Category Archives: SEO Tools

Google: The Social Media Company

By jorge | Published: March 19, 2010
Over the last few years, the popularity of social channels – for professionals, teens, grandmas and everyone in between – has skyrocketed. Consider the recent numbers: Twitter experienced an annual growth in 2009 of 1,382% Facebook now boasts 400 million active users Every minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube Between blog posts, Facebook status updates, tweets, videos and every other piece of social content published, there’s a whole lot of information floating around out there. Enter the latest social media player, Google. Google’s latest activities, acquisitions and features all point to the fact that the search giant no longer has a close eye on web 2.0; it’s already there. Here are 5 ways Google is now becoming a dominant social media player: 1. Google Social Search Google Social Search results Until now all of the social content in channels like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, hasn’t been easy to find in a central place – including through Google search.  Until now, that is.
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10 Reasons SES New York is a Must-Attend Marketing Conference

By Shervin | Published: March 18, 2010
Let’s get it out of the way that Online Marketing Blog is a media sponsor for Search Engine Strategies conferences and also that I serve on the advisory board . In fact, the blog you’re reading right now was the very first blog to be recognized as a media sponsor by a major marketing industry conference. Specifically, Search Engine Strategies thanks to Matt McGowan . As a long time speaker at SES New York in combination with our other involvement, you could say I have a pretty strong opinion of this event. Here are 10 reasons why I think SES New York is a “must attend” marketing conference: 1. Keynotes! Starting the day with big picture content is a great way to get the synapse firing in your brain. Well, that and a few cups of coffee from the Starbucks inside the Hilton.  With David Meerman Scott – Author of the New Rules of Marketing & PR, Avinash Kaushik – Analytics Guru & Author from Google and Yusuf Mehdi SVP from Bing, you are sure to get riveting insight about the future of internet marketing and where companies should be focusing their efforts in the long term
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2010 LeadingRE Conference: TopRank Digital Marketing Sessions

By admin | Published: March 17, 2010
Last week, I was in Las Vegas for the LeadingRE annual conference and marketing technology event speaking on social media and SEO strategies for real estate professionals. It’s always interesting to see where different verticals are at with their willingness to embrace social channels, and I’m pleased to report the top realtors globally are already engaging, or at the least starting to define their path. I gave the opening presentation to the MarTech part of the conference – a track of panels/sessions designed to help real estate professionals better integrate their marketing initiates with technology. Additionally, I spoke on two panels in the general sessions of the conference: one on online reputation management and one as an open panel Q&A answering marketing strategy questions. For Online Marketing Blog readers, following is a wrapup of each of my sessions and some key takeaways. Architecting A Web 2.0 Marketing And PR Strategy For this session, I took event goers through an overview of the process we at TopRank implement for companies seeking social media strategy: a social media roadmap
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5 Ways to Electrify Your Social Network

By Shervin | Published: March 16, 2010
A typical situation for many marketers when it comes to social networks is this: Setup LinkedIn profile, check. Corporate LinkedIn page, check.  Facebook profile, check. Facebook Fan Page, check. Twitter account, check. Corporate blog, check. Check check check! But where’s the buzz?
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Shutterstock Voted Best Royalty Free Stock Photos Site for Bloggers

By anthony | Published: March 15, 2010
A great photo can really add a lot of flavor to a blog post and in our own analysis at Online Marketing Blog as well as with clients, including quality images with a blog post can boost traffic and referrals 30-50%. To make posts more personal, I try to use my own photos as much as possible and do use imags from Flickr under Creative Commons from time to time. This is an area of significant impact for blogs as effective communication and marketing tools, so last week we ran a Reader Poll on the best site for royalty free, stock photos for bloggers. We had the most comments from iStockphoto users and interestingly enough, the “Other” category came in second place with suggestions including: screenshots, stock.xchng, PhotoXpress.com and Creative Commons imagies from Flickr. The poll results are below, but as you can tell from the image, Shutterstock was the winner:  Best Stock Photo Site for Bloggers . Shutterstock.com (38%, 83 Votes) iStockphoto.com (31%, 68 Votes) Other – Add to comments (9%, 19 Votes) dreamstime.com (8%, 17 Votes) fotolia.com (8%, 17 Votes) morguefile.com (2%, 5 Votes) stockvault.net (2%, 4 Votes) freedigitalphotos.net (1%, 3 Votes) everystockphoto.com (1%, 1 Votes) Online Marketing Blog has been using iStockphoto for the past 3-4 years but after seeing this poll, we’ll check out Shutterstock.  In fact, I ran into the Shutterstock booth while at the SXSW Interactive conference and shared the good news in person.
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12 Tips on Live Blogging & Content Marketing at SXSWi

By anthony | Published: March 12, 2010
So here I sit in the DFW airport hanging out with David Berkowitz and Joe Morin waiting for my connection to Austin. What better way to spend that 45 min than to write a helpful blog post? A big part of my “mission” for SXSXi is to create content after all. I have several other goals like networking (reconnecting and especially new contacts), competitive research, recruiting and potential client prospecting. But content marketing is our bread and butter. It can be an effective tactic for you too, especially if you can learn to be highly efficient at liveblogging conferences. Here are a few tips that will not only give you a tested and proven guideline but should improve your efficiency and quality of output
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5 Social Media Tips for Ecommerce Marketing

By admin | Published: March 12, 2010
If you run an ecommerce business, chances are your customers – regardless of their age, gender or economic status – are active on social networks and social media sharing sites. Just consider the statistics from social media monitoring site Pingdom : Males and females almost equally use social sites (47% vs. 53%) 61% of Facebook users are middle aged or older, with the average age being 37 18- to 24-year-olds don’t dominate any particular social networking site; they’re spread out all over The bottom line: If you aren’t discovering which in social networking channels your customers spend time and include them in your ecommerce marketing mix, you’re probably  missing out on building relationships, community and increasing new customer acquisition through online word of mouth. Leverage these five social media marketing tips for ecommerce to either get started with more social digital marketing or take your current social strategy to the next level: 1. Go Where Your Customers Are Very few things in life promise endless options – digital and social media marketing being one exception. From Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn to YouTube, there’s no limit to the number of social networking channels available for your business to leverage. Key to successful social media marketing for ecommerce is choosing the right channels to reach customers
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BIGLIST Social SEO Blogs Update 031110

By jorge | Published: March 11, 2010
Welcome to the post-Winter/pre-Spring version of the BIGLIST review of  SEO blogs .  Snow is starting to melt and you can actually walk around outside (in Minnesota) without your eyelashes freezing together. We have a nice group for you to review so fire up your RSS reader and subscribe. LyndiT blog gets our attention for great design and user experience in this BIGLIST update. Lyndi Thompson is a Social Media and Online Marketing Specialist and like me, is addicted to peanut M&Ms.  Besides writing about a mix of social media, SEO, web design and online marketing topics, you might be interested to know Lyndi lives on a mini farm, owns several animals including a donkey and supports some great causes in the Northwest. Frank Thinking About Internet Marketing – Frank Reed blogs on several sites including Marketing Pilgrim and Biznology. Here, he shares is talented writing skills to tell stories about SMB internet marketing topics.
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11 Free Tools for Social Media Optimization

By admin | Published: March 10, 2010
Plenty of bloggers are talking about the inevitable intersection of social media marketing and search engine optimization. Heck, we’ve been blogging about SMO since 2006! Keyword optimized social content and channels of promotion provide abundant signals to search engines for improved visibility on standard, social and real-time search. The changing nature of social media marketing and optimization create the need for tools whether for research, marketing and promotion or analytics. Here are 11 social media and SEO tools you might find useful: howsociable.com – Social visibility score knowem.com – Profile building tool Social Media for Firefox – Build a powerful social profile on social news & bookmarking sites semrush.com – Find competitor organic search rankings Google Insights – Keyword demand trends Page Inlink Analyzer – Analyze inbound links, their Delicious bookmarks & keyword tags majesticseo.com – Historical back-link tracking trackur.com – Social media monitoring socialmention.com – Real-time social search & scoring, social keyword research bit.ly – Search friendly URL shortening with analytics analytics.postrank.com – Track social engagement with combined Google & social analytics Below are screen shots of each tool with a more detailed description of how you might use them. HowSociable is a useful tool to quickly gauge the social presence of a particular keyword or brand name. Agencies like TopRank Marketing will use this kind of tool (customized) to take snapshots of customer social presence metrics for social media optimization programs
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Ford’s Focus on Social Media: Scott Monty Interview

By admin | Published: March 9, 2010
When you think of successful consumer brands in the social media space, names like Dell, Zappos and Pepsi come to mind. Another is Ford. Last year the Ford Fiesta movement generated tremendous amount of awareness (and pre-orders) for a vehicle that wasn’t available to the public yet. At the same time, it inspired a community to engage, create content and continue discussions about the Fiesta with over 7 million video views.
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