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The 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing Blog

Best practices, training and innovations in Digital Strategy.

Bing search results- between authorship and subjectship

March 26, 2013 – 5:33 pm
Cristiana
 

Search results have always been important both for SEO and sales . While the algorithmic  formula is kept secret, many search engines are trying  to push the “creativity” further.Let’s compare Bing and Google.When someone starts searching for a particular keyword, the results  surprise, especially because they are confusing. For instance, the Bing results for author images seem to show exactly as the ones from Google. With one exception: they cannot be called author images,because they get more into subject images (which may be an attribute specific only to Bing search results).Example of authorship image from Google:

 

 

 

 

 

This is a  picture of Jim Crammer, host of CNBC’s Mad Money and a co-founder and chairman of TheStreet.com. In this case, Google associated my search with his picture and biography.Now moving forward with this analysis, let’s take a look at how Bing proceeds in terms of showing search results.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both arrows reveal that Nick Goodman’s picture shows he is author of those articles instead of … topic. In the middle of the search results page, instead of Nick’s picture (since he is the founder of the company that is subject of the article), one can notice a picture showing a plane  - the cover picture of the article in Forbes Magazine.While constantly trying to improve their search results,  engines have the tendency to become more confusing instead of creative. I think the best way to bring improvements to your search results  is using clarity and avoiding as much as possible misunderstandings. People get confused very easily, and if they are not particularly interested in a specific topic, and will go further with their readings, (so if  they just take a look at the Bing page) they will not understand who Nicholas Woodman is.

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The Domino Game of Duplicate Content

January 2, 2013 – 3:23 pm
Cristiana
 

In the digital marketing era, many companies rely on organic search as a way of fostering interest in their brand and gaining leads. Organic search is popular because of its low cost, high ROI possibilities, with some companies able to rely on search engine optimization as their primary or even sole marketing engine.
Search engine optimization includes targeting specific keywords related to your website – in which you aim to rank for in user-generated searches. In a constant effort to eradicate the SERPs of ‘unworthy’ content, Google penalizes a number of elements that are aimed at taking down those that ‘SPAM’ their websites to trick search engines into ranking them. One of these factors is duplicate content.
In the past, optimizers were able to duplicate keyword rich content on their site. This did several things. It allowed search engines to index a higher number or pages – a ranking factor as well as opened up the number of entrance paths to their website. It also allowed several pages of keyword rich text to be tied to the domain, regardless of how relevant it was or if it were previously on the site. Nowadays, the existence of duplicate content on a website is a ranking factor – so webmasters must do all they can to ensure that content is relevant to a page and that it is unique (both to their own domain and to other sites online, and not just copied from someone else).

There are several tools available to check if you have duplicate content. You want to check both title tags as well as the copy itself. SEOMoz is a great tool that will compare your site to other pages within your domain and alert you to duplicate content. Google Webmaster Tools will also alert you to duplicate title tags.
Sometimes webmasters duplicate content and don’t even realize it. This happens one of two ways. We link to a particular page on our site and that exists in more than one subfolder. For instance, a page links from both the homepage and an inner page. Instead of linking a single URL, the webmaster will make the content available in both sections in an effort to keep the subfolder organized.
For instance:

http://www.bluelinerny.com/contact

http://www.bluelinerny.com/marketing/contact

While it may make sense to some webmasters follow the URL structure on individual pages, what this does it put the exact same content on two different parts of the site. This is most common on e-Commerce sites, with items in a ‘Sale’ section and their regular parent group as well. Search engines will read this as duplicate content and should be flagged for review. Unique content should only exist on a single page of your domain.
Another common cause for duplicate content issues is URLs themselves. URLs that feature varying upper and lowercase letters can be indexed by search engines, creating two identical pages of content without you knowing. Without checking in a tool, you can try this on your website by simply entering two different ways to write a unique URL.                                                                                                                                                                                        For instance:

http://www.bluelinerny.com/seo

http:://www.bluelinerny.com/SEO

http://www.bluelinerny.com/SeO

If all these URL variants were honored by the site (and you were allowed to visit each variation rather than be redirected), you may have a duplicate content issue.  Your next step is to check if these alterative URLs are being indexed.
If you have a small website, you may be able to rel=canonical the URLs with varying capitalizations. It’s important that all URLs canonical to a URL of similar structure. Thus, all should redirect to lowercase URLs (standard) and no uppercase letters should be honored.
It is possible that your URLs are too long or the site is too big and it’s not reasonable to rel=canonical URLs. A simple IIS rewrite rule (dotNetNuke) or script written for your .htaccess file can correct this by ignoring cases and matching URLs [A-Z].
There are several other instances of where duplicate content can appear, but these among the most common. Duplicate content can have very negative implications. While SEO is a long term plan of optimizing several smaller parts, fixing duplicate content issues is one of the few things you can correct and almost immediately see a positive impact. A duplicate content audit should be one of the first tasks undertaken in an SEO undertaking.

 

 

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It’s About Time: Google’s Disavow Links

October 18, 2012 – 9:58 am
Riyaad
 

After years of asking and months of promises, Google has finally launched their disavow links feature. A little late behind the Bing Webmaster tool, disavowing links allows webmasters to discredit un-favorable links to their site.

Disavowing links has become more important than ever since the Penguin updates. These updates directly targeted ‘non-quality’ inbound links to your domain. This could have happened by optimizers SPAMMING their way to the top of the search engine results pages, either on behalf of your site or of a past owner of your domain. Unfavorable quality links included those from pop up websites, in comments sections of blogs, and more.

Trying to rid their top results pages of irrelevant content, Google’s Penguin update was a blessing for those search optimizers that have always relied on not only white hat SEO, but building actual, quality links. For those that have practiced bad link building, they saw their websites hit hard.

Up until now, clearing up bad links was a pain staking process. At times, you were able to build your way out of it. By creating actual, quality links, it was possible to minimize the negative effects of the older links by simply expanding the ratio of quality links to non-quality links. This did not work in every case though. Some sites were just buried too deep.

In that case, it required sorting through sometimes tens of thousands of inbound links, then denoting the page rank, domain and page authority, page location, etc. With Penguin those once useful links counted against your site more than ever. In order to disavow them yourself, it required hours of sifting through websites looking for contact information or looking the domain up on WhoIs or a similar site if not listed. Then you would have to request that the link be removed via email. Some webmasters oblige, while others you won’t even get a response from. Following up and keeping track of the links removed and those you were waiting on could consume a massive amount of hours depending on how many there were.

And this was just for Google. Bing has allowed you to one by one, enter and confirm the page you wished to be disavowed in Webmaster Tools. Google came back with something even easier. Simply upload the text file of the list of websites that you’d like disavowed, and Google will do it. They warned not to go crazy with this feature and to tread lightly, as removing the wrong links can also have a negative impact on your site. It can also take up to several weeks for the link to be disavowed, but none the less, the Google Disavow Link tool is here and we couldn’t be happier!

 

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Your Meta Mapping Style

September 27, 2012 – 2:11 pm
Riyaad
 

It’s not uncommon to see a great keyword list poorly executed. This can result in hard work gone to waste and your website can see little to no SEO improvements.

By the same merit, a terrible keyword list properly mapped throughout a site can assist in your SEO success. Keyword mapping is often the first stage of writing meta data. There is not right way to do this. Every SEO optimizer has their own technique for allocating keywords to a page. Some like to just wing it and write each page as they go along, and some like to attack in stages.

In the past, keyword stuffing had been effective. We can still see some sites that have effective search results with stuffing. Though, when we examine their larger keyword strategy, we can quickly identify the short-comings with this method.

Proper keyword strategy includes allocating specific keywords to relevant pages. The keywords you have chosen should be uniquely (ideally) relevant to a particular page or set of pages on your website. Some search optimizers like to make one big list from which they’ll make their selections. This certainly is a popular method and I’ve done this in the past as well as seen it work well with others.

Blueliner’s keyword list approach is unique. Based on the 7 Pillars of Digital Marketing techniques and best practices, Blueliner’s keyword lists use a tiered approach. A typical keyword list is broken into 5-8 tiers, depending on the size of the site. These tiers represent the level of importance these keywords have to you and how you will distribute them throughout the site.

The keywords in Tier 1 are more important to you and thus distributed more freely throughout your content and in your meta-data. Tiers are developed based on several factors, including volume, relativity, specificity, competitiveness, and more. Each keyword is given a score based on these verticals. The system works well as it forces the optimizer into providing justification for their keyword selection and why they deem one more important than the other. Even more importantly, the scoring system (which is complex and I won’t get into) allows for flexibility. Because of this, the same system has been effective for websites across an array of industries.

I personally prefer a multi-tiered approach. It’s exactly Blueliner’s strategy but makes it easier me when optimizing and analyzing a website. The first thing I do when I look at a website is break out the different sections. When doing keyword research, I like the break out the optimization based on subject matter. Thus if a website’s content can be broken out into six different talking points or subjects, I’ll create seven smaller keyword lists. The first keyword list will be general and speak to the website as a whole. These keywords represent those that will be distributed and represented throughout the entire site.

I tend to find inspiration for keywords based on what the website currently ranks for, what their competitors rank for, and by just reading the site copy. Although I know some of that will change, one can never underestimate the ideas or directions they’ll come up with based on the site copy. Unfortunately, this is not common practice for everyone. Reading almost an entire website is one of the first things I do when creating a keyword list.

The other 6 mini lists include keywords specifically targeted to the variant website subjects. The keywords within these lists are broken down and organized the same way as Blueliner’s tiered strategy. When I create a sitemap, I’ll assign each page a subject. I tend to color code this in Excel and correlate this to the color coding on my individual keyword lists. From there, I’m able to easily allocate the keywords based on subject to the most relevant pages of the site. I will always take at least one keyword from the general list and incorporate it into the page.

This helps to put it into perspective a bit. I now know which keywords are on which page, why they’re there, and can easily affirm their relevancy.

After implementation, this multi-tiered approach makes link building easier as well. I can now track link building to sets of keywords, rather than a keyword list where I sometimes have to wonder if a certain part of a site has gotten enough attention.

When analyzing, refreshing website data, or doing a routine competitive analysis, the multi-tiered approach can also assist in determining how much of a voice you have. It allows you to single out how competitive you are for the different aspects of your website against varying competitors, allowing for a different perspective on where improvements can be made.

This is just my method though. There are tons of great ways to stay organized from the very beginning, making subsequent aspects of your SEO easier on you. Write in the comments below, and let us know what little things you’ve done over the years that have helped you keep a handle on large and complex websites.

 

 

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14 years later, Google still owns online search

September 11, 2012 – 3:38 pm
Damjan Dano
 

On the 4th of September, 1998, Google was officially registered as a company in the U.S., making their mission to instantly change the way people search for information online and to set up new standards for the global network called internet.

Nowadays, there is no internet user that does not use Google and it’s search engine. The company is worth over $200 billion US, has various projects and services and has more then 50.000 employees around the globe. Now Google owns Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Android, Google+ and a lot of other services that we use on a daily basis. They are even trying to make autonomous cars!

The search engine as a project was started in 1996 by the two Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and was named after the word “Googol” (mathematical term for a number equivalent to ten raised to the power of a hundred), but later changed to “Google” as an alternative. They registered Google.com on 15th of September, 1997 and started their journey, it took them about a year until they found a good investor and launch their business.

Below is an interesting part of the Discovery Channel’s Download episode devoted to the search giant’s history:

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How Important is Industry (Domain) Knowledge in SEO?

September 10, 2012 – 3:20 am
Arman Rousta
 

Think back to some of your favorite Mad Men episodes.  Like the ones where the creative team sits around a boardroom to brainstorm on a strategy for their presidential client, Richard Nixon.  How truly knowledgeable were those marketers on politics.  Not very (knowledgeable) in my opinion.  Now, while things might have changed quite a bit, with the level of specialized industry research, and access to information via the Internet, enabling “smart marketers” and niche agencies to become domain experts, the question still arises amidst marketers at all levels – “How much (previous) domain knowledge is necessary to be effective on a specific project?”

Take an SEO project for example, on an esoteric field, like Quantum Physics, that nobody within a particular agency has any prior experience with.  If you were the CEO, how would you tackle this challenge, keeping in mind budgetary limitations as well as client satisfaction?  Here are your choices:

  1. Utilize the best, most adaptable SEO Specialist that you have on board, and have him (or her) dive in, increase his industry knowledge (which will take him hours of additional time, outside of the project scope – because no client wants to pay you to learn about their industry), ask the client tons of questions during the Discovery process and in general “fake it til he makes it”.
  2. Recruit an industry-trained, freelance copywriter or author (at your own cost), that has at least some prior SEO experience; the copywriter, being a domain expert, will work hand-in-hand with your SEO team, to fill in the gaps.
  3. Express your concerns to the client, and let them know about these two options, soliciting their input and possibly, additional budgeting, to accommodate the need for greater domain expertise from the SEO team.  Given their natural knowledge about Quantum Physics, perhaps the client can allocate someone from their own staff to fill in the “domain knowledge gap.”
  4. Other – I’m sure there are other ways about it; feel free to leave ideas and suggestions in the Comments of this post, and I will try my best to give my thoughts on them.

Many problems arise in Scenario 1, when attempting to go with a top-notch tactical expert, who has to dig into pages of content that are on a foreign, technical topic.  Meanwhile, Scenario 2 can also be quite hard, especially if the domain expert is a novice SEO practitioner, that will require a lot of training and hand-holding.  In reality, you see a mix of all three noted approaches (above) in response to “new territory” client opportunities.  In a future post, I’ll go deeper into the Pros and Cons of each.  There is no one right answer for all situations.  This topic comes up across the board, on the SEO front, as well as Social Media, Content Marketing and Web UX Design fronts.  It is quite a hot topic in the agency world, especially when it comes to regulated industries, such as Financial Services and Healthcare.  Although industry specialization has evolved quite a bit since the Mad Men era, it continues to present unique challenges, including business strategy questions, ethics, the need for greater professional development, HR issues and margin pressure.

This question is also quite important for marketers as individuals, from a career development standpoint.  Should you go deeper into a particular industry, to create a nice for yourself (ie. “Travel & Tourism SEO Expert”) or remain as broad as possible, taking on different projects and diversifying your domain knowledge?  We’re going to leave it there for now.  Hopefully, I’ve given you something meaningful to ponder!

 

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Lee Odden’s “Optimizes” SES NY 2012: Part 2

March 26, 2012 – 11:29 pm
Arman Rousta
 

[This is Part 2 of 2 in a review of Lee Odden's Search Engine Strategies NY 2012 Session. Part 1 is available here.]

Picking up on my original post last week, here are a few more slides (from Lee) and observations (from me) on Lee Odden’s SES NY presentation.

[SLIDE 5: SOCIAL SEO KPIs & BUSINESS OUTCOMES]

SEO KPIs, Business Outcomes, Content Marketing

Odden poses an important question to digital marketers and online-focused companies – “What if Google disappeared tomorrow?” followed by a recommendation “Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket!  Optimize for consumers, experiences and outcomes.”  The Social SEO KPIs slide brings to light the Business Outcomes in order to take some of the focus off obsession with KPIs, which in and of themselves, fluctuate in importance.  Insightful comment of the day from Odden, in my view was “KPIs are just a stepping stone to get what we really want, which are tangible business outcomes.”

[SLIDE 6: TOP 6 CONTENT MARKETING TACTICS: AND HOW TO OPTIMIZE THEM]

content marketing tactics, SEO, blog marketing, ebook
The 2011 Content Marketing Playbook, put out by the Content Marketing Institute, identifies these six tactics [1) Blog, 2) Digital Newsletter, 3) White Paper, 4) Article, 5) eBook and 6) Video] amongst the top ten CM tactics for 2011.  Odden takes us through them, giving some tips on best practices in each area.  There was no one strategy trumps all or correct strategy mix for companies to follow.  eBooks might work well for a particular company or industry, while Videos work better for a different industry.

[SLIDE 7: 30 CONTENT MARKETING TACTICS]

content marketing tactics, PR, Social Media, lee oddenOdden outlines a larger list of 30 Content Marketing Tactics, which are further expanded upon in his blog.  As a marketer who has run campaigns across all of these 30 channels, my personal favorites from this list are – 1) Webinars, 2) Crowdsourcing, 3) Mobile Apps, 4) Videos and 5) Infographics.  We are reminded that regardless of the strategies utilized, keyword strategies and trending social media topics should be at the heart of them.  For example, if you want to get attention for “red widgets”, then interview a bunch of people who are “red widget” experts, and make sure to ask them a lot of questions with the wording “red widgets” as well as related phrases.  Transcribing the interview Q&A will yield a healthy amount of mentions for “red widgets” and related keywords in the text, which provides a major SEO benefit.

[SLIDE 8: CONTENT IDEAS]

content ideas, google alerts, twitter handles, hash tag marketing

Some of the memorable tips in this part of the presentation include:

  • Interview Other Bloggers: Ask one question to many bloggers (so you get a high percentage of responses) or many (10 or so questions) to fewer bloggers.
  • Aggregate Comments: Pull together the best comments from other blogs, and your own blogs; and put them into a fresh post or widget.
  • Use of Hash Tags & Twitter Handles: Put hash tags and twitter @ handles in title tags of blog posts, and watch some cool things happen.

I like #7 as well, and have used that quite successfully for a Blueliner client (Completely Bare, a leading Laser Hair Removal and Spray Tan Spa) who gets a ton of customer inquiries to their blog.  We setup each question to come in as a new blog post, with the question as the title, and answer (from the company) as the body content.  Huge SEO benefits accumulated from this tactic.

CONCLUSION

I like Lee Odden’s presentation style.  He doesn’t mince words or talk a lot of fluff.  It’s straight advice given by a marketing professional who does “walk the talk”.  His own company, like Blueliner, does not spend a penny on advertising – because their inbound marketing strategy is so strong.  I have learned a few things from him over the years, most important of which is the consistency of his efforts in quality, multi-form content creation.  That is a lesson that everyone should take home and meditate deeply on.  Whether it’s Google, Facebook, Pinterest or the next big thing, it will be some type of content aggregator and database, that seeks out high quality content providers.  Will you be one of them?

 

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Lee Odden “Optimizes” SES NY

March 22, 2012 – 8:01 pm
Arman Rousta
 

I have always been a fan of Lee Odden – one of the digital marketing industry’s thought leaders – and got the chance to finally meet him today after watching his talk at SES NY.  Odden strength is in his effective communication and knack for weaving that skill into great content strategy, production and distribution.  He recently authored Optimize, which I hope to win a free copy of by live blogging from the conference (I have been taking notes and pictures throughout the session, which have been going up on Twitter – @blueliner while citing @leeodden with the #sesny hashtag throughout).  Win or not, I plan to read the book because I value what Odden has to offer, and encourage other marketers to do the same.  His message is simple, but the work required behind it is not as easy as it looks.  It requires real dedication, of time and resources, to follow through on an effective Content Marketing strategy.  Luckily, Odden gives us some good tools and a framework to approach Content Marketing, while weaving in SEO and Social Media (notice that 3 of our 7 Pillars are covered).

Here is a quick summary of my notes from today’s one-hour session in a kind of slide show (Odden’s slides, not all of them or in the order they were presented) + commentary (my observations) format:

[SLIDE 1: KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE]

content marketing, target audience

Odden reminds us that Content Marketing is not just about adding more content and pages to your website; but rather about strategically devising content for specific audiences.  It’s common sense, but surprisingly, a lot of businesses don’t spend enough time doing their research and segmentation on the types of customers they have.  Odden instructs that this process should be part of the initial discovery stage of a content marketing strategy.

[SLIDE 2: CREATING CUSTOMER PERSONAS]

personas, lee odden model, content marketing

Once a basic level of research is done on existing CRM and Analytics data, creating Personas – which are essentially profiles of what your target customers look like demographically and behaviorally – is the next step.  These Personas then guide the content, Social and SEO strategies.  Odden got into a lot more detail about this, which I would refer to you to his new Content Marketing book website to learn more about.

[SLIDE 3: HUB & SPOKE MODEL]

hub spoke marketing model, content marketing, blog marketing, odden

Odden utilizes this Hub & Spoke Publishing model to demonstrate all of the various channels through which we can distribute and repurpose our content, as well as that of others.  Some useful tips are recommended, like “Oreo cookie commentary”, where you curate other people’s content with your own twist (kind of like what I’m doing with this blog entry, leveraging Odden’s content – the Oreo filling, but adding my own introduction and perspective around it).  Ultimately, depending on the size of your content team, a realistic checklist and process has to be agreed on, then activated via a manageable Editorial Calendar.

[SLIDE 4: SEO FITS IN EVERYWHERE!]

SEO Content Marketing stagesOdden advises us to “think more holistically about where (and what) you can optimize.”  Most companies have more digital assets (such as PowerPoint presentations, videos, white papers, and images) than they realize.  Identifying those, and building a Digital Assets Management system, so that these nuggets are accessible for various Content Marketing initiatives, is a good step.  This slide also illustrates how pervasive SEO is to the entire life cycle of a customer’s experience with any product or service category.

 

CONCLUSION

I have a bit more to say on this topic, and more slides from Odden’s workshop to share in Part 2 (published on March 26, 2012).  For now, I just wanted to get something out while still at the conference, while it’s fresh.

 

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Project Re:Brief – Redefining online marketing

March 19, 2012 – 11:21 am
Damjan Dano
 

Project Re:Brief is Google’s latest initiative to expand the reach and awareness of digital marketing through re-adapting couple of the most epic marketing campaigns in the history of advertising for the new, modern audience that spends enormous amounts of time online and is constantly connected thanks to the latest gadgets and technology.

As Google states on the project’s website, internet advertising turns 18 years-old this year, but even after two decades of existence and constant innovation, digital ads are used simply to inform more than they’re being used to connect, engage and entertain.

Taking Coca Cola’s “Hilltop“, Volvo’s “Drive it like you hate it“, Alka-Seltzer’s “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” and Avis’ “We try harder” campaigns, Google’s team of experts will try to re-imagine these iconic campaigns for the digital age.

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Where did Google make their money in 2011?

January 24, 2012 – 7:37 pm
Damjan Dano
 

The internet marketing software company WordStream published an interesting infographic about Google’s 2011 revenues. The data in the infographic is based on Google’s investor reports and financial tables and is stating the facts in a very nice visual format.

Google’s 2011 revenues were a total of 37.9 billion dollars… yes, 37.9 billion, with a B. The most interesting fact is that 96% of the revenue came from advertising.

Thanks to companies like StateFarm, Progressive, Amazon, Macy’s, Sears, Quicken Loans, Lowe’s, Booking.com and many others like them that spend millions of dollars per year bidding for keywords like “new york hotels” with average CPC of $7.68 (used by Booking.com), “zumba dance dvd” with average CPC $5.18 (amazon), “self employed health insurance” with a extremely high CPC of $43.39 (eHealthInsurance), “cheap hybrid cars” bidding for average CPC of $15.57 (Cars.com) Google made its billions.

Below you can find the infographic with all the breakdowns and stats…

Source: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/01/23/google-revenues

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