Posts Tagged ‘SEO’
SEO site review session by Matt Cutts
June 7th, 2010
If you’re interested in SEO, and you should be if you understand the value of digital, here is a good video from Matt Cutts and his team.
He goes through a series of websites from all genres and gives helpful tips and advice on how each site could be better optimised. It’s over an hour long but well worth the watch. Interesting stuff!
Social Media Optimization Is The New SEO With Brian Solis
April 15th, 2010
Last night, I joined in the Hubspot webinar on “Social Media is the New SEO” with Brian Solis and took away enough ideas to last through the rest of this year at least.
Brian engages with diamond-like clarity and precision; and he doesn’t waste words so, likewise, I’ll keep this short.
You can see Brian’s presentation on Slideshare. http://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/social-media-optimization-is-the-new-seo
Main takeaways:
- Social media conversations currently are “Blah Blah Blah!”
- The next level for marketing/brand professionals is to cut through
- Do this by accepting that we are all publishers now
- Create and curate Social Objects that extend depth and range of your conversations
- Social Media Objects, managed correctly, automate your social media work
- This is Word of Mouth automated, not just “going viral”
- Social Media will have its own budget in companies next year
- Maybe every savvy company will have a Chief Editorial Officer
- That Officer will direct quality, calibre and frequency of content (Social Objects)
- The new “CEOs” will help to connect the dots in Search.
- With Social Objects you will be found and be useful, relevant, authoritative.
- Social Media Optimisation is more than a conversation, more than manipulation
- Empathy is the key.
You know, there was so much more in that hour - The buzz around the webinar and Brian’s book, Engage, is continuing through the #engage hashtag if you want to joiun the conversation.
You can also out more about Social Media Optimisation on Brian’s blogsite http://www.briansolis.com/2010/02/social-media-optimization-smo-is-the-new-seo-part-1/
Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up (05-03-2010)
March 5th, 2010
Welcome to another instalment of the ‘Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up’.
1. Stickr will let you post stickers on the Web. You can leave notes all over the Internet that track your activity, or that of your friends.View the video for a further overview.
2. Collecta #trends gives you top real-time trends right off the bat. Each trend gives you the latest photo, story, comment and update. Collecta can also be used for searching your own trends.
3. Trends is another real-time trending platform, which is more visual than Collecta and offers a good selection of topics to navigate. On clicking a trend you are presented with a wealth of information.
4. Toobla. What they say: “Get Visual. Easily collect, enjoy and share your favourite content, bookmarked websites and everything else. Toobla helps you do it.”
Here is an example.
5. Thumboo - simple to generate thumbnails via a submitted URL
Social Media post of the week: If you missed it, here’s the link to the BIG social media quiz
SEO post of the week: Anatomy of a Hands-on SEO Site Audit – Part 1 Anatomy of a Hands-on SEO Audit – Part 2
More of the same social media sites and tools next week!
May 14th, 2009
Today we have a guest blogger posting on behalf of Liberate Media - his name is Ian Howie, Account Director, at 1upSearch, which was one of the first ever UK companies to become a Google Website Optimizer (GWO) Authorised Consultant, making it one of an elite group of Website Optimizer specialists.
How to SEO your Press Release
An essential part of your PR strategy should be optimising your press release for Google.
Optimising for Google will also help you to build awareness on Yahoo and other smaller search engines.
Instead of just dropping copy in your release and hoping it will be picked up by the Search Engines, simply follow my five tips to make sure that your online press release works harder for you.
1. Optimise for your Audience not the Search Engines…
This may sound counterintuitive - but optimising a Press Release is all about writing copy that is going to appeal to your audience. Simply stuffing your Press Release full of words that are popular will stop your Press Release from making sense to both your audience and to Google.
I’d suggest using Keyword Tools (see my next point) to find the right Keywords - and then using them in your Headline and at least two or three times in the body copy and again in your About section.
2. Use Keyword Research
So, for my example, I have a Press Release about a new service from Pressitt.
You can use these free Keyword Tools from Google and Wordtracker to help you workout which keywords to put in and in which order.
Let’s have a look at the Google Keyword Tool:
You can either enter the Keywords you want to research into the top box or you can enter a URL from your website if you want to research a subject area.
The second half of the screen shows the actual Keywords being searched in Google, the competition on Google Adwords and an indication of Search Volume (how many Searches per month).
Now, rather than peppering the Press Release with all the phrases, I’m going to combine them into one:
Social Media News Release Service
Covering the Keywords:
Social Media News Release
News Release Service
By doing this, the release will optimise better since (a) it includes both phrases, and (b) it describes more of what the service actually is.
Here is the Optimised text applied to the Press Release:
Social Media News Release Service in Public Beta - From Pressitt
Xx April 2009
Social Media News Release Service - Pressitt - today launches in public beta, following a successful month of private beta testing.
….
Wendy McAuliffe, director of Liberate Media and Pressitt, says: “The private beta phase has been incredibly successful, and we’re delighted to be coming out of it after just one month of testing. The Social Media News Release Service has been a hot topic within the global PR industry for a while, and we’re pleased to see that businesses and brands of all sizes are eager to trial this up-to-date press release format. Early user feedback has been constructive and encouraging, and we’re making service updates as quickly as possible to ensure we’re continually innovating and responding to the needs of our users.”
….
About Pressitt
Pressitt is a Social Media News Release Service, provided by digital PR and social media consultancy Liberate Media and web development company Best Served Cold.
Pressitt allows you to create your own social media news release (SMNR) - also known as a social media press release (SMPR) or social media release (SMR) and publish it to an online community of journalists, the blogosphere and the general public.
…
The full release is just over 3,500 words - however we repeat the optimised terms only 7 times. The context of where you put your Keywords is very important - in the headline (which carries the most weight) and the first line. And is then repeated again within the body and the about section.
3. Use Wordle
To see how a Search Engine would see the words within your release, you can use a clever little site called: Wordle.net. You can cut and paste your copy into it. If I put in my Social Media News Release text, I get this visualisation:
Ideally, the Keywords that you want to be indexed should show up in the largest text in the Visualisation.
4. Embed links
Put links into your copy that link to the relevant parts of your website, you can also link to client/partner websites. These links will help people reading your Press Release to find out more about you and also tell the Search Engines which of your clients’ pages are related to this Press Release, e.g.:
Social Media News Release service Pressitt today launches in public beta, following a successful month of private beta testing.
Developed by digital PR and social media consultancy Liberate Media and web development firm Best Served Cold, Pressitt has already been trailed by an impressive list of high-profile and challenger brands and organisations. These include Johnson’s online parenting community BabyCentre, the Government’s Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, online music provider Napster, digital creative agency Collective, digital entertainment and internet solutions firm iBAHN, digital engagement agency Kerb and LED lamp producer Greengage Lighting.
5, Clear Online Path Back
Name, email address and phone number are now not only ways you can be found online you can also add links to an online version of your Release, as well as your homepage URL, Twitter address, Linked In Group and your blog.
Press contacts:
Wendy McAuliffe
Director
Liberate Media / Pressitt
Tel: 07900 886791
Email: wendy@liberatemedia.com
Online:
Web: www.pressitt.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/Pressitt
Blog: http://pressitt.com/blog
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pressitt-Social-Media-News-Release-SMNR/77338107702?v=wall
So here are the results: the press release is third in the Google Results ranking, after being posted on Pressitt’s sister site Liberate Media:
And ranking at number one and two on Yahoo UK:
This post was written by Ian Howie Account Director at 1upSearch
Twitter: ihowie
Web: www.1upsearch.co.uk
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ianhowie
Five on Friday - five fabulous Web 2.0 tools and sites of the week (05-12-08)
December 5th, 2008
December is here already, and here is my usual web 2.0 tool and site weekly round-up.
1. As always the obligatory Twitter tool: this week it’s called twitbacks . “Brand yourself on Twitter by creating your very own Twitter background. Simply add your photo, logo and contact information. Then choose a theme and TwitBacks will automatically create a Twitter profile background” - pretty easy to do this yourself if you know your way around Photoshop!
2. This next Web 2.0 tool is a neat SEO tool. It is called SEO Extractor. You add your keywords to the site, and it generates a report telling you where you are positioned on Google Yahoo and MSN. You will also receive an email when your ranking goes up or down.
3. Zing Sale is up next. Zing Sale lets you know when products you want go on sale, alerting you via email.
This is what LifeHacker had to say about it:
ZingSale Notifies You When Products Go on Sale
“You don’t have to run a manual search every day from now until December 23rd to find the best price on an item you’re hot to purchase but only for so much - ZingSale will monitor item prices for you over time, and email you when they go on sale.”
4. A little bit of nostalgia now. My Tweet 16 gives you your first ever 16 Tweets - my first was on December the 16th.
5. We finish off today’s little jaunt with a nice clean PDF search engine called PDFse. Just enter a keyword and it will find the related keyword ebook.
See ya next week!
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Will SEO drop out of the social media mix in the future?
November 20th, 2008
After reading an excellent post by Learn to Duck, titled SEO is dead, I started to wonder, where does that leave SEO? And, who now owns the majority slice of the social media mix, if not SEO?
To recap, the main points of the ‘SEO Is dead’ post were:
- There was a time when SEO consultants could charge a fortune for services, but now everyone is a so called SEO expert.
- Web designers are designing websites with SEO in mind.
- Platforms such as Wordpress have SEO principals in their framework.
- SEO organisations need to re-position themselves within the next three years.
So where does this leave the SEO specialists, if in three years time SEO is dead and buried?
I think there will always be a need for SEO expertise, but not in the traditional stand alone sense. We have to develop a more joined up sense of how online PR, or any other element of the social media mix, links with SEO tactics. The joined up approach is the way Liberate Media likes to operate, meaning in an ideal scenario our client’s online services will be streamlined and focused on the same overall strategy, like a well-oiled machine. So, SEO expertise is still a very valued service but in the wider context of a digital strategy. In the future, I don’t think SEO will be seen as a standalone service.
Therefore, if we remove the channel approach, who will own the future SEO slice of the social media pie if not search agencies? - Online PR, marketers, digital agencys, freelance consultants, something completely new, or all of the above? Will our skills need to encompass the entire digital range to become truly proficient social media marketeers?
Liberate Media make it on to the SEO BIGLIST
August 26th, 2008
The guys at Liberate Media always strive to give are community of readers something back in the form of honest and thought provoking commentary, the latest social media news and lots of others features from our writers Wendy McAuliffe, Lloyd Gofton, Tim Greenhalgh and Andy Merchant.
So it was nice to see somebody had recognised are hard work, in the form of the - BIGLIST SEO Blog Reviews 082508
This is what Lee Odden from the online marketing blog had to say:
Liberate Media Blog - This UK based agency blog with Andy Merchant, Tim Greenhalgh and founders Lloyd Gofton and Wendy McAuliffe covers emerging trends, industry observations, social media and digital PR topics.
As part of the list we get a big shiny badge to add to our site:
Thanks for reading the blog so far, we hope you enjoy it.
Watch this space for more exiting posts.
Dragons Den talks search engine optimisation (SEO)
July 29th, 2008
As a big fan of TV’s Drangons Den I tuned in to last nights weekly episode as usual, half way through the show a guy pitched for a company called Diamond Geezer, an online retailer of Diamonds. What happened next was a first for Dragons Den. Peter Jones wanted to know all about Diamond Geezers Google rankings and key words.
View the video to see how the conversation unfolded:
Just goes to show how (SEO) keywords and page ranking are now becoming an important mix of companies online strategy’s.
Will PRs and journalists own natural search?
July 23rd, 2008
You might say, “who cares?”, but for me this is a refreshing new angle on the ‘who owns online PR?’ discussion that has been going on within the social media industry for a while. Of course I’m going to like suggestions that PRs might be in line to own SEO, but setting my vested interests aside, this line of thought helps explain why it is crucial that journalists and PRs understand the long-term trends that are happening in natural search.
Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker made his own rather crude observations on the subject on Monday, in his overly optimised article, “Online POKER marketing could spell the NAKED end of VIAGRA journalism as we LOHAN know it.” He doesn’t say anything new - online headlines have always been important for driving traffic and natural links, and the only difference is that journalists are waking up to the impact optimised copy can have on their authority and popularity rankings - but the article drives home the SEO control that journalists have at their fingertips, should they choose to use it intelligently.
Similarly, Leon Bailey Green has today contributed a post to the E-Consultancy blog entitled: “Is the role of the SEO dead and should PRs own natural search?“, where he argues “off-site optimisation, link building or link baiting, should actually be in the domain of PR professionals”. He concludes “so if a web developer can build a search engine friendly website, a content writer knows how to write search engine friendly copy and an online PR guru can get blogs/websites/forums to link to that content, where does that leave an SEO?”
Regardless of who might own SEO in the future, or whether anyone will, it’s becoming more and more important for PRs and journalists to have a basic understanding of how relevancy, authority and quality of content will increasingly be the metrics used by search engines to rank sites. In addition, social networks are in some cases beginning to displace search, by creating trusted networks of relevant recommendations - which will make the role that PR plays even more important.
The tactics of PR and journalism don’t necessarily need to change, but individuals working in these sectors will have to be very good at what they do.
Natural search can appear very scientific, and I personally am on a mission to understand the techniques as well as I can…but ultimately, PR as an industry needs to focus on the quality of its output. There’s no place for fakers!
Who holds the key to the future of online PR?
May 15th, 2008
There’s been a raging debate in the Liberate Media office over the last few days, the reasons for which will become clear soon. As a result, i thought i would share some thinking on one of the issues: Has the PR industry lost ownership of online PR?
In my opinion yes…but PR is regaining lost ground.
So why? Well i think it relates to a slow uptake of the basics of online PR, and i don’t mean by the few, i mean by the many…the PR industry as a whole. Going back a few years, when online PR was all about keywords and online distribution, the PR industry was slow to react. SEOs took the lead and as the experts in this field it made sense that they would. However, as online PR techniques became more mainstream and with the introduction of the social media press release, the PR industry, or certain factions at least, has finally got its act together.
However, the argument has moved on in this time, communicating via the social web demands more than just technical knowledge, it requires strategic thinking and an understanding of the fundamentals of open communications. This is where i feel the PR industry must step up.
Strategic thinking and a basic understanding of the fundamentals of communications should be where the PR industry is unmatched. No other marketing discipline has the background or the qualifications to match up. Furthermore, many of the key thinkers in the social media sector have PR or comms backgrounds, and social media and online PR should go hand-in-hand.
So why the delay? Why is the relevancy of online PR still being questioned? Why is knowledge still so low (as an industry)? Don’t get me wrong the trailblazers are doing a fine job, producing amazing work and sharing insightful thinking, but what about the masses? Is online PR still just seen as a nerdy thing for the tech team? Maybe.
Will we see a breakout group of PRs, SEOs and social media experts lead the sector away from PR - is it already happening? I think so.
PR professionals that are still under the illusion that they can survive without clearly understanding the online landscape, and even those that still see online as just a channel to reach a specific audience are going to have a rude awakening in the near future.