can interact with consumers on Google+ and the potential implications are enormous.

Impact on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

To go along with pages, Google has launched a new type of search called Direct Connect.  This allows users to go directly to a brand’s Google+ page simply by typing ‘+’ in the search bar right before the brand name.  It’s kind of like clicking the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button, except you know exactly where you’re going to land.  This means the content you share on Google+ is easier to find than the content you share on any other social network.  It also means your Google+ page is now as important as your Google Places page and probably only one tier below your website.

There’s one more reason Google+ is important to search.  The content that you share on Google+ is subject to the +1 button.  If you don’t know what the +1 button is, it’s basically Google’s version of the ‘Like’ button, but it impacts search results when you’re logged into your Google account.  Sites that are +1’d by your friends show up higher in your results than those that don’t (you’re also hypothetically more likely to click a link your friends have +1’d than one they haven’t).  If your company shares a link to your blog or your website on Google+, the +1’s that link receives will impact search results.  People can also +1 your Google+ page itself, helping that page rank higher in search results even if a Direct Connect search is not used.

Impact on Paid Search or Pay-Per-Click

Unlike Facebook, Google is not creating paid search ads within the Google+ platform (at least for now).  That means you will not be able to “buy” +1’s by displaying ads to Google+ users based on other pages they follow.  However, you can buy paid ads within Google search that direct people to your Google+ page.  It’s as simple as linking there instead of to your website.  Whether that’s an efficient use of your resources is another question, but it’s certainly within the realm of plausibility.

Paid search ads in Google also carry the same +1’s that organic search results carry.  So a paid search ad linking to a site that lots of people have +1’d is more likely to receive a higher placement among paid results, and could even influence a user’s decision about which ad to click.  Paid searchers will have to account for this in their pay-per-click strategy as the +1 grows in popularity.

Impact on Social Media

Google+ is, after all, a social platform, so how can we not discuss the social media impact of Google+ pages?  Your Google+ page is not like your Facebook page.  They may look similar, but their functionality is vastly different (and consumers use Google+ in different ways than Facebook, if they use Google+ at all—more on that below).  The biggest draw of Google+ has always been the organization of discussions and the ability to conduct multi-person video chats.  While there are other great features (and Google+ has always had great features), those are the two that brands should focus on the most as they set up their Google+ presence.

In many ways, Google+ more closely resembles Twitter than Facebook.  Some recent features such as ‘What’s Hot’ (similar to ‘Trending Topics’) help to cement those similarities.  But Google+’s advantage is the way comments are organized conversationally.  This is an opportunity for brands to communicate in a way they can’t on Twitter.  In other words, your Google+ content strategy should be similar to your Twitter strategy except that you have the ability to organize your conversations.

However, the biggest advantage of Google+ is the video features.  Not only is Google+ integrated with YouTube (did you notice the new YouTube search bar on the Google+ homepage that opens a pop-up video screen?), but you can have two, three or even ten-way communication with your customers by using the Hangout feature.  This is a brand new, exciting way for businesses to interact with consumers.  Use it to make announcements, handle customer complaints, hold contests and more.  Be creative.  Find new uses for video communication that nobody has done before.  The potential here is huge and could be what ultimately brings users to your Google+ page.

Did Google+ Become Relevant Again?

Depends who you ask.  Businesses, large and small, need to pay attention.  The question (and the reason I mentioned these implications are only potentially huge) is whether consumers will pay attention.  The momentum of users rushing to create Google+ profiles is long gone.  Can business pages stir up enough excitement to bring users back?  That’s the big question we have to ask—and the challenge your brand is now faced with.  What I do know is that, consumers or no consumers, the SEO and paid search implications now make Google+ a must for brands.

1. You perform a search, perhaps for “SEO best practices” (while logged into Google).

2. You click on the first link and decide it’s not detailed enough, so you click the back button.  When you return to the Google SERPs, you notice a new link next to the first listing:

As long as this feature is used only for personalization (as opposed to affecting the search results), it has the potential to make Google friendlier to users, since it will help them get to more desirable results faster.  Back in March, Google stated this would not be a search signal.  However, as time goes on, I would be shocked if it’s not incorporated into Google’s black-box algorithm.  If (when) this happens, a new element will be introduced to the SERPs: public (and competitor) opinion.  If your website doesn’t provide the promised information, is spam-heavy or otherwise unpleasant to your viewing audience, they can “boo you off the stage”.  On the sleazier side, your competitors may start blocking your site from hundreds of artificially created Google accounts to bring your SEO efforts down.

How else do you think this feature will affect the search results?  Will this help or hurt Google’s effort to serve the most relevant search results?

1. Help shoppers get around with improved navigation

Holiday shoppers are busy people and now, more than ever, people are shopping for and buying gifts online.  The last thing you want is to have the perfect holiday gift hidden among confusing or inconvenient navigation.  A good rule of thumb: no page on your website should be more than 2 clicks away.  If you don’t currently have a site map, get one!  This makes it easy for people to find what they’re looking for, decreasing the chances of abandonment and increasing the chance that you’ll get that conversion.  Put your holiday deals front and center, perhaps even including a holiday shopping menu tab or main landing page to give people the quickest route to purchase.

2. Refresh or update your site map

Speaking of site maps, is yours decorated in the holiday spirit?  By this, I mean make sure that all of your products, especially your holiday-specific ones are included in it.  Some products may only be available during the holidays and so you might have left them off of your site map.  This is the time to make sure they’re back on there and ready to be purchased.

3. Make keywords holiday-shopper friendly

If you already have keywords assigned for each of your pages and products, great.  Now is the time to dress those keywords up so they’re more appealing to holiday shoppers.  Words like “gifts” and “presents” will see an increase, so you should include these words when applicable and revisit your keyword research to see if there are any words that can be tweaked to be more holiday-specific.  Additionally, make sure you’ve included the most relevant and most accurate keywords possible.  People will be searching for the specific things they want, so if you have sweaters on sale, but your keywords don’t include “sweaters” or “sale”, you probably won’t rank well in the search engines, making it more difficult for shoppers to find you.  Do your due diligence now to make sure your site is holiday-ready.

4. Promote your products as good holiday gifts

Is your product the perfect gift for mom or what any dad would love to have?  Then say so.  Your product descriptions should be as detailed and accurate as possible to help people quickly make the decision to purchase without hunting around for more information.  You can help them make that decision by describing a product as “perfect for mom” or “the ultimate gift for your guy”.  The more information you can provide a shopper up-front, the less likely they’ll be to abandon your site to go looking for something with more information.  You can include this information in the title tags or meta descriptions as appropriate for an added search engine bonus.

5. Merry metas

To build on that, be sure that your meta descriptions are optimized for the holidays wherever appropriate.  While these don’t help your search rankings, they can ultimately be the deciding factor between a shopper clicking your link and the one above or below you.  Take the time to include information on shipping, holiday deals, the ideal recipient for certain products and anything else in keeping with the spirit of holiday shopping.  Include a call-to-action to persuade people to click on your click and discover the amazing holiday deals you have waiting for them.  But don’t forget the cheer!  Consider adding a little bit of holiday humor to bring a smile to people’s faces while shopping online.  It may make your meta more memorable and drive them to click through.

6. Don’t skimp on basics

Just like when your grandparents gave you socks for Christmas when you were little, it’s always important to consider the basics.  By this, I mean that you should ensure that your site is functioning in SEO terms. Do all of the links work?  Do all of your pages have title tags that are the appropriate length (70 characters or less)?  No number of holiday promotions will make up for a site that isn’t functioning well.  Not only can problems in the basics cause you to rank poorly in search engines (and thus decrease the likelihood that shoppers will find you), but it could also cause any shoppers who do find you to become quickly frustrated and leave.

7. Optimize your media

Holidays are the perfect time to add videos and images to your site.  Media makes your site more interesting and enjoyable to spend time on and it can serve as a valuable opportunity to give your potential customers more information on products and deals in a quick and aesthetically pleasing manner. This is also an opportunity for additional optimization.  Be sure you name your image and video files with accurate, descriptive keywords, including holiday specific keywords, if appropriate.  Also make sure that your image title and alt tags are in order to benefit shoppers on your site.  These actions will help search engines identify your offerings and serve them up to deal-eager shoppers, as well as improve the overall experience for shoppers while they’re on your site.

8. Boost link strength to popular items

Do you have some items you know are popular during the holidays?  Help get these pages more views and click throughs by linking to them from larger, higher ranking pages such as the homepage, as this will give them greater link juice, which may help them rank better in the search engines.  This is a great idea because, as I mentioned earlier, the easier you can make it for shoppers to get to your hot products, the greater the likelihood that they’ll actually get there and check out.

9. Make it easy to buy

Simply put, the more steps and hurdles there are to checking out, the less likely consumers are to go through them and make it to the actual purchase.  This doesn’t need to be specific to the holidays, but this is a great opportunity to make some changes to your check-out process—just as pages shouldn’t be too many clicks away from where a shopper is, nor should the check-out process be lengthy or difficult.  Streamline the purchase process if possible.  Consider placing an on-page buy button that allows shoppers to quickly and easily place an item into their cart and proceed to check out in one easy click.  Google Places can also factor heavily into shopping decisions, with people browsing locations and their offerings before actually going to the store.  Be sure your Google Place listings are updated and current if you have them—including products you have in-stock and any deals you may have—and include a link to your website to help shoppers gather their information ahead of time.

10. Make it social

Finally, don’t underestimate the importance of social media.  The holidays are about family and friends after all, so be prepared with some social media strategies to help your customers get to know you and your business.  Consider some new blog posts with gift ideas and be sure to include all the information a consumer may need right there on the page, along with an easy buy button, rather than directing them to your website where they then must track down the gift you’ve blogged about and purchase it.  Additionally, don’t neglect your Twitter and Facebook pages.  Holidays and shopping are social in nature and people will be searching social media platforms for deals, suggestions and reviews.  Knowing this, be sure you’re posting your deals and offerings in the form of Tweets and Facebook posts while including the appropriate wording.  Craft your 140-characters to be enticing to shoppers and include words like “good gift ideas”, “holiday deals,” etc., because these are the sorts of things people are looking for.

Are you ready for the holidays? Cyber Monday is only a month away so now is the time to get going on making your site the holiday shopping destination.  Hopefully with these tips, you and your customers will have a very merry holiday season.

While those who crave greater Internet privacy may be breathing a sigh of relief, internet marketers everywhere are preparing for what will surely be an interesting bout of reporting.  With encrypted keyword queries, internet marketers will no longer be able to find data regarding search volumes for those terms, nor will websites receive “referrer” data indicating when users arrive at their page via specific search terms except in the case of ads.  Keyword queries that drive users to a site through ads that are displayed based on that query will still be reported, regardless of the connection security.

Before you allow panic to set in, here are a few key facts to consider about the great change:

Searches are only encrypted when users are logged into Google.com via a secure connection. How many people do this?  While Google software engineer Matt Cutts declined to give an exact number, he indicated that this number would be low, somewhere in the single-digit percentages of all Google searches.  So while the numbers reported via Google Keyword Tool will certainly be affected, they can still be used as indicative of ideal search terms for optimization, as always.

Traffic will be reported as usual.  Visits will still accurately portray the true number of organic visits, but will no longer be entirely keyword specific.

Website owners and internet marketers will be able to receive an aggregated list of the top 1,000 search queries that drove traffic to their site via Google Webmaster Tools.  Therefore, keywords that drive traffic will still be reported, but in a different manner.  This may, in the end, be a positive development and spur more people to use the Webmaster Tools which have the ability to make reporting much easier.

What will be interesting to see are the types of insights on search behavior that can be pulled, following this development.  For example, will we see a marked decrease in search volumes for, “Is the government watching me?” and “Alien abductions”?  Or will we find that consumers who enjoy queso and want a good recipe also value their privacy.  This new security tweak has the potential to help marketers add to their understanding of their customer and the way they search.

To summarize, the data reported regarding keyword query volumes can still be used as indicative of both good words to select for website optimization, as well as which phrases or words drove the most traffic to a particular site.  Perhaps the greatest impact of this change will be that referral traffic will undoubtedly take a hit; internet marketers and website owners everywhere should be prepared for some fluctuation in this area in the coming months.  However, it is unlikely that this change will cause any significant tremors in the world of internet marketing.  Now we can all rest a little easier knowing Google is looking out for everyone’s interests.

By now, most professionals and many students know about LinkedIn— the professional social network.  With more than 120 million users, it’s your online resume and networking all in one place.  But while many people are currently using LinkedIn, a good number aren’t using it to its full potential.  Yes, it does have an Update function that allows for posting and of course, it’s an easy way to connect with other people for professional purposes.  However, if used correctly, LinkedIn has the potential to do the networking for you, helping other professionals get to know you without you ever saying a word.  Here are 5 easy ways to maximize your LinkedIn potential to help you find that perfect job.

1. Update Often

Of course, anytime your experience or specialties change, this should be reflected in your LinkedIn profile.  But even making minor changes is enough to bump up your profile in the search results for relevant terms.  Take the time to look back every week or so and see if there’s a word or two to be tweaked, or entire experiences to be added.  It will help you to be found and make you look better when you are found.

2.Complete Your Profile

Maybe you don’t think that your high school experience was important or that your unpaid internship 4 summers ago was useless, but others may not.  To increase the probability of being found in searches and to provide more information to those looking at your profile, make sure all the sections are filled out completely (yes, completely).  This means you may have to think long and hard about what you were doing those times to pull out relevant and useful experiences to list, but it’s worth the time.  The more terms that are on your profile, the more ways you can be searched and the more people can find you.  LinkedIn has a smart job recommendation function that recommends jobs for you based on what’s in your profile so you can make the job hunt a lot easier (the jobs are presented to you) by ensuring your profile is filled out with special consideration to keywords (as discussed in my next tip).

3. Optimize Your Profile Specialties

In reality, your entire LinkedIn profile is an opportunity for optimization, as discussed in the point above, but the Specialties portion of your profile acts as a kind of keyword depository for your professional life.  Anything that you consider a skill, talent or specialty of yours should go in here.  Give this optimization an extra boost by taking the time to really think about how other people might search for this.  Don’t just put in “SEO”, put in “search engine optimization (SEO), marketing and internet marketing”.  Don’t just say “healthcare”, say “patient coordination, insurance billing and hospital scheduling”.  This is THE place to be sure you add in anything you can do that may or may not be covered in the rest of your profile.  Don’t ignore it.

4. Get Recommendations

Without a doubt, LinkedIn should be used for connections, so be sure to check often for new people to connect with.  Don’t be shy either; connecting with others is as beneficial to them as it is to you— so get out there!  These connections can be expanded on by asking for recommendations wherever possible.  Ask co-workers, classmates and colleagues to leave you even a brief recommendation when appropriate.  Bonus tip: Take link-building strategy to the professional world by offering to write them a recommendation in return.  This can really help you stand out when people you don’t know view your profile because the personal recommendation is already there.  Now people who may be connected to people you know (as well as those who aren’t) will have added reason to be interested in you, because your resume just became personalized.  It’s quick, effective networking without much effort.

5. Make It Personal

Recommendations are a great way to make your LinkedIn profile much more personal, but there are many other opportunities to expand on this.  At the bottom of your LinkedIn profile is a space for hobbies and interests.  Many people avoid filling out this section because they feel it’s not professional, but as long as your hobbies or interests are not wildly inappropriate, they have a place here.  After all, companies want to hire human beings with personality, not robots.  Perhaps the recruiter looking at your profile loves yoga, biking and coffee.  If you do too and they can see that, they’re more likely to feel a connection with you and view you on a more personal level.

LinkedIn also has widgets that you can take advantage of to give your profile a more personal touch.  For example, LinkedIn has a ‘ReadingList by Amazon’ widget in which you can list books you’re currently reading or have read, much like Good Reads.  Take advantage of this to show people in a more interesting way who you are and what you’re all about.  It also gives potential employers a touch point with you that they may not otherwise have had.

6. Make It Easy on the Eyes

Simply put, don’t clutter up your profile with long paragraphs.  Use bullet points and short, easy-to-read paragraphs to succinctly convey your experience.  This will improve the chances that people will actually read all of what you’ve written and it also will help them to remember the important points.  If there are points you feel are more important, relevant or most accurately describe your abilities, put those at the top to make it easy for people to learn about you, whether it’s at a glance or in a full-read.

Whether you’re an active job seeker, one who has lost his motivation, an employee looking to change jobs or just someone who likes to take advantage of technology, these tips should help make your LinkedIn profile the best it can be so you can spend more time enjoying those hobbies and experiences you’ve just lovingly added to your page.

Morris will take you on a deep dive into understanding the key data points that will help you move the needle with your SEO investment. This session will go beyond the basics of search engine optimization and will give actionable items around Prioritization, Content Development and the Analytical data points you should be monitoring.

Attendees will also learn about the growing practice of Interactive Investment Management and how to manage their online spend in a manner that will produce higher ROI. Morris will use real world examples drawn from his experience working with some of the world’s largest and best known brands on how to create your own SEO roadmap.

The Roadmap looks at 6 key factors in determining the appropriate way to prioritize your SEO efforts.

These factors include:

Analysis of a keywords by category

Current coverage in the category against all others

An understanding of content needs

Probability for ranking success

The relevance of the keywords to your business

Your estimated ROI

Register for SEO: How Understanding Your Analytics Gives You the Edge here.

To access real-time reporting, a user must enable the new version of Google Analytics (GA5).  For anyone who doubts the necessity of making the switch, we made a compelling argument in August that is underscored with the roll-out of ‘real-time’.  The new reports originally were housed in the Dashboards tab, but they will be moved to the Home tab in the imminent update of the GA5 interface.  Four reports are available in the Real-Time beta:

Overview

Locations

Traffic Sources

Content

The Overview tab provides a high level view of the most salient metrics and data about your site.  Visitors are segmented between returning and new using the utma visitor cookie.  Top Referral, Top Keywords and Top Active Pages are displayed in separate tables.  A heat map shows the geography of the Top Locations of traffic origination (or more correctly, the server hosting the visitor’s IP).  Additionally a time graph of pageviews is offered using (t-minutes) data which keys off of the utmb session cookie.

On the Locations tab, the time lapse page view graph persists accompanied by a flat world map or 3-D view enabled by adding the Google Earth Plugin.  Active visitors are now segmented by country.

The Traffic Sources report segments the visitors according to Medium and adds a table including source and the number of active visitors.

Lastly, the Content report is similar to the Traffic Sources report with the exception that the source/medium/active visitors table is substituted for a table with Active page and Active Visitors.  The Active Visitors metric can be toggled to display number of views by page.

I am suitably impressed by the smooth feel and efficiency of the Real Time Google Analytics reporting.  I feel obligated to caution readers that the interface can become a quick time-sink as you monitor active updates and changes to visitors on your site.  From a business value stand-point, some additional time is required to come up with application of the real-time metrics.  Perhaps blast email campaigns efficacy can be analyzed spontaneously?  Maybe testing environments could be made much more dynamic if configured adequately to display in the Content reports.  These are just a couple preliminary musings.  I welcome additional insights and feedback.

Spyfu:

If the name doesn’t give it away, this is a great tool for competitive analysis. Spyfu allows you to check keywords that you currently rank for along with your competitors’ keyword rankings and provides a comparison. The unique piece that Spyfu offers is that you can look into what your competitors’ top organic words are, as well as get an idea for what they are doing in paid campaigns.

SEO Tip: Use this tool to come up with blog topics! Spy on your competition to learn what words they are ranking for. Then, run the same report on your own site to cross-check and find words that you don’t have anything ranking. Once you have a set of words that your site doesn’t rank for, get writing!

SEOMoz:

SEOMoz has TONS of resources for search engine optimization (it is hard to even know where to start). If I were a business working on my own SEO and could only have one tool- this would be it. Overall, SEOMoz has a wide-variety of tools to help be proactive in your SEO efforts, as well as to address any problems you are having in your optimization efforts. My favorite offering of SEOMoz is the campaigns. You can set up a “campaign” for websites that you need to monitor regularly. Using this campaign, SEOMoz sends a crawler (RogerBot) to crawl your site on a weekly basis. RogerBot reports back on any items that could raise a flag with search engines. You can even download these reports whenever you want.  Another valuable (but not very unique) tool that SEOMoz offers is the keyword tracking ability. You can upload a list of keywords that you want to track positions on and it will check positions on a weekly basis and keep historical positions.

I am very much looking forward to their social media tracking (currently in Beta). That is another really nice part about SEOMoz- it is always improving tools and capabilities.

SEO Tip: Link your Google Analytics account to view organic traffic, number of URL’s receiving organic traffic and the number of keywords sending organic traffic on a weekly basis. (We know you could just login to your Google Analytics account, but it is sure nice to see this all in one place!)

Yahoo Site Explorer:

Yahoo Site Explorer is nothing fancy or new- no bells and whistles. However, it is still my go-to for checking back links to a site. While you can only export 1,000 back links, it still gives you a good idea of the number of back links that a site has.

SEO Tip: Use Yahoo Site Explorer in conjunction with SEOMoz’s Linkscape Visualization Tool. This will give you a good idea of whether your site is falling short on authority of links or link count.

Screaming Frog:

Screaming Frog is a really fast site crawler. It crawls a website and returns all URLs, page titles, response codes, headers, meta keywords, meta descriptions, canonical tags and much much more! This site crawler is the most comprehensive crawler that I have found to date. In addition to being the most comprehensive, it is lightening fast!

SEO Tip: Use Screaming Frog to find 302 (temporary) redirects. Use Yahoo (above) to explore these URL’s to see if they have links. If so, switch these to 301 redirects so that link juice can be passed through to the new URL.