Every year we go to this show and every year it is a huge success, and a lot of fun – especially all the after parties. You are definitely going to want to sign up.  And make sure to sign up sooner than later because the longer you wait, the higher the price gets. Is IM-NY going to have a beer-and-pizza-filled booth at the expo hall?  That remains to be seen!

View the SMX East Schedule.

Promediacorp was contracted to do SEO training for the editorial group of a publishing company. Our challenge was to teach these editors – who have English and writing and journalism degrees, and several years experience writing for print – to learn to adapt their writing styles to the web.

We first pointed out the obvious – search engines are not human. Google does not understand metaphor, sarcasm, analogies, and cannot infer meaning from them. We all know the importance of keywords and keyword research. Unless you specifically place keywords on your web page describing your web page, Google won’t always understand what it’s about.  But – on the other hand – one of the first rules of SEO copywriting is to write for humans first, and search engines second. In other words, don’t dumb down your copy for Google’s sake.

Let’s go through an example.

We have a book called “How to Booze: Exquisite Cocktails and Unsound Advice“.  The jacket-flap copy reads like this:

There is a perfect drink for every situation. So what should you drink tonight? It depends…
Are you stalking your ex? Try a pisco sour.
Drowning out the ticking of your biological clock? A bee’s knees will do.
Spoiling for a vicious brawl with your dearest loved ones? A tipperary helps you get there.
Sinking into debauchery underneath the mistletoe at your boss’s holiday party? A presbyterian, what else?
How to Booze has all the answers on what to drink when. Armed with nearly one hundred iconic recipes, useful facts on technique and ingredients, and more than enough advice to get you into trouble, you will now know just the right drink for the occasion and how to prepare it like a professional.

It’s very cute. I get the allegories.

But what is this book about? It’s a how-to guide on mixing cocktails and alcoholic drinks. But for the search engines, there does not seem to be a clear theme to this book. What does stalking your ex have to do with a bees knees or debauchery underneath the mistletoe? A better strategy here might be to include words such as “drinking”, “cocktails”, “cocktail recipes” “bar-tending”, none of which are included in the copy. If you are looking for a book on bar-tending or mixing cocktails, you may not immediately find it on Amazon or Barnes and Nobles online because the book does not match the keyword query.

I’m absolutely not saying to stuff the important keywords throughout the copy. We always want to write first for the user experience, before writing for search engines. But it is possible to sprinkle in some of our core terms without compromising the quality and intent of this flap-jacket copy.

Here are my general tips for optimizing book jacket copy:

1. Do the keyword research. What core terms will lead people to your book?
2. Use variations of keywords where possible. Check out Promediacorp Suggester for some help.
3. Your keywords should follow a general theme so Google can infer meaning from the copy (Google can perceive a connection between keyword proximity).
4. Get the core keywords in the first few sentences.

Unfortunately, Google dictates the way we do business today which means we have no choice but to conform to Google guidelines if we want to be competitive online. And yes, a  webpage’s structure and meta data (title tag, meta description) are very important components in helping a webpage rank in the SERPs, and you could argue that sites like Amazon place reviews, comments, and tons of other keyword-rich content on a page, taking the focus away from book jacket copy. That’s true, but, with thousands of sites out there pulling content, you never know where book jacket copy is going to live. That copy could stand alone on a webpage. And if getting a few keywords in there helps make a sale, then it’s a no-brainer.

1. Throttle your posting

One of the newest versions of New Facebook gave us the dichotomy of Top News and Most Recent.  In the Most Recent news feed, you’ll see real-time updates from all your connections.  However, Top News is the default view for Facebook users and the only one that really matters.  Facebook determines what it feels you most likely would want to see from everything happening real-time and serves it to you as Top News.  Because of this, timing is very important for getting exposure for your updates.  If you post too much in a small time frame, then your posts will compete with themselves.  In most cases, Facebook will not flood a user’s news feed with updates from one source.  So, if you decide to post six great links to your wall at once, realize that most people will only notice one.

When you use Facebook for business purposes, it easily starts seeming like work.  Despite this, it’s important not to put off your updates!  Nothing says “I’m just using this to spam you” like five posts in one day every few weeks.  Facebook is a social site, and socializing is a daily thing.  Try taking a few minutes each day to update and interact with your Facebook page.

2. Tag!

One of the most popular features of Twitter is the @reply.  #FollowFriday is devoted simply to the idea of @replying to people as a way of tagging them and telling your friends, “I approve of this person.”  But did you know Facebook has that same feature?  Most people don’t realize this, and it’s probably the most useful overlooked feature on Facebook.

Remember, there is a limit of 6 tags within an update.

3. Engage your audience with your posts

Don’t forget the social aspect of social networking.  People are on Facebook to engage with others, to hear and be heard.  So, it’s important to give them a forum through your page or profile to be heard.  The best and simplest way to do this is to ask a question in your status update.  ”Who’s your favorite author?” would be a great status update for a library’s page.  Consider your audience when asking the question.  Also, using quotes is a great way of getting likes.  Comments and likes factor in greatly when deciding what to display in a person’s Top News feed.  If your status update gets a lot of comments and likes, then it will show up for more people more often.

4. Control your brand and products

Recent changes to Facebook have made everything in the Internet world likeable.  As a result, everything is now a Facebook fan page.  If a page doesn’t exist for something a user puts on their profile, then it’s created as a Community Page.  Community Pages are not controlled by anyone, though will likely be opened up and operated in a kind of wiki manner (be sure to sign up for pages you want the opportunity to contribute to).  For businesses, it’s incredibly valuable to have control of a page, as it lets you post updates to the news feeds of all its fans.  So, letting your brand or product become a community page is a huge missed opportunity.  For example, the fan page for To Kill a Mockingbird has over 500,000 fans.  Unfortunately for HarperCollins (the publisher of the book), it’s a community page.  Beyoncé, on the other hand, is not a community page and is controlled by Beyoncé’s people.  This gives her a huge marketing advantage on Facebook that HarperCollins has missed out on.

To Kill a Mockingbird Community Page



Beyoncé Fan Page



5. Custom Landing Page

There are many settings to let you customize your fan page.  The best customization you have available is the  Facebook Static FBML app which lets you put HTML along with Facebook Markup Language (FBML) onto a tab within your page’s profile.  Then, by changing the Default Landing Tab under your Wall settings to your FBML tab, you can build a custom landing page for your page!  Check out Dominos custom landing page, currently advertising their Show Us Your Pizza contest.

Stay tuned for more tips and tricks for leveraging Facebook. If anyone has any good Facebook tips, we’d love to hear them, so please share your thoughts below!

Grab the presentation on Advanced YouTube Tactics and monetization now!

The timing of this panel couldn’t be better, as YouTube celebrated its 5th birthday on Monday by announcing that it has passed the two billion views per day mark. The ever-increasing popularity of YouTube with both viewers and content producers, combined with new features like live broadcasts and paid rentals, means that YouTube may be finally approaching an extremely important milestone: profitability.

According to analysts cited by the New York Times, YouTube may finally break even this year after five years of losses.

But really, who cares if YouTube makes money (unless you’re an employee)? What we all want is more money in our own wallets…

That’s why Avi will be talking about YouTube Monetization Opportunities: inVideo Adsense, the Partner Watch Program, streaming rentals, promoted videos, viral videos and more. And if you heard Avi speak last year about the “Do The Jingle” campaign, then you know that Avi is not a speaker you want to miss!

After SMX Advanced London wraps up, Avi’s presentation will be posted here for download, so make sure to check back in. Hope to see you in London!

Knowing the list of suggested terms related to a particular keyword also allows you to take advantage of Google Suggest’s chicken-or-the-egg distortion of search behavior. That is, if Google suggests a term, there is a greater likelihood that people will search for that term, which then increases the probability that Google will suggest it. (Woah, that’s deep. I think I just discovered the fifth dimension.)

The problem with using Google Suggest for extensive keyword research is that it’s been slow and tedious… until now.

We’re proud to announce the debut of Promediacorp Suggester, our free keyword research tool for generating deep lists of Google Suggest keywords. Suggester goes beyond the “top ten list” of Google suggestions to reveal the terms around which Google wants your content optimized.

What’s more, since these keywords already appear in the deep Google Suggest list for your most important queries, optimizing content and links for positive terms on the list can have the effect of promoting these terms to the “top ten list” of Google Suggest terms. (Yes, what I’m saying is that Suggester can be useful if you’re trying to remove undesirable terms from Google Suggest.)

So try out Promediacorp Suggester now. Research your most valuable query and discover the keywords that Google Suggest already knows!

P.S. We’re planning on adding more features to Suggester in the future, like the ability to export keyword lists to CSV and generate even deeper lists. Please let us know what you’d like to see, and we’ll work on implementation in the next version.

Also, be sure to check out Avi & Sheara’s live session coverage at the Search Engine Roundtable, if you haven’t already. Always check out Lisa’s comprehensive coverage at the Outspoken Media blog.

Special thanks to Matt McGowan and the crew at Incisive for putting on yet another awesome SESNY.

I don’t need to tell you that it’s vitally important in this industry to stay on the cutting edge – and we like to think of SES as our annual knife sharpening. (Of course, we’d be misleading if we didn’t say that SES NY is also going to be a huge party. We love hangin’ out with our colleagues in the search industry!)

This year’s conference looks set to be awesome as usual, with keynote speakers including “World Wide Rave” author David Meerman Scott, Google Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik, and Yusuf Mehdi, the Senior Vice President for Online Audience Business at Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

Even 5 minutes alone to ask questions with any one of those guys would be more than worth the SES price of admission… so while things won’t be that intimate, we’re still pretty psyched.

Promediacorp is particularly looking forward to the “White Hat Black Hat: Unconferenced” session at the Bridges Bar in the Hilton at the end of Day 2. We hear all the participants will be forced to choose white or black hats before being thrown into a huge pit for a battle to the death! Or something like that. Whatever it is, it’ll be lots of fun with tasty drinks loosening everyone lips (and perhaps a few shirt buttons and neckties).

For those of you who can’t make it to SES NY – or if you just want to follow what Promediacorp is up to – we’re happy to announce that Avi and Sheara are going to be live-blogging all three days of the conference on behalf of Search Engine Roundtable so make sure to check out for the coverage there.

We can’t wait to see all of you here in New York!

It’s because real-time search represents a tantalizing confluence of hot SEO topics: social media + search = real-time search. But real-time search can also be frustrating to explain to clients, many of whom simply express a desire to dominate the real-time results… just like they want to be at the top of traditional search results pages.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a magic bullet to ensure that your client’s message will be better represented in real-time search results than messages from competitors, or even worse, messages from people who really hate your brand and have an axe to grind.

We realize that the information below is by no means exhaustively comprehensive, but here’s how we explain real-time search to our clients at Promediacorp:

What is Real-time Search?

Real-time search allows people and companies to hear what the Internet is talking about, right now:

• For now, most real-time search results come from Twitter tweets
• Recently published news items may appear
• Some Facebook status updates are also included (News today that MySpace updates are also now included on Google)
• Some real-time search sites also include blog posts and content from various microblogging services (Friendfeed, Identica, Jaiku (still alive!), Bleeper, Google Buzz, etc.)

What are the most popular real-time search features? (example from Scoopler.com)

• Search through the latest tweets: This is the most common, simple search feature. Search for a keyword and all the latest mentions will appear before your eyes.
• Browse popular links posted by Twitter users: Many people find this more useful than simply looking at tweets. Rather than just showing you what people are saying about Lady Gaga, this will give you a list of the hottest, most-current links to Lady Gaga-related content.
• View media being mentioned on Twitter (images & video): If people are posting tweets with links to images and videos related to your search term, you’ll find that content here.

Three of the Top Real-time Search Engines

Twitter Search

• Currently the king of real-time search
• Most people still tweet and search for tweets directly through Twitter
• Twitter has instant and complete access to all tweets
• Simply displays latest tweets related to search
• Big drawback is that search results are not ranked
• Twitter does not attempt to determine which tweets are most relevant and useful

Google’s “Updates” & “Latest” Search Results

• Results are integrated into the main search results
• Position on search results page is based on how current Google believes the topic to be
• No real-time results will show on main search page when searching for topics that aren’t being heavily discussed on social media sites (“Frank Sinatra” search won’t automatically display real-time results, but a search for “Lady Gaga” probably will)
• Google integrates news and blog posts into “Latest” real-time results, while selecting “Updates” limits results to Twitter, Buzz, MySpace, etc. (add “site:google.com” to view only Google Buzz posts; use “site:myspace.com” to view only MySpace updates)

Bing Twitter (Is that name awkward or what?)

• Deal with Twitter supposedly allows full access to real-time tweets… but tweets go through filters at Bing, so results are a few minutes older than at Twitter.com
• “Top links” feature shows popular links along with referring tweets
• Posts can be sorted by “most recent” or “best match”. “Best match” shows posts from most followed users along with heavily retweeted posts.

The Good & The Bad of Real-time Search

Good:

• Monitor what people are saying right now about your brand
• Engage your customers directly
• Respond immediately to sensational news and controversy
• Increase your brand’s Twitter/Facebook following
• Increase your brand’s official presence in search results through the use of popular keywords in social media content

Bad:

• Tweets from upset customers and detractors will also appear in real-time search results
• Real-time search is currently still very susceptible to real-time spam
• Speed required for effective tweeting means your client must give up some control over the marketing message. There is no time for a “measured response” in real-time search.

Real-time Search Strategies (suspiciously similar to social media strategies, eh?)

1.  Develop social media personalities around your brand, for example:

• The brand’s spokesperson/manager
• The “ultimate fan”
• The webmaster
• Etc., etc. according to client’s needs

2.  Listen to the conversation

• Actively monitor what people are saying about your brand through the use of various real-time search engines and monitoring tools.

3.  Engage in the conversation

• Be proactive. Provide your audience with interesting news and links to entertaining content. Tell them what’s going on with your brand.
• Be reactive. When appropriate, respond to unfounded rumors, slander, hoaxes, etc.

BOTTOM LINE: A dedicated, full-time effort is needed to engage in, monitor and respond to the real-time conversation going on about your brand. Real-time search means it’s more important than ever to devise and follow a social media strategy.

Anybody out there have any other tips for explaining real-time search to clients?

Of all Google’s tweaks to the search engine results page (SERP), perhaps nothing has generated more interest in the SEO community than SiteLinks. SiteLinks are those extra links to internal pages displayed below your SERP listing… but they only show up when your site ranks very highly for a particular search term. SiteLinks are useful links to useful content.

Google designed the SiteLinks algorithm to determine which links inside your domain are most useful to visitors, based on several key factors:

• General site credibility
• Relevance of your internal content to the overall site theme
• Google’s understanding of your site’s structure
• Likelihood that search engine users will click on the SiteLink

Those first three criteria can more or less be summed up in one statement: follow SEO best practices. If you’re running a well-designed site full of useful content, and you’re ranking at the top of the SERPs for your most important keywords, you should be all good. Likewise, it wouldn’t hurt to consider siloing your content. But let’s talk about that fourth item…

If you’ve ever done research on SiteLinks for a client, you probably noticed that links are showing up that aren’t even part of your navigation. This is because Google’s user tracking data is becoming an increasingly important – perhaps even the most important – factor in determining which sections of your site are most “useful”, thus worthy of being rewarded with SiteLinks. Google wants SiteLinks to lead directly to the most visited pages on your site.

Why are SiteLinks important?

• SiteLinks increase your site’s prominence in Google search results. And when you’re occupying more SERP real estate, your site can’t help but see a healthy jump in traffic.
• Users believe listings with SiteLinks are more authoritative. There isn’t any research data that I’m aware of to support this, but I won’t let that stop me from saying it. Especially when you’re talking about the eight link, two column SiteLinks. The first thing that pops into my head when I see these SiteLinks is, “Wow, this really must be the site I’m searching for.” And Google obviously agrees if it’s going to use so much space on the page for a single listing.
• Users can quickly find the content they’re seeking. It’s simple. You want visitors to your site to find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible, or you risk losing them. SiteLinks mean one less click between you and your customers.

When do SiteLinks show up?

SiteLinks are displayed for up to three top search results for any given keyword or search term. There are two types of SiteLinks:

• Long SiteLinks (usually 8 links in 2 columns) are displayed when Google is fairly sure the top listing contains what you’re searching for. Long SiteLinks only appear under the top (#1) listing, but it’s not enough just to be on top. If Google isn’t sure the top result is completely relevant to the search, long SiteLinks will not be displayed.
• Mini SiteLinks (usually 3-4 links in 1 row) are displayed when Google is less sure it has found what you’re searching for. Mini SiteLinks can appear on any of the top three listings, but again, only when Google is pretty sure of the relevance. These are less desirable than long SiteLinks because they’re much easier for the eye to skip over.

How does Google determine relevance for SiteLinks?

This is best demonstrated with an example. KFC is the top search result for a search of either the term “fried chicken” or “KFC”. But “KFC” is obviously more relevant to the KFC Corporation, whereas “fried chicken” searchers may be looking for home-style recipes, nutritional information, reheating instructions, or whatever. Google knows this, and that intelligence is reflected in the use of SiteLinks:

• Search for “fried chicken”:

• Search for “KFC” or “Kentucky Fried Chicken”:

SiteLinks: What Can You Do?

1.  Make sure you’re the #1 search result for important keywords. The top search result for a keyword will usually have SiteLinks displayed, except when:

• Google is unsure of the site’s relevance to the search term
• Keyword has low search volume
• Site has low PageRank and/or credibility
• Site is structured in a way that isn’t clear to Google

2.  Use short, easy-to-crawl HTML navigational links on the home page. This let’s Google know where you think your visitors want to go. This will not result in SiteLinks if your navigation leads to irrelevant content or to a page that is rarely visited by Google-tracked users.

3.  Use a simple site structure that mirrors the navigation. Together with HTML and XML sitemaps, this ensures that Google understands which pages are most relevant to users.

The bottom line? Following SEO best practices results in SiteLinks. Google rewards top-ranking, well-organized sites that contain useful content.

Other resources:

Google SiteLinks Come in How Many Flavors?

Google SiteLinks: Brand Domination through Keyword Ownership

How to Get Google SiteLinks

Google SiteLinks: The Ultimate FAQ