Digital Marketing and Technological Insight

There are two main questions I hear over and over again when it comes to Twitter…both of which revolve around the same theme of how do “I or we” use it? From a individual  perspective the question becomes more about what the person is looking to gain. From a business perspective things get a bit more complicated but the objective becomes clearer.

I have heard plenty of positive stories and have had my own success using Twitter from a business perspective. Whether for pure traffic generation, customer service, revenue or just general communication - it is clear Twitter is a powerful took every company should be taking advantage of.

Below is a quick list I put together of  ways companies can utilize Twitter (in no particular order).

• Coupon Promotion. Have a coupon or discount code? Why not put it on Twitter and let your fans become your marketers by retweeting and posting. An even better idea is to generate a Twitter exclusive coupon.
• Promote limited time offers. “Only 3 hours left to save an extra 25% off our top products!”
• Online Reputation Management. By using Twitter Search you can monitor mentions of your brand and address any potential issues.
• Customer feedback / reviews.
• Out of stock alerts. Have a hot product that is selling well? Let your followers know there is only a limited quantity left.
• Job recruiting.
• New product alerts
• Shopping advice. Who doesn’t love a good “Here some of our favorite  summer shoes” type links?
• Be the expert. Proactively engage the Twitter audience through Twitter Search. If you are a sock company and someone is asking about socks - answer their question! Not only will you gain a follower you might gain a customer as  well.
• General company news and announcements
• Message testing. Before launching an advertising campaign why not get instant feedback / reaction from your followers first?
• Company fun / random facts.
• Tips and advice related to your companies business.
• Links to new content / blog posts.
• Question & Answer sessions.
• Company stock quotes.
• Market research
• Customer Service
• Promote email
• Promote profiles on other social media services.
• Direct communication from company executives.
• Interesting news and articles not from your company but related to your business.

Should a company take on everything listed above? Of Course not. But, every company who has a Twitter presence should at least be doing a few.

What are some of the other ways companies can use Twitter?

Starting this weekend Google will be running a Chrome commercial using Google TV Ads on various networks. Below is the commercial that will be running…will this actually get people to install and use Chrome over FireFox & Internet Explorer?

As anyone with even a vague familiarity of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)  knows, a key component of search engine ranking success is having a solid SEO Linking Strategy. Building inbound links is also one of the parts that takes the most effort - when it comes to SEO links it is always quality over quantity (even though some people well tell you otherwise).

There are many ways to gain great inbound SEO links, but I have found over the years that nothing is more important than building relationships with the top website / blog owners who are relevant to specific categories I am targeting. What does this mean exactly? Everyone in SEO talks about how to get links, who to go after and how to contact them (form email anyone?). But, most people leave out a component that can work in your favor for the long run - building direct relationships.

Why is building relationships so important? The answer is simple - it saves you time & effort while giving you the results you need. For example, lets say you are building an SEO strategy for an e-commerce company and you are looking for some quality inbound links for specific keywords. You reach out to top related blogs and get a few to write posts about your products - great. But, what if through building that direct relationship you can go back to that  blog every time you have a new product you want to feature or a new keyword you are going after? If you have an existing relationship you can reach out to them directly and start building those quality links right away.

So, the question becomes how do you build these SEO linking relationships? Below is the method I have used with great success.

• As with any SEO link building campaign - identify the top websites / blogs in the specific keyword category you are going after.
• Of the chosen websites, target the ones that not only drive traffic and have a good PageRank / SERP presence, but also have either a clear personal voice or have built existing relationships.
• Send a personalized email outlining not only what you are looking for but why you are reaching out to them specifically. Template based email requests might work some of the time but all of the top site owners I talk to usually ignore them.
• Offer something. The best blogs and websites focus on giving their readers something of value - you need to do the same.
• Once link is live  send a personalized thank you email.
• Follow-up with the site owner on a regular basis with updates on how things are going - meaning, referral traffic from their site, impact on rankings, etc.
• Wine and Dine them. Now you don’t have to go all out but offer to buy them dinner and / or drinks when they are in town.  Even if the site owner never takes you up on the offer the invitation was still given and it instantly creates a bond.
• Lastly, make them feel special. By this I mean send them “exclusive” information, products, coupons, feature them on your website - whatever you can do. It doesn’t matter what you offer them, people (bloggers especially) love to feel they have something no one else has. Give them this in any form and they will be your friends for life.

There you have my steps to building a SEO linking relationship - I guarantee that the time and effort you spend building relationships willpayy-off greatly in the long run.

Free web analytic service Compete.com re-launched today with some killer new features and enhancements. For those of us who have been using Compete since it launched a couple years ago the new version is a serious upgrade - especially in regards to the user-interface.

Here are some of the new / improved features at Compete.com:

• Enhanced UI
• User Generated Tagging
• Improved Graphing
• Daily Digest Emails

Whether you previously used Compete or not, they are definitely worth taking another look at as web analytics should be a core piece of any digital strategy.

A question I always hear revolves around what are the key elements a company just starting SEO work should focus on.  SEO isn’t about “quick hits” it is an ongoing process that requires a great deal of time and effort. However, there are base-line elements a company should / can focus on in order to get them on the right path - here are my Top 10 SEO Tips:

1. Keyword strategy
   It all starts with the keywords you choose. You can have the best SEO strategy in place for your website but if you don’t put enough time and effort into the keywords you target everything else is useless. You need to choose the keywords that your company and website truly focuses on so that a natural relevancy is created. You also need to make sure you understand the ranking opportunities for the keywords you choose - everyone wants to rank for high-volume / generic keywords but the odds of that happening are slim. Target keywords that not only drive traffic but are reachable.
2. On-site content development
   The old saying still remains true today - “content is king”. Combine  a solid keyword strategy with deep related content and you are on the path to SEO success. Just make sure you write content for the website visitor that incorporates, in a sensible way, related keywords. SEO is all about relevancy.
3. Inbound links
   We all know that a big piece of SEO is about getting external links coming to your website with related keywords used in the anchor text. However, when it comes to linking I go with the quality over quantity theory.  The old SEO way was to get as many inbound links as possible regardless of where they was coming from. Honestly, the old way is a waste of time - even though there are plenty of people that would disagree. The most successful link building campaigns I have ever run focuses on targeting the leaders in a given topic and building direct relationships with them. I would take 10 links from targeted, contextually relevant, solid traffic websites over 1,000 random sites any day.
4. Internal links
   Take your inbound linking strategy and focus it internally. Create a contextually relevant internal linking structure that focuses on content flow and the semantic relationship between pages.
5. Title Tags
   Title Tags are another key part of a SEO strategy many websites overlook. Writing Title Tags isn’t rocket science - keep it relevant to what the page is about, work off your keyword strategy and make sure every page is unique.
6. URL structure
   I am a big fan of using keywords within the domain whenever it makes sense from a branding perspective. However, since most companies have little primary domain flexibility a good area to focus on is the URL structure. First keep it simple & straight forward (use a URL re-write tool if needed) and name files / directories with related keywords.
7. Image / Video optimization
   With the growing focus of universal search there is a huge opportunity for companies, especially those selling products, to focus on Image and Video SEO. Image SEO is fairly simple - name image files with keywords, use ALT tags, etc. Video SEO can be a bit more complicated - check out my Video SEO Guide for more detailed information.
8. Optimize code elements
   By “code elements” I mean everything other than Title Tags, which include Header Tags (H1, H2, etc), Meta keywords & descriptions and ALT tags.
9. Avoid Technological limitations
   Use 301 redirects whenever possible, avoid dynamic URL structure, run a broken link analysis, Validate HTML & CSS, avoid Flash and JavaScript. Technology can either be SEO’s best friend of worst enemy.
10. Robots.txt / Site Map
    Site Map: As with Meta Data, there is a lot of discussions about the true SEO value of a Site Map. Like with Meta Data we might question the actual impact but considering it is a fairly easy task to build a SiteMap.xml file and it will help search engines crawl / index your website…why wouldn’t you build one? Robots.txt: There is a long list of ways you can use your Robots.txt file, however my #1 reason is for what you DO NOT want a search engine to find. By using a “disallow” command you can prevent files and folders from being crawled.

The above Top 10 SEO tips are fairly basic and are meant as a starting point for a broader SEO strategy - be sure to check out our  SEO checklist for more guidance and tips.