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Search and Social: A Partnership for the Ages

October 19, 2011 By
Robbie Williams

Robbie Williams is an SEO Consultant at Slingshot, and wrote this guest post in exchange for a guest post I wrote for their website.

Robbie Williams

Robbie Williams. I love his version of 'Somewhere Beyond the Sea' from Finding Nemo

What grabs a social media guru’s attention faster than mentioning the term “social media guru?”

The answer: Providing data-driven ROI statistics for their industry and, better yet, doing it in conjunction with SEO.

Worked, didn’t it?

Now that I have your attention, I want you to dabble in my thoughts for a moment.

I’ve often pondered how a social media practitioner would address the topic of “Search and Social” as they are the two dominating powers on the Internet. Now I know. They turn to the SEO professionals to address it.

As we all know, the Google algo is one of mankind’s best kept secrets. So I’m not going to come out and tell you that I know anything in my industry to be a 100% fact — aside from what Google tells us directly (which often keeps me up at night). However, I can back up my opinions and observations with the experience of day-in, day-out SEO practice, where dealing with rankings for an array of keywords is my entire world.

Within this digital domain, I’ve had first-hand experience with the algorithm and how it responds to certain human signals; e.g., social signals. However, (drumroll please….) social signals alone have yet to produce an identifiable, data-proven effect on rankings in the majority of SERPs. So yes, given the access to the data streams of Twitter and Facebook, there has been a trace amount of evidence where social media has had a noticeable effect on rankings in certain keyword search queries.

Now, back to proving ROI for social media with search. We all know how powerful social media has become and it’s not unreasonable to think that Google doesn’t realize it too. As a matter of fact, it has attempted to gain access to the Twitter and Facebook “fire hoses” (the full feed of information behind their massive firewalls) but to no avail … yet. As soon as this happens, you better believe that social media is going to have a significant effect on rankings, and it’s only a matter of time.

***Disclaimer: As an SEO professional, I am required to mention the discussion Correlation vs. Causation when discussing this topic. So here it goes: a page/brand/keyword will typically have social cues surrounding it because it’s a good page/brand/keyword and it will rank accordingly because of this. The reverse is not true, a page/brand/keyword will not rank only because it has social. In the world of SEO, it’s never that simple.***

Imagine a graph illustrating the respective positions of traffic-driving, conversion-producing keywords in individual SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Now overlay it with another graph of social media activity that’s been strategically produced around the same SEO keywords.

What do you see? Positive correlation (not necessarily causation). Additionally, imagine a Google Analytics graph showing increased conversion, increased on-page time and click-through rates, as well as a decrease in user bounce rates for those same keywords and their associated pages, overlaid on top. (I’m drooling at the thought of this, I don’t know about you…)

Boom. professional search engine optimization company. Aside from work, he loves being outside; running, mountain biking, adventure racing, etc. Robbie’s current motto: If you keep life full, you never have time to worry about tomorrow.

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    Author :  •  Content Location : Indianapolis, IN  •  Copyright Year : 2011  •  Headline : Search and Social: A Partnership for the Ages  •  Keywords : social media, search engine optimization, websites, SEOmoz, Slingshot SEO, Robbie Williams  • 
    Filed Under: Blogging, Corporate Blogging, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Social Media Analytics, Social Media Experts, Social Media Marketing, Social Networks Tagged With: , , , , , ,

    It’s Still Corporate Blogging, Not the Social Web

    April 13, 2011 By
    Decoder Ring Theatre cast

    Debbie Weil doesn’t like the term “blog” anymore. She wants to do away with it.

    I was listening to Debbie on Doug Karr’s Blog Talk Radio from the end of February, and she said she doesn’t like the term “blog” anymore. Rather, she wants to call it the “social web,” since blogging has grown beyond a string of chronologically arranged thoughts by writers who wanted to journal publicly (I’m paraphrasing).

    I couldn’t disagree more.

    While blogging may be old hat to people like Debbie, Doug, and me, it’s still new to a lot of businesspeople, who are only just now hearing about it. They’re only just now hearing about social media. They have just recently quit calling it “Facespace,” and realize there might be something to allowing their employees to contribute to their website.

    Amish buggy and cart

    Some of these guys even have a website. (No, not the horse.)

    Keep in mind, the business community still hasn’t embraced the Internet as a whole. According to Formstack, only 45% of businesses in the US have a website.

    That’s a friggin’ website! That’s not even a blog.

    I built my first website in 1994. On Adobe PageMill. It was horrible. But we were one of the first businesses in our industry to have one, and I’ve been online ever since.

    It’s 17 years later, and more than half of the businesses in this country still don’t have a website. They’re certainly not thinking about a blog. Maybe they’ve heard of it, maybe they know someone who’s got one. But they’re not seeing the need to have one.

    And if that’s the case, they’re certainly not ready to embrace the social-ness of their website, and stop referring to it as a blog, since they don’t even have one.

    Decoder Ring Theatre cast

    Cast of Decoder Ring Theatre, an audio theatre company in Toronto. They're airing 6 of my radio scripts this summer on their podcast.

    I’ve seen this “we’ve got to stop calling it by the old name because it’s not accurate anymore” phenomenon so many times before in so many different industries. Radio theatre is no longer called “radio theatre” anymore, it’s called “audio theatre.” Why? Because you don’t listen to these plays on the radio anymore, you listen to them via streaming audio, podcasts, mobile phones, CDs, and even tapes. Who the hell uses radio?

    The audio theatre groups I’ve been a part of have been arguing about this for the last 10 years. (In fact, if I want to rile them up, I’ll bring it up again, like shaking a jar of angry bees just as they’re starting to calm down.) But the only people who care about the distinction are the practitioners themselves. Most of the non-audio theatre public still calls it “radio theatre,” because that’s the name they know. That’s how they refer to it when they talk about what they, their parents, or their grandparents listened to.

    When I ask them about “audio theatre,” they stare at me blankly, until I say “that’s the new word for radio theatre.” Then they get it. Audio theatre’s biggest marketing blunder was when they stopped calling the art form what the typical listener was calling it, and I think it played a role in the diminished acceptance of the art form, even as audiobooks and other forms of audio entertainment and education have taken off.

    If we want corporate blogging to continue to grow, we need to keep calling it a “blog” for as long as the business community has not fully embraced the Internet as a whole. Once everyone has a website and a blog, then I’ll call it a “social web.” Until then, I’m going to stick with the term the rest of the business community is already using. The social media pros can call it whatever they like.

    Photo credit: pullarf (Flickr)

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      Author :  •  Content Location : Indianapolis, IN  •  Headline : It's Still Corporate Blogging, Not the Social Web  •  Keywords : corporate blog, corporate blogging, Debbie Weil, Douglas Karr, social web, websites  • 
      Filed Under: Blog Writing, Blogging, Business Blogging Content, Communication, Corporate Blogging, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , ,

      Another Sign Newspapers Don’t Get It: Charging Companies That Help You

      November 29, 2010 By

      On the Media Culpa blog today comes news that the British newspaper industry is going to start charging websites that link to newspaper’s online articles as part of their services.

      The British High Court ruled in favor of the National Licensing Agency — a co-op owned by eight newspaper publishers — against Meltwater, saying that aggregated web links from newspaper’s websites are protected by copyright law.British Newspapers from the day Bagdad fell

      In this particular case, Meltwater News acted as a news monitoring service that was paid by end users who consumed the aggregated headlines that Meltwater put together. The NLA said that Meltwater was infringing on their copyright because they were providing the service without having an NLA license. (Actually, it was a “licence,” since they’re British.)

      While I can see the argument from the NLA because another company was making money off their headlines, it seems like the NLA is cutting its nose off to spite its face. Meltwater is helping the newspapers gain readers by clicking them through to the news articles, where they can see the ads, be counted as readership, which helps sell more ads, etc.

      Yes, the headlines are copyrighted. But they’re also public. What Meltwater is doing is no different than an RSS feed. The only difference is they’re charging people to access their RSS feed. But I could just as easily set up an RSS feed on my own reader or My Yahoo, which I used to create my own online newspaper.

      While I’m conflicted about whether Meltwater should profit by providing stuff that’s available for free if you’re the tiniest bit clever, I think the newspapers are hurting themselves. Charging people to refer people to your websites will only hurt you as those people will stop referring people to your sites.

      Fewer people means fewer visits, which means you have to tell advertisers viewership is down. Which means you will have to charge less for ads, which means your revenue will drop until you either get smart or go out of business.

      But, hey, you keep doing what you think is best. Good luck with that.

      My book, Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (affiliate link), is available for pre-order on Amazon.com. I wrote it with my good friend, Kyle Lacy, who I also helped write Twitter Marketing For Dummies (another affiliate link).

      Photo credit: DanBrady

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        Author :  •  Content Location : Indianapolis, IN  •  Headline : Another Sign Newspapers Don't Get It: Charging Companies That Help You  •  Keywords : England, mainstream media, newspapers, social media, traditional media, UK, websites  • 
        Filed Under: Social Media, Traditional Media Tagged With: , , , , , ,

        NY Paper Sues Readers for Reading Their Paper. You’re Doing It Wrong

        November 1, 2010 By

        If you’re in the news business, suing your readers for reading your paper is not actually a good business decision. But if you’re the North Country Gazette, a newspaper from upstate New York, that seems to be the way to do it.

        I’ll admit, I don’t know much about the business side of journalism. Who knows, maybe this is actually a sound business practice. But like particle physics, Latin, or the fascination with Stieg Larsen, I just don’t get it.,

        According to an article on IHeartChaos.com, the the North Country Gazette is threatening to sue anyone who reads more than one article on their site. The problem is they don’t even have a paywall up on their newspaper.

        A subscription is required at North Country Gazette. We allow only one free read per visitor. We are currently gathering IPs and computer info on persistent intruders who refuse to buy subscription and are engaging in a theft of services. We have engaged an attorney who will be doing a bulk subpoena demand on each ISP involved, particularly Verizon Droids, Frontier and Road Runner, and will then pursue individual legal actions.

        In other words, don’t read our stuff, or we’re going to sue the bejeezus out of you.

        Maybe it’s just me, but I think suing people you want to have as customers is not going to help you. There are much better, and less draconian, ways of making money on a newspaper:

        • Set up an actual paywall. As much of a pain as they are, they cost a lot less than an attorney. You can even just password protect your website to keep out the riffraff.
        • Don’t put your stuff online in the first place. If you’re worried about nonsubscribers reading your content, then don’t waste your time or energy putting it online.
        • Encourage people to subscribe, rather than punish nonsubscribers. The Denver Post is an online newspaper that got enough subscribers to keep their paper running, and they never had to threaten a thing.
        • Actually put up some good content. My guess is that their news is either hyperlocal, in which case, the only readers are going to be people who live in the area, or that it’s so nationally broad that I can just read about it in USA Today. Either way, my guess is that it’s not interesting enough for people to want it so bad they’re willing to subscribe to it.

        Putting your stuff online for people to not read is not a textbook technique for success. It’s like telling people “don’t think of gray elephants.” The North Country Gazette should just take their website down, rather than inflict their poor decision making on the rest of us.

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          Author :  •  Content Location : Indianapolis, IN  •  Headline : NY Paper Sues Readers for Reading Their Paper. You're Doing It Wrong  •  Keywords : mainstream media, newspapers, social media, traditional media, websites  • 
          Filed Under: Marketing, Public Relations, Social Media, Traditional Media Tagged With: , , , ,

          Why I Trust User Comments More Than Marketing Copy

          July 29, 2010 By

          I love my Moleskine notebooks.

          I’ve been using them for over five years, have gone through at least 10 of them, am a regular visitor at Moleskinerie.com and Moleskiners.com, and know that it’s pronounced Mole-eh-skeen-eh(no, seriously).

          Pilot G-2 .05 mm pen with my Moleskine notebook

          When I got my first Moleskine, I knew I had a special notebook, so I wanted to get a special pen to write in it. I did a quick Google search for “best pen for Moleskine notebook,” and the top result was a discussion on the Moleskinerie website (in fact, that’s how I discovered the site in the first place).

          The number of comments that all touted the Pilot G-2 outnumbered all the other pens other people were recommending, so I took a leap of faith, and bought a small pack of Pilot G-2s, without ever testing a single one.

          The writing was so smooth and the pen just glided across the page. I was immediately hooked. It felt like I was writing on butter with more butter. Since then, I have used nothing but Moleskine pens for all my writing. In fact, the one in the picture is the same pen I’ve carried for three years, I’ve just refilled it several times with barrels by cannibalizing a box of other G-2s.

          My point is that I bought this pen based on user recommendations, not marketing copy, not magazine ads, not even the Pilot website. (Although, ironically, I bought the notebook because I liked the description on the little card about the history of the Moleskine.) I trusted the opinion of several strangers more than I trusted the opinion of a professional who is paid to tell me what is so awesome about their pen.

          That’s what social media has done for us. It has changed marketing so that we no longer believe the professionals as much as we believe our own friends, or even strangers. I’ve had other people buy Moleskines just because I use them. And I was evangelizing about my pen to a friend of mine yesterday morning, and she probably had her own set by the afternoon.

          So for those travel destinations, restaurants, and specialty brands who are still relying on traditional marketing to tell your story, divert just a little bit of your marketing budget to social media. Create a place where your fans can talk about how awesome you are, and can share those good experiences with their friends. Let other people do your marketing for you.

          How about you? What makes you decide what to buy, where to eat, where to go on vacation? Do you visit the website or look at review sites like Yelp and UrbanSpoon? How much of a factor are user recommendations?

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            Author :  •  Content Location : Indianapolis, IN  •  Headline : Why I Trust User Comments More Than Marketing Copy - Professional Blog Service  •  Keywords : Moleskine, pen, user generated content, websites  • 
            Filed Under: Lead Generation, Marketing, Reputation Management, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

            Is Social Media Making Corporate Websites Irrelevant? Hardly.

            May 26, 2009 By

            Adam Ostrow, editor-in-chief at Mashable.com and the subject of many social media man-crushes, recently posed the question, “Is social media making corporate websites irrelevant?”

            In a word, no.

            Ostrow makes a good point that a website is becoming less important than it once was.

            There was a time when having a dotcom was absolutely key to your brand, and once you had one, it was the URL you pointed everyone to in all of your marketing. But with the emergence of the social web, and opportunities to engage with fans elsewhere, is that really the right strategy – or even a requirement at all?

            But now we’re starting to see more business cards with a Twitter handle (I’m at @edeckers), bands promoting thier MySpace pages, nonprofits and their fans pushing people to their Causes page on Facebook.

            Does this mean that people are turning away from dotcom websites and blogs to interact with each other on social networking sites?

            Not really. They’re still spending their time in the dotcom realm. They’re just spending additional time on the social networking sites.

            Ostrow cites Vitamin Water as a good example of a corporation that successfully launched a social networking and ESPN advertising campaign — ads on ESPN pointed people to their Facebook page; this will let them engage with people who continue to use Facebook long after the campaign is over — but it’s not a sign that the dotcom era is dead. Just a sign that it’s evolving.

            According to Technorati, 77% of all Internet users read blogs. In fact, they indexed 133 million blogs between 2002 – 2008.

            Websites and blogs are still the anchor corporations need to drive their clients to, especially if you’re a B2B company or in such a specialized niche that Facebook advertising just doesn’t make sense.

            Let’s say you make specialty framing hammers for the construction industry. Where are you going to advertise? Facebook? Maybe, if you can find a bunch of contractors on the site first. ESPN? Only if you want to reach 99.5% of the people who don’t do construction. Pay-per-click? Possibly, but it can be expensive unless you have a professional who knows how to do it right.

            The best place for information about your hammers is going to be your own site. There, you can host your own how-to videos, write blog posts about effective hammering techniques, ecommerce posts about the benefits of your hammer, an ecommerce store to sell your hammer, and a forum for funny hammer stories (if any exist).

            Not this kind of hammerTo be honest, you’re not going to have many hammer fans who flock to your Facebook page, there won’t be a Hammer Lovers social network, and people will not be Twittering about your hammer several times a day. However, you can still drive search traffic to your website by blogging about hammers, participating in a social network for home building contractors, and reaching your customers where they spend a lot of their time.

            Your website needs to be the centralized repository of all your information, the place where people can find anything and everything they want. Reproduce that information around the Internet all you want, but make sure it drives people back to your website. Win the searches, and sell your product that way.

            Photo; Kyle May (Flower hammer)
            Photo: FoxyPar4 (Hammer throwing)

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              Author :  •  Content Location : Indianapolis, IN  •  Headline : Is Social Media Making Corporate Websites Irrelevant? Hardly.  •  Keywords : blogging, dotcom, Social Media, social networking, website  • 
              Filed Under: Blogging, Lead Generation, Social Media, Social Networks Tagged With: , , , ,

              12 Business Blog Essentials

              November 4, 2008 By

              There are about a million items a business blog could have, but the essentials make up a short list. Some essentials relate to blog structure, others relate to the message you provide on key pages. Get the following 12 essentials right and your business blogging will get serious results.

              Also, be sure to check out the bonus 3 at the bottom of the list.

              Business Blog Essentials

              1. The purpose of every blog post/page is clear to visitors.

              2. A homepage that clearly conveys the blog’s offerings & purpose.

              3. Easy to find breadcrumb navigation.

              4. Obvious links. (Underlined Links are what we have been using for years. Don’t reinvent the web.)

              5. Copy (content) written for the general public. (3rd-5th grade level)

              6. All options and next steps are obvious.

              7. Free of any wording or imagery that is unnecessary, confusing or distracting.

              8. Consistent with icons, buttons, menus and links. (Make sure they look and work the same no matter what.)

              9. A site wide search feature which logs search queries.

              10. A short sales funnel which tells people what they are getting, what it costs and how to buy it.

              11. A “printer friendly” link for content or a style sheet for print media so pages look good on screen and off the printer.

              12. Quality assurance system to fix broken links, spelling errors and other items.

              Bonus: Three Deadly Mistakes

              Not putting descriptive titles and alt tags on pictures and links.
              Failing to do so means search engines and people with visual impairments may not be able to use your site.

              Reinventing the web.
              Make your website look like a website and not like a high end print brochure.

              Forgetting that some people have slow connections.
              There are a lot of users in offices where the shared T1 is slow or who have an old-fashioned modem at home.

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                Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

                Which Analytics Platform Measures ROI Accurately?

                November 4, 2008 By

                Yes, there are always massive discrepancies in analytics between platforms. It’s because each system measures things in different ways.

                Ever wondered what what the difference was between ad servers, log analyzers & javascript based analytics tools like Google Analytics? And which one you should be using? Here is a brief primer to help you understand.

                Ad Servers
                An ad server reports clicks that result in a redirect to a web page. There’s no guarantee the visitor made it to the page or wasn’t further redirected.

                These stats can be affected by hijacking (toolbars that redirect traffic), bots, the end user, and in some cases, performance of the ad server (I clicked and it timed out!).

                Bottom Line: Ad servers accurately measure ad displays and clicks. They are not so accurate at telling you how many people visited a website.

                Log Analyzers
                A log analyzer report on pages served by a web server. It does not see pages served from caching proxies used by ISPs and does not see pages served from a browser’s cache.

                Bottom Line: Log analyzers accurately report server activity and nothing else.

                Javascript Based Metrics
                All java based metrics (like Google Analytics) will report web site activity accurately if the end user has javascript and no software that blocks your tracker (7-15% of your visitor’s computers have this depending on who’s metrics you are using).

                Bottom Line: Javascript based metrics tell you within 7-15% what pages have been viewed.

                So, since the best we can do is within 7-15% accuracy anyway it’s best to measure actual ROI with javascript based metrics. In other words, measure the success of each campaign by the number of sales made vs. the amount of money spent to get the traffic to that particular campaign.

                Do this and you are sure to get your metrics right.

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                  Filed Under: Blog ROI Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,