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Search Engine Strategies Conference returns to Chicago November 14 – 18. Marketers and SEO professionals will gather to discuss all topics related to search, social media and more. Interested in checking out the conference? Use priority code “OGV20” at registration for a special discount.

I recently had the privilege to interview Eric Ward, president, EricWard.com. Eric is an expert on content linking strategies and has been involved in online marketing since 1993. Eric has helped a countless number of companies create and execute linking strategies to increase the awareness of their web content.

Eric is on a panel at SES Chicago, “Social Media Linking and Promotion,” where he’ll discuss how social media usage has created opportunities (and frenzy) among link building and promotion. Here is an excerpt of what Eric had to say about social media linking and promotion:





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Last week, Google+ announced changes 91-107 for the platform many of which are strong indicators of a site that is listening to its users and thinking thoughtfully about use cases. Unfortunately for a fledgling social media site, the very next day at f8, Facebook shared its latest and greatest rollouts with developers and the public.

Amid Andy Sandberg appearances, Spotify integration, and a sweeping UI change called Timeline (all of which are well recapped by my colleague, John Stauffer, in his post), it was tough for Google+’s more functional changes to stand out in conversation.

In fact, if you look at online conversation about the two, Facebook conversation eclipses Google+ conversation ten to one the last two weeks.

Volume of Social Media Conversation about Facebook and Google+ from 9/14/11-9/28/11

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The new reality for brands is people are consuming and creating more content in more ways than ever before. Eric Schmidt said we now generate as much information every two days as was generated from the beginning of time to 2003. Next time you stand in line at your local Starbucks notice how everyone is staring at their smart phone sending emails, updating Facebook status or reading the headlines.

This combination of consumption and creation has opened new opportunities for brands who want to get into the content game. Many brands are getting into the content game, According to AdAge 51% of marketing executives said they were already investing bigger marketing budgets.

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Tomorrow marks the first day of SES Chicago 2010. In earlier parts of our SES Chicago interview series we chatted with Chris Long about B2B marketing tips and Hollis Thomases about Twitter and automation.

For part III of our interview series, I had the opportunity to connect with Robert Murray, CEO of iProspect, a search engine marketing firm. Robert will be on a panel of speakers discussing the future of search tomorrow. During our interview Rob provided great insight on changes in search and what the future of search holds.

Brian Camen (BC): I’ve noticed there’s a wide spectrum of knowledge when it comes to paid advertising campaigns. Many people either know very little or have a full grasp on paid campaigns. What are some misconceptions businesses have about paid search advertising campaigns?

Robert Murray (RM): The biggest misconception about paid search is the degree to which it can be automated. Many marketers perceive it to be something that can be done with the push of a button. Big retailers are especially prone to this thinking.

But the reality is that paid search relies heavily on human thought and judgment. An automated bidding system is just a tool that employs rules. It won’t develop a strategy for you. Nor will it devise a series of tests. And it certainly won’t develop your ad copy.

While there are definitely parts of paid search that can be automated, it is not something that you can just set and walk away from.  In fact, you can have the best tool in the business, but if you don’t have savvy and strategic search marketers “driving the bus,” it won’t get you too far.

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The World Cup, the biggest sporting event in the world, is quickly approaching. Starting June 11^th, 32 teams representing different countries from around the world will compete for the soccer title that has been given every four years since 1930 (with an exception of 1942 and 1946 due to WWII). But 2010 is a particularly special and relevant year. Why, you ask? Because of social media!

Social Media as we know it did not exist during the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Twitter did not launch until July 2006. Facebook didn’t become public until September 2006. YouTube existed but videos looked like this #6 most popular YouTube video of 2006. Now, only 4 years later, Facebook has over 400 million members and more than 50 million tweets are sent each day. These platforms, which were infants during the last World Cup, are now globally available and hugely popular.

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It was only a matter of time before we went from using our phones to call or text friends and plan to meet in a certain location to using our smartphones when we’re in a certain location to find out which of our friends are already there.  Social networking, while already popular online, is one of the fastest-growing activities among mobile users.  In fact, eMarketer predicts that by 2013, 43% of global mobile Internet users will be accessing social networks from their mobile devices and 45% of the US mobile Internet population will be on social networks from their mobile devices.  It seems that even when we’re socializing in real life, we want access to our online networks.  continue reading

Content strategy has long been the corner stone to effectively delivering “The right content at the right time to the right person.” While this sounds a bit cliché brands will have a hard time achieving this simple premise with out a plan that is guided by consumer intent. Knowing what people are looking for, where they are looking for it and how well they find it is at the heart of understanding consumer intent.

Lets start with a simple definition of what content strategy is.

Content Strategy is an actionable plan for creating, managing & optimizing content align consumer intent with business goals. The important part of this statement is the alignment of what the consumer wants, with what the brand hopes to get in return.

Developing a content strategy is not as simple as it used to be in the early days of digital marketing. We now face an ever-growing landscape of places where consumers interact with content and a variety of new devices it is consumed on. Think about the last time you were researching for something new to buy. It is likely you started by searching Google, watched a video on Youtube, read a consumer review and did a quick poll of your friends on Facebook.

It’s also likely your customer will not be accessing content in a browser at their desk. Instead they will be using GPS enabled devices that deliver content based on their location. This can be game changing for a number of reasons.

The first use of location-based content we think of is the ability to deliver offers and promotions based on proximity to a person’s location. This has long been a dream of marketers. What I find much more interesting is when location based thinking goes beyond a simple direct response model to placing content in context of activities and interest.

Imagine if an outdoor store provided a mobile app allowing people to leave photos and suggestions along hiking trails across the country. Add the capability to log in with a Facebook account and now suddenly you can share your experience with friends in your network. The opportunity for the outdoor store to engage would be by providing useful tips for cooking on the trail, food to pack with promotions for products that will make future trips even better.

As our content becomes more distributed so do the tools for measuring effectiveness. Measuring consumption, favorability and sharing across channels is essential to make decisions on how to optimize the mix of places content goes and what content is developed.

As you can see there are a number of moving parts that must be considered when developing a content strategy. As you begin to develop your plan ask your self a few questions: Are consumer’s goals and business goals aligning? Does the content your creating have a purpose? How will you know if you content is working for you.

We often get questions about if and when brands can edit a Wikipedia article and I’d like to provide some background on Wikipedia’s format and clarify what is and is not an acceptable edit. I am not morally against brands editing Wikipedia articles and there are no rules against it but the acceptable instances are few and any edits should be done transparently and by someone educated in the format and citation process of Wikipedia. continue reading

I will be attending Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago from December 7-11 (at the Hilton Chicago - 720 S. Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60605).

On Tuesday I posted a Q&A with Bill Leake , President and CEO, Apogee Search.  Today I’m pleased to interview Matt Van Wagner of Findmefaster.com.

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I will be attending Search Engine Strategies Conference in Chicago from December 7-11 (at the Hilton Chicago - 720 S. Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60605).  As a lead-in to the conference I’m pleased to post a few interviews over the course of this week.

The first subject is Bill Leake , President and CEO, Apogee Search.  Bill also serves as the president of the Austin Interactive Marketing Association, and as the chairman of the SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization) committee.

Bill will be one of the speakers in the session called PR, Social Media and Search, covering how to integrate social media and search into your PR strategy.

It’s worth noting that the questions I’ve posed below not only reflect my relatively nascent knowledge of “search,” but also what I hear a lot of friends, colleagues and clients asking.  Hope you come away with a useful nugget or two.  Comments and additional questions welcomed.

More so than ever we see brands focusing on driving earned social media coverage as a way to help promote a product, service or even advocate for a cause.  For the uninitiated, can you give us the 101 on how social media impacts organic search results?

Google, in a nutshell, likes fresh relevant content (roughly 20% of the algorithm) and old links / offpage (roughly 80% of the algorithm).  Social Media, properly done, can get you both.  Fresh content, saying what you want it to say (contextually and semantically dead-on), linking back to one of your properties.

That being said, most social media folks know boo diddly about how to actually do SEO, and when they get rankings on a truly competitive keyword, it’s usually completely by happenstance.

In many organizations, PR, social media and search are “owned” by different factions within either the marketing or communications teams.  Any recommendations on how these disciplines can be integrated for the greater good?

It can get worse than that. Sometimes search itself is “owned” by multiple parties.  Paid Search / Adwords is often owned by field marketing or demand generation teams, operating tactically at the divisional level, while Natural Search / SEO is often owned by corporate marketing, or even corporate IT.

That being said, IMHO it’s vital that all customer-facing marketing teams coordinate their efforts.  Search & PR are already collaborating more and more, and I expect that ultimately social will be “owned” by the search & PR teams (at least the customer acquisition piece of social), rather than existing as a separate practice area.  Already, we’re finding that more and more of the better social media agencies are actually the social media practice areas of search engine marketing companies.

Can you talk a bit about Facebook in particular? What does it mean (i.e. what is the effect) that it’s a “closed” community in terms of search visibility (versus, for example, Twitter).  And where do you see this going in 2010?

I think Facebook is a sign that not everyone wants to be dependent upon Google for their visibility (and ultimately, their moneymaking).  Just like the Wall Street Journal has much of their content paid subscription only, and just like NewsCorp / Murdoch is talking about pulling much of their content out of Google, some of the major “publishers” (and Facebook is a publisher, in a sense, of user generated content), are going to make a courageous go of it on their own, trusting that they have enough critical mass to survive w/out Google’s help in attracting eyeballs.

In the Facebook case, they are able to use Google searches for a person to drive eyeballs into the person’s profile page, but if you want to read more (wall, etc) or see more (photos), you need to enter their walled garden.  If they can pull it off, this looks like a far more defensible business model than what Twitter has going on. Has anyone seen Twitter’s real revenue model yet?  I thought not …

This is a blog written by a PR firm, so it begs asking – what can PR people do as they build strategic and tactical plans to ensure we are leveraging search as effectively as possible?

Find a great search firm to partner with, and search firms need to make themselves partner friendly for their part as well.  A well crafted PR plan, whether a strategic plan or a tactical plan, if it covers online (and in this day and age, I’d hope that most would cover online), should have discussion areas in it about how best to integrate and leverage search.  Not just natural search / SEO either, but also paid search / PPC.

What are your three favorite blogs/online resources (besides your own) for relative beginners to learn about search?

I do like ours … as it’s one of the top ranking ones out there for a search for “Search Marketing Blog” and we really encourage rank and file participation from our team (rather than most Search Marketing firm blogs, where 90% of the posts are just 2-3 folks, including the company “great leader” type).  That being said, here goes:

1. Search Engine Strategies Blog
2. Danny Sullivan’s Blog
3. ClickZ