Three Ways Social Media Helps SEO

Search Engine Land has three ways Social Media helps SEO and they are:

1) Getting quality, relevant inbound links – The best thing about this is that the majority (if not all) of the links that come from a social media marketing campaign are natural links; they’re not reciprocated, bought, or solicited

2) Using social media websites for reputation management – Lots of social media sites, especially the more popular ones, rank very well within the search engines. This can be both a positive and negative thing when it comes to managing your reputation.

3) Ranking pages on social media websites – If you’re launching a brand new site and you know it’s going to be awhile before it ranks, you might want to consider uploading some videos to YouTube or creating a MySpace profile and building a few good links to it. I’m not saying it’s better to have these pages rank than your own site, but it’s definitely better than not having anything ranked.

Social Media and SEO from Mashable

A few months ago there was a great article from Mashable on “Social Media and SEO“. Below is a partial exceprt:

From a marketing standpoint, you can look at the benefits of SEO and social media two different ways:

First, implementing a social media marketing program without optimizing content is leaving money on the table. Useful social content (blog, video, images, audio) that cannot be discovered via search is a lost opportunity to reach an audience that is looking.

For example, the popular blog about student loans and college financing from Wells Fargo identifies 29 keywords in its Keyword Meta Tag and doesn’t rank in Google’s first page for 26 of them. Those that do rank are variations of the blog’s name.

While there is a generous amount of cross linking within posts, a basic blog template optimization effort leveraging keywords and other minor adjustments could improve search traffic for this site substantially – without any compromise in content quality or user experience.

Social interactions and media sharing amongst social network participants create the kind of content that can improve a brand’s visibility within search results through profiles, videos, blog posts, or other media. A good example is Stormhoek wines’ first page Google rankings including blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

On the flip side, implementing SEO programs without leveraging the content distribution and linking benefits of social web participation makes link building for SEO an uphill battle. The nature of the social web encourages participation: sharing, voting, commenting & linking. Popular social content gets exposure, traffic and can result in a substantial number of relevant inbound links.

Bottom line? Content + Links = Search Engine Success!

Some Final Thoughts on Proper Use of Social Media on Your SEO Strategy

Remember, putting in various keywords in your social media profiles and other content won’t really help you reach your goals. To get the best results you should research the best practices of social media campaigns are being done today. Here are the things that other smart companies are doing these days in their Social Media and SEO activities:

1. Identify the specific audience you are trying to reach
2. Set specific goals and objectives that can be measured
3. Plan a strategy for reaching those goals with the intended audience
4. Decide on the mix of tactics that will support and execute the game plan
5. Measure and identify what events and outcomes from your activites

Today, consumers typically begin their research for a product or service online, even if they plan to make the actual purchase in person or by phone. Local online searches are fast replacing other means of finding local companies, such as the phone book, newspapers, or other directories.

To grow your clientele, you must adjust with the times. Local search marketing offers the power of the major search engines with local directories, known as the Internet yellow pages. The search is targeted for geo-specific keywords related to your business and your community, such as “caterers in St. Louis,” or “St. Louis catering.” Many of your potential customers will use key words such as these to find area businesses and then drive to the location or make a phone call to secure the service or make the purchase.

Local search visibility is a simple and cost effective way to reach this large customer base. Because it can be time consuming, you may want to secure the help of a local search marketing expert to make sure your company is targeting the right keywords and getting included in the right locations. Another benefit is that you can take advantage of the local search marketing techniques with or without a website.

To find out more, Network Solutions offers an educational resource covering the pros and cons of local search marketing, titled, “Search Engine Optimization: Local Search Visibility Solutions Guide.” This paper will explain in greater detail how to get started, how to get help, and why this should be an important aspect of your marketing efforts.

These days there are many Software as a Service (SaaS) products out on the market. Ones for billing, ones for project management, ones for selling and customer service. There are also a few for handling your accounting needs. This is a very tough nut to crack since many are first reticent to put data into the cloud, much less their financial information, and then they have to contend with the Intuit Quickbooks ownership of the market place.

This is why I was skeptical when I heard about what Outright was planning to do but in true Agile software methodology they started with the basics and have stayed on a constant improvement path adding features and functionality incrementally. My business was evaluating the move off of Quickbooks which is used on our network and doesn’t give access to our team or accountant like the web product does. This provided me an opportunity to evaluate lots of other services (which will be for a later post).

What I liked about Outright

Two simple messages – Save Time and Save Money. You are really speaking my language. Accounting package can suck your life away because of the complexity many have and the time it takes to learn everything properly. I want my accountant to be helping me with tax planning and cash flow management not training me on how to properly enter vendors and reconcile the checkbook.

Integration with other SaaS tools – They have started with two big ones – Freshbooks and Shoeboxed. We use Freshbooks for invoicing but our expensing is done separately and shoeboxed is not a vendor of ours.

Techcrunch has a nice update on the addition of Expensify “Getting started with the site is quite easy, because Outright has recently partnered with a number of financial services: you can import invoices from Freshbooks, receipts from Shoeboxed, your PayPal transaction history, as well as your credit card transactions through a deal with Expensify, which supports 94% of US credit cards. You only have to do this once — once you’ve linked your account, they’ll keep automatically updating until you unlink them.

Killer Tax Planning Tool – One of the big areas many new entrepreneurs and freelancers screw up is in the tax area. For years they have been used to their employer taking out taxes and they just took their W-2 and did their taxes. With a new business there are all kinds of tax benefits to using expenses and also planning your cash flow so the right amount goes to the IRS quarterly so you don’t get spanked the following year with a tax bill plus penalties that make you cry and ask yourself why you are doing this in the first place.

What I didn’t like about Outright (but they can change this and innovate to fix this stuff)

No Connectivity to banking accounts – This was my deal breaker. Despite my love-hate relationship with Quickbooks some times, they do this part flawlessly and I am able to quickly go through the month and match deposits to client billing and categorize the expenses with a final reconcile button that takes me about 60-90 minutes a month to do my books.

Granted, I think I have become spoiled to this functionality because Quickbooks has been doing it for so long and I can get this online though the personal budgeting tool Mint.com so I am really kind of expecting it. Despite the enormous complexities of integration behind the scenes I am willing to wait for this but many other non-technical people who have this in other products will look for it.

Then again, this product is FREE and has some great functionality already so I can’t completely put them to task.

Tax planning only covers Schedule C – For the uninitiated, Schedule C is for a Sole Proprietorship and not partnerships or corporations. I won’t go into a business law discussion but a sole proprietorship is the most basic form a business and many firms are usually formed as LLC or Subchapter-S corporations for liability protection and tax advantages. My firm is S-Corporation and all partners get K-1’s at the end of the year that go into our tax returns.

Inability to bring in balance sheet items from previous year – You may go, huh? The plain english translation of that statement is basically this could be old receivables from customers that haven’t paid yet (or may never pay) that you will need to write off. This can offset your tax liability in a big way so your estimated taxes in the tax planner are just that – estimated. If you have complexities like this you should engage an accountant who can give you a better picture of tax planning for this year and next.

Who is this Smart Working Tool for?

I would say at this point in their life, Outright absolutely perfect for the independent contractor or freelancer who has a very simple cash-in, cash-out approach with no employees. Outright is FREE, which takes away any cost objections. Plus, if you can leverage Freshbooks and Shoeboxed to automate the sync to Outright, this can work really well. Oh yeah, did I mention that is FREE to use?

Check it out today and if you are current user of Outright, please leave a comment on your opinion of the service and if we missed anything.

Steve: Anthony, thanks for being here today. I guess the best way to get started is to ask you how you got your start and what lead you to start the Pappas Group.

Anthony: Thanks Steve. Well I got my start as a designer in college and worked in ad agencies in NY as an art director and was always working on brands. I joined a local firm in the 90’s called Proxicom and eventually worked my way up the ranks over 10 years to become Senior VP of Creative globally for the company. During that time I not only advanced my design skills but alos got really experienced at building teams. When Proxicom was acquired I looked at NY and DC and around here saw many boutique shops but no one focusing on helping a client build their brand. Let’s face it, these days brand are built online. They are built in other ways, but for the most part today they are built online. So I decided to go out on my own and start the Pappas Group.

Steve: Your firm approaches clients as a branding company where it used to be traditionally the domain of advertising agencies. Why this type of differentiation?

Anthony: Because the boutique firms where most design agencies the first thing we identified was that we were not first and foremost a design agency. Let me explain why. You can’t come at a brand strictly from a design perspective. You must start with the strategy. I learned this firsthand when I was at Proxicom and we worked with large ad agencies that owned the brand and dictated how they wanted their sites built. Unfortunately, there was a large conflict of interest because what they wanted wasn’t always beneficial to the client, especially in an online space. So what I wanted to do was help companies “change”. We want to help them reach a goal or launch a product. How you execute is not the point but rather how a company wants or needs to evolve. Every company’s brand is different and there is no perfect service mix.

Steve: Being here in the DC marketplace, what are your hopes for bringing a bit the flare of the brands that are in places like NY?

Anthony: Place like New York have big brands that take risks (i.e. Nike, Liz Claiborne) and while we have great firms here, there is not the same sex appeal which makes it hard to retain the talent here in the area. So I want to help the DC market get awareness and tell the rest of the country that we have the skills here to do it. We start by working with the brands that are here in town.  This is kind of my soapbox right now.

Steve: You will be presenting at the Grow Smart Business conference next week. What should we expect to see and hear from you?

Anthony: One of the things I am going to talk about is that for any company to create a strong brand, it has to come from the inside.  You can’t just build a brand from the outside, it has to come from the people inside the company first. Strong companies are strong companies because their employees are living the brand so people believe it. If they are faking it, people will see right through it.

Steve: I like to wrap up interviews with a top five list. In this case, what are your top five brands?

Anthony: Hmm, let’s see…

1.) Apple – They are really intelligent about marketing. I use their products and I knew they were good. They said they were going to break convention and they said they would do it their way and people would follow. And they have, which is why I really like that brand. They are a serious brand that is making money.

2.) Porsche - The brand that they have built, beyond their cars being excellent, is that they have built a brand that is a good reflection of their product. They hired a great firm and the brand exudes a certain essence about the drive. It is understated which is elegant and powerful.

3.) Target – They have done an amazing job breaking out of the mold of low-cost warehouse store. Target just raised its awareness and said they aren’t playing the game that has been done in the past. People believe that Target doesn’t have the same stuff as other stores and their brand has been the factor that convinces people.

4.) Nordstrom – Their experience is fantastic and the people that are there actually seem like they want to be there which shows that people live the brand.

5.) Zappos – The brand is still new and they are doing the right things like Nordstrom does and is trying to build that it is about quality and service.

Steve: Thanks for the time today. Great interview.

Anthony: Great to be here. See you all next week at the Grow Smart Biz conference.

Register for the Grow Smart Biz Conference and See Anthony Speak

Coming next week on September 29, in Washington, DC, Network Solutions is hosting the Grow Smart Biz Conference where you can see Anthony Pappas speak along with keynote speaker Chris Anderson and Governor Mark Warner. The Grow Smart Biz conference is a premier one-day event featuring renowned small business leaders and well-known industry experts. If you haven’t registered, then click here to learn more and register now. Tickets are going fast!

Determine the Best Keywords

We start by determining the best ones and go from there. To do this, RemarkaBlogger put together this list, initially for Wordpress SEO, but it applies to almost every web site:

1. Use the Google suggest box. When you search on Google, a drop-down appears that contains suggestions. These suggestions are aggregated from the millions of searches people do on Google every day. What you’re seeing there is a “best of” list of the most frequently searched keywords.
2. Use the Free Wordtracker Keyword tool. Wordtracker has a free and a paid version of their service. The free version is perfectly adequate for most people.
3. Use Google’s Free Keyword Tool for AdWords. Even if you’re not going to run a Google AdWords campaign, you can still use the free keyword tool to get an overview of the market around a keyword in terms of searches, ad spend, and clicks. If you make money from your blog by running Google AdSense, this tool can help you target keywords for post topics that will create a more profitable context for AdSense ads.
4. Analyze the top sites for your keywords. To be blunt, you can simply copy the successful tactics of other sites. Look at how a site writes its title tags and meta descriptions. Observe how its content is written and how keywords are used in it. Observe the site’s architecture and file-naming. Synthesize how the top sites do it into your own keyword/content/navigation strategy.

Tuning and Improving Your Keyword Rankings

Once you are out there and the site has been running for a few weeks, it will be time to tune to improve your search engine rankings. For some quick tips, I came across this great list from Kherize5 Marketing on six steps to improve keyword rankings:

1. Modify Site. Evaluate the page that is ranking for the core keyword and determine what changes can be made.

2. Search Keywords. Perform a search for the core keyword as well as yourlongtail keywords to spark some content ideas as well as areas where you can get inbound links.  Inbound links from sites that are already ranking are best as they have a high traffic volume which will click through to your site.

3. Research & Review Content.  While searching keywords take a look at the content on the pages to see how you can differentiate yourself while still focusing on the needs/wants of your target market.

4. Create a Call to Action Around the Keyword.  Creating a call to action around the keyword is far better than saying “Click here.” You do not want to rank for click here. Ultimately you want convert readers into buyers and this is another way to increase rankings and traffic. Also, a call to action that does not convert readers into buyers is pointless.

5. Measure Results.  Track the number of inbound links after modifications have been made.  Measure the number of visitors, leads and conversion rate to customers.  Have you moved up in keyword rankings?  Converted to customers?

6. Repeat and Tune. Repeat the entire process for other keywords that are close to a page 1 ranking and then once again in a few months to further search engine optimization efforts to achieve a page 1 ranking for a highly searched term with a high difficulty.

Best thing you can do is to just get started and experiment with things and as the last recommendation said “Repeat and Tune”. This is an ongoing process and one which your efforts will pay off with increased traffic and if you have the right promotions/take actions on your web site, new sales leads.

Yaro Starak talks about what he calls “Impact Marketing Techniques” – the kind of tricks he’s used himself to drive hoards of new traffic to his own 6-figure income blog. This video is from Yaro and his BecomeABlogger.com site that is a training course for bloggers looking to make a living from blogging.

Now, is most of his stuff all over the Internet and published by other people in various ways? Sure, but there is a value add that Yaro and his partner Gideon offer people. They utilize the e-book to draw in leads and convert them effectively with some simple and effective email campaigns but the information hidden behind the veil is packaged extremely well with video and audio along with coursework to build your blogging ninja skills.

Here is the video and below that video are the 10 tips:

Ten Tips on Driving a Flood of Traffic to Your Blog – Taken from the Video above and written by Yaro Starek

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don’t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts.A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

The opposite of this and the purpose of the post is Inbound Marketing.

Many of you might have heard the term “Inbound Marketing” but for those of you that have not, it is essentially getting the customers to come to you. This involves “discovering where potential customers are searching, positioning yourself correctly so they’ll find you and letting them discover whether you have what they are looking for”.

So how do you get discovered naturally and have customers come to you? Well, I have put together what I think are 10 Great Rules for Inbound Marketing that you can use in your business.

Rule #10 – Blog about things that solve your customers problems – People will see the value in your advice and your business. You may think you are giving away free consulting but if people don’t know you how will they know you are an expert and worth talking to?

Rule #9 – Optimize your web sites – SEO is critical so that search engines can locate our sites and our articles easily

Rule #8 – Market Your Content to Where your Readers Are – Submit your content to social bookmarking and social networking sites. We also submit our sites to blog directories and our articles to article directories

Rule #7 – Create an “Inbound Hub” – This means setting your website up like a “hub” for your industry that attracts visitors naturally through the search engines, through the blogosphere, and through the social media sites.

Rule #6 – Use Social Networking Sites for actual networking – There are many other social network sites out there beyond Facebook that focus on niche areas. This allows you to build focused networks with others in those respective niches and interests

Rule #5 – Employ Analytics – Your hard work needs to have some result and you need to know if things are working. The easiest way to do this is to employ metrics technologies like Google Analytics, Hubspot and Radian6.

Rule #4 – Make it easy to buy – Give visitors to your site the information that will help in their decision making process.

Rule #3 – Get that prospect’s name – There are many clever ways to drop in their name and email to keep updated on information. Sounds easy and at this point in web technology, it is but most people

Rule #2 – Provide methods for visitors to make inquiries or purchases – You would be surprise how many web sites FAIL at this portion of the web site. Heck, you spent all that money on a web site and someone can’t fill in a form or quickly ask a question. SEE RULE #4 on Make it EASY TO BUY.

Rule #1 – Give some stuff away – This might sound trite or even cheap but this actually brings all previous nine rules to a focus point. Create an e-book, or a podcast, maybe even a video series. This relates to capturing info and leveraging all the rules together so a potential customer can easily find you, see that you have something of value they can use in exchange for some basic info (email and name) which shows them how much of an expert you are and how easy it is to buy and hire your company.

Any other rules I missed?

These are my 10 rules for implementing an inbound marketing program with customers, is there anything I missed or should add? Leave a comment.

Back in August 2008, public relations professional, author of the book Putting Public Back In Public Relations and creator of the term “PR 2.0″, Brian Solis released what is called the Conversation Prism. But what exactly is this Conversation Prism? According to Solis, it’s to help “provide a visual representation of the true expansiveness of the Social Web and the conversations that define it”. There has been a lot of new tools and applications that have appeared over the past few years and this has become a pretty crucial means of keeping track of how people engage in conversations online.

So what does it all mean? It looks pretty convoluted so here’s an explanation to help make it pretty clear:

The core of the conversation is the brand. It’s the main reason why you’re going to have a conversation. From there, your goal is to become the observer, listener, internalizer and router. This is where you look to find the communities you should participate in and to gain the research on how to improve your relationships with your customers.

After listening and researching how you can enter the conversation, you need to create an environment inside your company and brand that will respond to the conversation being had. So what type of infrastructure will you have to handle crisis communication, product & sales,  marketing & public relations, and even community? It’s in this phase of the conversation that you’ll need to help determine who will be managing each component. Is it a community manager? Do you have a committee who will determine the next course of action but with a single leader?

According to Brian Solis, the next cycle after establishing your brand, listening, and determining the authority on managing the conversation will complete the “image of the conversational workflow”, but not the cycle. It should be noted that this is where you begin to participate. You, as the community manager, will begin to shape the dialogue through active participation, building online relationships (which will help build brand visibility and strengthen its value), engaging in researching for ongoing feedback and insight, and finally recognizing that conversations extend beyond the online realm – it’s also about meeting people in real life.

Okay, now you know the steps to creating the conversation, where do you talk the talk?

This is the outer part of the Conversation Prism. You seek out where your customers/community are and then engage them there. One step to begin would be to create what’s called a social map. Take your customers information and research and find out where on the social networks are they having a dialogue. As Solis points out, doing so will help you identify exactly where relevant discussions are taking place, as well as their scale and frequency. The outer realms of the Conversation Prism are categories of social networks and examples of specific sites within each category. So if you’re finding that your customers are active on photo social networks, you might look into seeing what conversations are being had on Flickr, Photobucket, SmugMug, Picasa, or others.

Solis recommends that anyone serious about conversations should conduct an audit and gauge where customers are and track the results. He also suggests measuring the rate of occurrence, whether each instance required a response, and if so, by whom, and also the potential reach of each dialog by quantifying the network of friends and friends of friends in order to establish priority, authority, response strategies, and urgency. You can read more about the idea of the Conversation Prism here.

The idea behind diagramming how conversations can take place online is a pretty great one and Brian Solis has done a great job putting something conceptually together. Combined with a great aesthetically pleasing diagram by Jesse Thomas, the Conversation Prism is a glowing representation on the ever-expanding universe of the social web. Regardless of the type of conversations being had on social networks, the point is that they should. Learn to focus on the brand, the infrastructure, its management and the effort in participation and you’ll have plenty of discussions for years to come.

Image credit: Brian Solis/Jesse Thomas (ConversationPrism.com)

This morning I came across the 7-Minute SEO Guide on Marketing Pilgrim and it is a great and short explanation of the basics of SEO. In fact, it just takes seven minutes but I have shortened it to three minutes to the key elements you MUST know as you are reworking your current web site or designing a new one. So lets get started…

1. Three Key Components in an Awesome SEO site – Good structure, content that matches queries and quality/relevant links
2. Avoid using lots of images of Flash content, Javascript and Flash Navigation
3. Don’t create duplicate pages and keep your code clean and concise
4. Research your keywords and avoid using industry jargon
5. Use the keywords in the <TITLE> tag of each page, the name of the page file, content headings (H1 tags) and for each 250 words of text, try to include 2-3 mentions of the keyword
6. Obtain external links from business partners, suppliers, clients, industry blogs, and news media
7. Link from one of your pages to another using keywords in your anchor text
8. Consider adding a “sitemap.html” page and link it from your home page. This will help Google discover and crawl your entire site.

Your three minutes are up.

Want to learn more? Set aside 7 minutes and check out the 7-Minute SEO Guide – you won’t regret it.

(Photo Credit: iStockphoto)

As I was writing this yesterday I was reviewing my blog feed and saw Chris Brogan’s post “Please Write this Robert” which talked about Robert Scoble’s post about Web 2010. What I didn’t realize until I read Scoble’s post was that he was commenting on the All Things D Conference held last week by Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg. It was there that they were trying to capitalize on marking their conference as the start of the Web 3.0 era. Scoble called them out on this and addressed this by remarking that this type of innovation comes in at different times and that using a 2.0 or 3.0 really hurt the innovation process. Kara Swisher didn’t take too kindly to this in her response and so a blog fight has ensued.

What was sad is that they missed an opportunity to see Jay Berkowitz give his Web 2010 presentation which was not planned but coincidentally timed to these blog posts by Robert and Kara. The bigger point is that we are stepping into the next era of the web and 2010 is next year so this title is appropriate and forward thinking without getting too futurist on everyone.

In his talk last night, Jay pointed out 10 areas that are going to comprise our world and trends next year. Here are the highlights:

Area #1.) Micro-communications – Short communications for a short attention span. We will take our news in small bits using tools like Twitter, Qik, 12Seconds. Interesting case of @missionpie – they use Twitter and posts the pies they have this today and business is up 20% a day.

Area #2.) Virtualization – Businesses and segments going virutal. Virtual Assistants, Virtual Employees and Virtual Meetings. Tools – Guru, GoToMeeting, MyBusinessAssistant

Area #3.) Free Stuff! - Amazing free produrts with a revenue model attached. Wordpress, Podcasts, SEO Quake Toolbar, Google Analytics, Compete, Spyfu

Area #4.) Social Search – Crowsourcing opinions and interacting with community. Tools like Twitter Search are instantaneous and is faster than Google. Angie’s List, BazaarVoice and Threadless.

Area #5.) Customer Service ansd the New Marketing Department – Monitor your branding social media and develop a dialogue with your customers and prospects. Tools like Radian6 and CoTweet are extremely effective.

Area #6.) Disintermdediation Part 2 – Take advantage of “news hole” and engage directly. Tools like HelpAReporterOut are taking out the middleman.

Area #7.)  Super Widgetization – Develop applications to go direct to desktop. Facebook apps, iPhone apps, WeFollow, Twitter Apps, Widgets (widgetbox, clearspring)

Area #8.) Video! - Videos build viral traffic and conversion – Youtube, HowToVideos, Name and Tag videos with key words. Use Tubemogul, Great Thumbnails

Area #9) Personal Brand (PeoplePool, Google Profiles) – Create a unique brand and own it

a.) Be Your own Brand Manager (develop your brand marketing plan, how are you going to promote, set specific measurable goals)

b.) Determine your USP (what makes you distinctive, how can you enhance your unique skills)

c.) Follow Your Passion (where do you like to hangout, what do you

d.) Listen

e.) Embrace Your Inner Author (Create Unique Content)

f.) Build Your New (Set a goal to make a few quality connections, give to get ask about them, Ask about them)

g.) Volunteer to Shine (Develop new skills, enhance skill through freelance opportunities)

h.) Innovate to Lead

i.) Be Entrepreneurial – Entrepreneur is a verb

j.) Speak Up! – Go to Toastmasters, Presentation Zen

Area #10.) The Semantic Web – Evolving extension of the web and not just just an interconnectivity but an understanding of data. For more on this area I would review the Wikipedia explanation and Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Web) seminal article on Semantic Web in Scientific America.

For more great nuggests of trends and marketing goodness, check out presentations by Jay at his site at http://Presentations.TenGoldenRules.com