The Online Marketing Summit’s 23-city tour made a stop in Denver this year. 90octane’s Brooke Caesar spoke at the conference and various staff members attended sessions that covered topics such as social media, search, email, demand generation, usability and integrated marketing efforts. Keep reading for some key takeaways from the June 23rd conference.
Posted by Chelsea Maxwell, Sr. Marketing Coordinator
Does social media participation have an effect on your website’s overall search rankings? This question is top of mind for companies anxious to drink the social media Kool-Aid, and the answer is both yes and no. While having a presence in the social space will not affect your placement in search engine rankings, it does give you visibility for both real-time and social search.
Google, Yahoo and Bing have all integrated social media into their search environments. This often pushes the “regular” search engine results below the fold in favor of real-time updates, meaning that social search is now taking up prime real estate in the search engines.
Participating in social media and receiving backlinks from social sites can have a positive impact on a website’s search engine reputation. However, remember that jumping into social media before you are ready is never a good idea. Get the basics down first. Then, when the time is right, examine what social outlets make the most sense for your company or brand.
Posted by: Nicole Johnson, Marketing Coordinator
Ever heard of “location-sensitive mobile advertising?” It sounds fancy, but it’s just a term that encompasses a combination of two tactics that are becoming bigger and better every day – local search marketing and mobile advertising. The major players in the game (Yelp, Google and Facebook) are paving the way for new growth in this arena.
Yelp offers a smartphone application called “Nearby” for its mobile users. The app allows easy mobile access to any coupon or offer posted on a local business’s Yelp profile page. Users can also use the app to find businesses located in close proximity to their immediate locations.
Similarly, Google released “Near Me Now,” a feature that is automatically available to any user who accesses Google using an iPhone or Android phone user a 2.0.1 version or newer browser. The feature gives users easy navigation to restaurants, banks and other businesses in their areas. The mobile search engine results page serves up 10 local businesses and features three Google Adwords paid listings. Keep in mind that the Near Me Now link only appears if users give Google permission to access their locations with GPS tracking.
Posted by: Nikki Burmaster, Marketing Coordinator
The importance of local online search strategies has increased exponentially within the last year. Implementing and continually optimizing local search techniques give businesses, especially those in very competitive industries or those with smaller marketing budgets, a leg up in the online marketing space.
Companies with local listings on the three major engines receive preferential treatment on results pages, showing in the top few listings when served. This is a major advantage considering the integration of paid ads, tweets, videos and more in many search engines’ results pages that are pushing actual organic results lower and lower on the first page.
In addition to higher search engine results, many listing services allow companies to add coupons and messages featuring current promotions or recent releases. Some local listings offer mobile integration, displaying search results with click-to-call features and local ad extensions that populate maps, directions, reviews and more.
Posted by: Nichole Garofalo, Marketing Intern
According to a recent report from Hitwise, Facebook overtook Google as the most visited website in the U.S., while sending a message that the social sharing site has become a major contender in the online search space. And it’s not hard to see why.
Facebook has managed to deliver the Web in a way that makes searching for solutions, in addition to good old socializing, seem more “real.” Regular people can use their connections on social networks like Facebook when they’re seeking recommendations for products and services and information gathering. That’s because these connections are actual people they know and trust. They can turn to Google afterward if they’re still unsatisfied. Why would online searchers choose results generated by anonymous bots when they can get trusted information based on the first-hand experience of friends on Facebook?
What’s more, with this kind of social, real-time search happening, Facebook presents an opportunity for marketers to monitor what’s being said about their brands (both the good and the bad).
Hitwise’s report states that Facebook and Google together accounted for 14% of all U.S. Internet visits, with Facebook’s homepage accounting for 7.07% of traffic and Google’s home page 7.03%. Although the traffic reports are close, Facebook’s year-over-year growth far outpaces Google’s. With a more targeted audience and Web traffic that is growing by the minute, Facebook is proving that marketers can’t ignore social media.
Posted by: Erin Wilson, Marketing Coordinator
Although Google continues to own the majority of the search engine market, Bing’s continued growth makes it necessary to think beyond Google when optimizing your website. Fortunately, most search engines rank their results based on many of the same criteria.
Below are four key areas to focus on when optimizing for search engines, particularly Bing:
Content and keyword placement: Great content is the best way to improve search rankings. Pay attention to where your keywords are located; use page titles, H1 and alt tags and linked text. Referring to Bing Webmaster Center is also a great way to stay on top of any changes.
Inbound links: Inbound links are important for any engine, especially Bing. Focus on obtaining a large number of links from other relevant pages.
Well-built website: A technically sound website with validated code, no broken links and proper redirects is important to Bing. Also, make an effort to use static URLs instead of dynamic URLs.
Domain age: Bing’s algorithm prioritizes older domains. Search engines are always looking to establish authority and domain age is one way to accomplish this.
Although it is important to include Bing in your optimization strategy, make sure you’re continuing to optimize for Google as well.
Posted by: Shannon Anderson, Project Manager
When managed properly, company blogs are a great way to keep readers up to date on company and industry knowledge, and can be very useful in improving a company’s online visibility. Implementing the following optimization best practices can help improve both your blog and your website’s organic visibility within the search engines:
Try using these tips to improve your blog’s organic visibility within the search engines. Ultimately, they can help improve your website’s visibility as well.
Posted by: Christy Roth, Project Manager
Is online video a part of your marketing mix and, in particular, your SEO strategy? As online video usage continues to surge, more marketers are focusing on how video can integrate into their search programs. The following YouTube statistics show how prevalent online video has become:
What can your company do to make sure that your videos are ranking high in search results and are visible to relevant users? Much like your site content and meta data, you need to make sure that your video title and description are keyword rich (without being spammy) and applicable to what the user is looking for. Think about what terms users that are interested in your video would use to search and work to incorporate them into your copy. You can also provide keyword tags for your video to increase search visibility.
Posted by: Erin Wilson, Marketing Coordinator
The start of 2010 brought a lot of changes and updates to search engine optimization practices. SEO is constantly evolving, making it necessary for companies to stay up to date on current trends.
Here are the top three SEO learnings from the start of 2010:
1) Incorporate social media into your overall marketing strategy to increase visibility. In an effort to make search a more interactive experience, search engines are focusing on incorporating social media into their results. Companies who are on board with social media have reaped the benefits through increased visibility. Users can now see social media results related to their search request and select websites they want to see more of, essentially customizing their search results. If you are not a part of social media yet, consider getting involved.
Posted by: Chelsea Maxwell, Marketing Coordinator
Mobile marketing is a strategy that we often hear talked about and the bottom line is mobile marketing is here to stay. As such, you need to make sure that you are creating and optimizing your website to be mobile-friendly.
The first way to ensure your website is compatible with most mobile browsers is to confirm your site is entirely W3C XHTML validated. Mobile browsers are not nearly as forgiving of XHTML errors as standard browsers. Additionally, when you adhere to XHTML accessibility guidelines, any images that do not show up on a mobile browser will appear in a text format.
When you are building mobile versions of your website remember that Flash, AJAX and Javascript don’t always translate across mobile browsers and should therefore be used sparingly in development. This will not only contribute to a better overall user experience, but will also help you gain better positioning within mobile search results.
If your company is already using mobile marketing be sure to test as you would the rest of your search engine optimization (SEO) strategies.
Learn more about mobile optimization at Search Insider.