Welcome

Lunch Box LearningOctober 27th, 2010

Presented By: Tommy Riggins

Leveraging the right tools to drive leads to your website.

Quick Overview –

• What Direction is SEO Taking?

• How to stand out & get noticed

• Get noticed on YouTube

• Changing the face of SEO link building

• How to tie in Social Media with your link building efforts

• Keeping up with Social Media

• Measuring your efforts

What Direction is SEO Taking?

The new main objective for your website is relevant and good content.

Gone are the days when meta tag stuffing will get you anywhere.

The search engines rewrite their algorithms regularly to ensure that where they take you is relevant to what you are looking for. And they are getting better and better at it.

Relevant and Optimized Content

Organize your website so that each page that you want found in the search engines contains relevant information to one topic.

That gives more concentrated strength to that page’s ranking.

Let’s use Pie as an example…

(I mean who doesn’t like pie)

Center each page around one central theme.

A page about “pies” with keywords and content about many different pies including “apple pie” “blueberry pie” “tips on making pies” will not rank well for the keyword “apple pie” because it is competing with all these other keywords.

To get a high page rank, create an “apple pie” page. Have “apple pie” in the title, in the headers, in the content with variations of the keyword.

Things to keep in mind when writing content for individual pages.

•Use keywords and phrases that relate to the page. Use synonyms of your important keyword phrases.•Provide good, solid content.•Have some keywords in bold.•Think of compelling descriptions that explain the images. These are called “Alt Image Tags.”•The Titles should include your keywords.•The Headings should include your keywords.•Links in the content should have specific names. (not “click here for cool stuff”)•Link to outside site’s relevant to your topic.

How to Stand Out and Get Noticed With your Website/Blog

• Provide something that cannot Provide something that cannot be found anywhere else.be found anywhere else.

There are over 157,000,000 sites There are over 157,000,000 sites that mention “pie” so how does that mention “pie” so how does

one get noticed?one get noticed?

**

It's not an issue that you do the It's not an issue that you do the same thing that dozens of same thing that dozens of others do. You just want to do it others do. You just want to do it differentlydifferently..

Example: Example: Sweet as Pie only uses Sweet as Pie only uses local organic produce that is in local organic produce that is in season.season.

Offer something unique. Offer something unique.

You can do this with your website design, the content on your pages, or how you package your products or services. Don't be afraid to break the boundaries for your industry.

Example: Sweet as Pie makes Apple Apple Pies.

Be interesting.

Package information in a way that it easy to find and even easier to digest and you'll build a very strong customer base.

Example: A well designed website with easy to use navigation goes a long way.

Be compelling.

Overall, you want them to walk away having had a genuine experience on your site. The more involved, engaged and invested they are in your site the better experience they'll have all together.

Overall, you want them to walk away having had a genuine experience on your site. The more involved, engaged and invested they are in your site the better experience they'll have all together.

Provide something valuable. Provide something valuable.

Get Noticed on YouTube

90% of all web traffic will be video by 2013.

The three categories of videos that generate traffic:

• Informational videos• Educational videos• Entertainment videos

So uploading your commercial isn’t going to cut it.

Get Noticed on

Consider video interviews, demonstrations, training on how to use your product or service. Set up a branded YouTube channel and send customers there for more info. Post videos up on the YouTube channel and embed them into your blog.

How Sweet as Pie gets noticed on

Changing the Face of SEOWith Link Building

Building links to your website is, by far, the most effective way to enhance your SEO. Each link represents an "endorsement" and the number of links partially influences how much of your website will be indexed by the search engines, and where you

appear in search results.

Link bait is any feature or content in a website that attracts or lures other websites to link to that particular website. Link bait should be interesting enough to catch other people’s attention and to entice them to make a link.

For ranking purposes, the link bait should have some association with the keyword you want to rank for, so people linking will naturally use that keyword.

Example:Sweet as Pie offers recipes on how to make a flawless pie crust that is out of this world. Complete with video demos and a how-to guide.

Find blogs that are relevant to your company or industry. Become a part of the blog community by commenting on a regular basis.

Example:Sweet as Pie regularly comments on other blogs that talk about dessert making and offers tips and advice.

There's a forum for every niche out there, get involved in discussions and link back to quality content on your site that visitors will find useful.

Whenever commenting on a forum/ blog have something VALUABLE to add to the discussion. Don't just drop a link and run. (In case you didn't know, that’s called SPAM!)

Example:Sweet as Pie discusses the in’s and out’s of crafting a homemade pie and links to a page on their site.

Very popular today - getting your content on quality news media sites. Helps rankings and traffic!

Example:Sweet as Pie writes regular articles on Tricks of the Trade when it comes to making pies and shares them with 2-3 news sites.

Three way linking is a useful way to trade and not “spammy looking” like direct reciprical links. It is defined as: site A links to site B, site B links to site C, and site C links to site A.

Just always make sure you're getting links from sites relevant to your own niche.

Example:Sweet as Pie links to “Apple Orchards NC” because this is where they get there local apples. “Apple Orchards NC” links to “Buy Local NC” because they sell there apples. And “Buy Local NC” links to “Sweet as Pie” because by supporting “Sweet as Pie” you are buying local.

Having high trust, high ranking sites linking to you should give you a major boost in the SERPs.

Example:Sweet as Pie reaches out to the Food Network with their flawless pie crust video demos and how-to guide. Food Network throws a link up to Sweet as Pie on their site.

Run a Google search and see what sites rank in the top 10 for the keywords you want to rank.

Send them a personal email and be straight forward about what you want. Personalize each email you send, do NOT automate this process.

Offer a link to their site from another one of yours, offer a one time payment, a gift certificate, or whatever it takes to get that link.

Submitting press releases online not only helps build links, it also can keep your website in the news.

Google has began showing news results in the SERPs. Write and submit press releases at least 1 or 2 times a month.

Some submissions are free, some you must pay for, so do your research. Check out:www.WebPR.com

Take control of the FREE “Local” maps on the search engines. Request the right and prove who you are to edit the entry for your company. You can use keywords and descriptions that will help you rank in the top of the “Local” maps section.

How to Tie in Social Media with your Link Building Efforts

Networking sites like• www.LinkedIn.com• www.Facebook.comoften allow links in their profile pages.

Use your Social Networking Sites to drop links to great stuff on your website.

When creating your accounts, you should customize them with branded skins.

Learn how to use them.

• Fill out the description. ALWAYS include links back toyour website, preferably using keywords in your descriptions to link back with.Then start searching on twitter for interesting topics related to what you do and retweet a good post or two.

• Google a related topic to your business and find blogs about what you do, if they are good, follow them. Use some of what they say as “food” for retweets.

• Don’t forget to mix up those personal things in there too. It is “social” media.

Keeping up with Social Media

If you have multiple social media accounts, we recommend using a tool like Tweetdeck to manage and post simultaneously to all of your accounts.

• Create a schedule that is realistic for you to follow. 4 tweets a week, two about useful information that is relevant to what you are marketing, and two about a social topic that you are passionate about.

• 1 or 2 comments a week on blogs related to your area of focus. If at all possible, link back to your site as a reference. Plan the creation of new content for your tips and information. Maybe one a month, one a week, once a quarter. When you create the information or tips, be sure to tweet them out.

•And finally make it part of your weekly plan to search for your company name and answer any negative or positive conversation going on about you.

Measuring your Efforts

What is your experience with utilizing Twitter and Facebook as platforms to generate sales?

Leverage social media to drive traffic back to your site/blog – measure your success by evaluating:– Unique visitors– Page views per visitor– Time spent on site– Total time spent per user– Frequency of visits– Conversions, etc.– Comments/content contribution

Measuring your Efforts

If you have a Fan Page on Facebook, you will get free weekly statistics on:

• Monthly Active Users• Interactions• Demographics• Total Likes

• Measure with Google Analytics to watch page traffic.

• You can get help installing this your site, if you are not technical.

• Log-in and start exploring all the different tools.

• Create web pages, that you use for specific campaigns through pay per click or specials that you have a page for that you tweet out.

• Monitor them in Google Analytics.

• Take one campaign at a time and measure your efforts until you learn what works for your company.

• Then grow your efforts and budget toward what works!

TELL US WHAT

YOU THINK:

Dynamic Quest

Check us out: dynamicquest.com

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