St Louis Web Marketing

Posts Tagged ‘search engine marketing’

How do video, social media and advances in mobile effect search? What are the search engines changing?

These were just a few of the questions answered at The Net Impact’s Search Engine Strategies Session on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010. The seminar covered current trends in search engine optimization and highlighted the best presentations from the The Net Impact’s SEO team’s recent trip to the Search Engine Strategies Session held in Chicago December 2009. The three presentations presented focused on B2B, Blended Search and Linking.

The first presentation, presented by Angela Cicerelli, Web Account Manager at The Net Impact, covered blended search. Blended search enhances user experience and is another way to engage with potential customer. If you are having troubles ranking for a keyword, blended search just may be the answer. The presentation discussed why we should care about images and videos in search. Social media sites, such as Flickr and YouTube, are now becoming major sources of  website traffic and are appearing in search results. What to take away from the session regarding blended search – The web isn’t about pages anymore, it’s all about streams, feeds and syndication. If information is important, it will find you.

The next presentation, led by Lauren Williamson, Web Content Manager at The Net Impact, highlighted the importance of linking. Link popularity measures the quality and quantity of links pointing to a web page. Recently, social media marketing has become one of the most practical and high quality ways to earn links. The Chicago Search Engine Strategies Session touched on three main reasons why it is important to have a linking program: improve rank, boost traffic and to increase brand exposure. Lauren closed with the statement: “Building links is similar to building relationships – it takes works and is all about quality, not quantity”.

Sonya Sawall, Web Account Manager at The Net Impact, led the final conversation on B2B. Business buyers and decision makers are online, using search engines. Business professionals engage in social networking in order to build relationships that bring business. They rely on search, sometimes throughout the whole buying cycle, and in order to be successful, Internet marketing experts must align their messages with buyers needs throughout each phase of the buying process.

The most important thing learned at The Net Impact’s SES Session: There is one certainty about SEO – the game is always changing. “If you are following a best practice that dates back to 2008 or earlier, toss it away.  It’s now wrong”. 2010 is the year of real-time, personalized results, growing importance of social, community and web mobility. We need to continue to adapt our SEO strategies to stay ahead of the curve.

We hope you all enjoyed the presentation as much as we did, and we look forward to seeing you at the next TNI event!

Check out some great pictures from the event on Flickr!

If you think online social networking is solely for the younger demographic, think again. Thanks to new social networking sites that enable professionals in a wide variety of industries, such as marketing, finance and even medicine, to build meaningful business relationships, social media is now flourishing in the business world.

The Institute for Corporate Productivity recently held a survey and found 65% of business professionals are connecting to social networking websites. Business executives also have turned to online forums, email lists and message boards to sound off on information related to their industries. Of those respondents who do not currently utilize social networks, the top reason (37%) is simply that they don’t know what networks to use. The majority of respondents (59%) said they would likely use social networks if they knew that such use would assist their professional development (31% say they already do), and a full 77% would welcome using them if they though the networks could aid organizational efficiency.

Millions of professionals already turn to broad-based networking sites like LinkedIn to swap job details and contact information, often for job seeking purposes. Recently, LinkedIn reached 43 million active users, with the average age of its members being 41 years. With the growing use of social networking by business professionals, there is a growing number of social networking sites popping up that focus on business users and meeting their needs, that go beyond the broad-based networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn. There are also many niche social networking sites for specific industries, such as legal and medical.

For example: When radiation oncologist Michael Tomblyn recently saw a 21-year-old patient whose eye was protruding from its socket, he turned to his fellow physicians for help. Dozens of doctors offered suggestions, HIV-associated lymphoma or a cocaine-associated sinus problem, eventually steering him toward the correct answer: rhabdomyosarcoma, a fast-growing cancer most often observed in young children. Surprisingly, this diagnosis didn’t take place in a doctor’s lounge. It happened on Sermo.com, the largest online physician community in the US, where practicing US physicians collaborate on difficult cases and exchange observations about drugs, devices and clinical issues., which Dr. Tomblyn and 25,000 doctors like him visit regularly to consult with colleagues specializing in areas from dermatology to psychiatry.

Sermo.com is just one of many targeted social networking sites for professionals. Another example is, Nexly.com, a web-based community designed for the B2B marketplace that provides access to tools and information businesses need in order to better connect. While community tools, like LinkedIn are useful for recruiting purposes, Tom Carlock, CEO of Nexly saw the need for a community created specifically for finding service providers. Nexly.com was created to simplify the process in finding qualified outsourcing services that will results in better buying results.

Nexly is currently in the Beta testing process, and on February 16, 2010, they held a focus group at The Net Impact’s office, in order to validate assumptions and biases in the Beta phase.Check out TNI’s Interview with CEO of Nexly.com, Tim Carlock, on TNI’s YouTube Channel!

Even in the midst of the social media revolution, the behaviors and networking needs of business professionals have not changed, the media simply has. In other words, business professionals are meeting age-old networking needs in new ways. Given the new functions, features and real-time access of social media, social networks have transformed the way  professionals establish and maintain their business relationships.

As more and more business professionals turn to social networks to meet their business objectives, we can only expect to see more targeted social networking sites for professionals continue to pop up on the web. While nothing replaces the quality of face-to-face meetings, social media is a new way to initiate and build relationships and thus, continue to grow one’s professional network.

Do you have any other social networking sites for business that you use?Which one has worked the best for your business?

Original Post at:  www.blog.thenetimpact.com

Its official! The Holiday season has begun. Get ready for battling for a parking space, never ending coupon codes and e-mail blasts galore. But, will new trends like smart phones and social media affect the way people shop? Sure, online holiday shopping is nothing new and either is Facebook, Twitter or cell phones, but as these digital forces continue to get stronger, there are sure to be some changes in retail trends.

Facebook and Twitter users are growing at a rapid pace and so are the features that they offer. This year it seems like doing holiday shopping via social media sites is extremely convenient and beneficial to the consumer. Facebook allows you to fan your favorite brands and see what kind of deals they have going on without ever leaving Facebook. Twitter’s trending topics helps you stay in the know, as well as be on top of the hot gift ideas. As published by Emarkter, 27% of online shoppers will turn to social networks for gift ideas and 45% will use social networks to research items, compare prices, and look for offers.

Smart phones really benefit the bargain shopper. With a browser on your cell phone you can be browsing the ads to your favorite store or be holding a product in your hand in one store, but be checking the price of it at another. iPhone has an unbelievable $1.99 application that allows you to scan a product barcode and it will look to find a better price somewhere else.  During the holidays people are always out to get the best deal and smart phones make price research easy on the go.

Whether you do your Holiday shopping online or in-store, digital media provides you with the tools you need to get the best gift ideas and deals.

If you’re a retailer, take this information and run with it. This is not the end of the social media trend. Get your facebook page up to date with custom pages and post deals on a daily basis. Participate in Twitter and blogs, this is how you get your name into those trending topics.  And, make sure your website is capable for all browsers (even cell phones).

Keep an eye out for more posts about social media and search engine marketing during the holidays. If you need any assistance in these areas, contact The Net Impact.

Flickr has become one of the most popular image sharing sites and currently hosts more than 4 billion images. Flickr is such an easy way to store photos, share them with family and friends, and even enhance traffic to your website.

How does Flickr drive traffic to my site?

Just like any other form of social media, Flickr is a great tool that sends traffic exactly where you direct it. Placing images on Flickr can be just as beneficial as uploading videos to YouTube. However, just like your YouTube videos, blogs, and tags, uploading images to Flickr is only beneficial if you optimize your images.

How do you optimize images for Flickr?

• Give your image a descriptive title.
• After you upload your photos, be sure to add tags. Tags are the keywords that describe your image. Be sure to use tags that you think people are searching for.
• Give a quality description with searched keywords. Be sure to always begin the description with your sites URL. This is an easy way to remind viewers where to go next.
• Create thematic sets. Try to organize your photos in to the proper set so there are even more contextual clues provided to the search engine crawlers.

Seems simple right? That’s because it is. Flickr provides you with the space you need to upload your photos and provide the tools for optimization. Be sure to check your Google Analytics Account and see just how many visitors you start getting from Flickr.

Plan- There is much more to Search Engine Optimization than just stuffing keywords on to a website. A good SEO Company will plan out a strategy specific to your site. They know that there isn’t a cookie cutter SEO plan for everyone and will do the research needed to devise the perfect strategy for you.
Educate- Search Engines and their algorithm methods are constantly changing. SEO companies must stay educated of these changes, because these small alterations can make all the difference in results.  The SEO Company must stay educated and also be able to inform their clients of the changes that may affect them.
Remembering Sales- Many SEO companies are only concerned with rankings. A good SEO company is concerned with the overall growth of sales for your company. They will analyze things other than rankings, such as traffic, conversion, and revenue.
Focus- A great site is more than just good keywords. The navigation path, following compliance codes, and architecture of your site are just as important when trying to provide a great site. It is crucial for an SEO company to remember to focus on all of these things when developing a strategy for you.
Exchange- The SEO Company and the client should be exchanging words and thoughts on a regular basis. Without communication, neither the client nor the company is getting the full benefits of working together.
Compromise- An SEO Company may often get frustrated when a client chooses not to or is unable to implement their recommendations. However, a good SEO Company will understand that compromise is essential and will be satisfied with the decision or work with the client to find a better solution.
Test- SEO is an ongoing process that requires a lot of attention, even after the recommendations have been implemented. Testing is necessary to see if things are taking the right path and helps provide information of what should be done in the future. A good SEO Company is always testing, reviewing, and re-strategizing.
If your SEO Company is not PERFECT or your looking for one who is check out The Net Impact.

If you have a website that gets few visitors, its time to do something about it. The most important and inexpensive strategy is to rank high organically for your keywords as opposed to paid ad (pay per click). Search is the second most common activity on the Internet after email. Statistics show that web users use search engines to find products and services. Search engines send robot “spiders” to index the content on your website, so what are some steps you can do to prepare your website for optimal indexing.

To improve your search engine ranking, make sure to have all the following SEO steps on your website: Read the rest of this entry »