This is not your parents Foursquare.

Remember the days playing this in school? Foursquare means business now!

Nor is this another rendition of Kick-The-Can!

This, ladies and gentlemen, is one of my favorite SoLoMo (Social Local Mobile) apps out there, and as a business it should be one of yours too! Let me ask you something…

Do you have a local business that thrives on needing new walk-in customers, and a business that values, more than life itself, repeat customers?

If you answered yes, and you better have, Foursquare is an application that you should deploy and use to help market your business immediately.

I keep hearing from business owners, looking for easy and inexpensive ways to get the word out about their business, and one of my go-to answers is always Foursquare.

They often look at me as if they have no clue as to what I am talking about, so I educate them on the value and opportunity, and in the end many still think it is too much work, or it may not work, or it may not be worth their time. Well, I say (shaking my fists in the air) YES it is!

Now let me ask you Mr. or Mrs. small business owner… How much real money does it cost you to run an ad on TV or radio? How about an ad in a local paper? How much are you spending on other marketing initiatives? Do you know how much Foursquare costs? Here is a hint… it’s FREE! (that’s less than air!)

The Basics of Foursquare:

Foursquare is a mobile (and desktop) application that allows patrons of your business to check-in to your location, and by doing so also alerting friends they are there. Users may also share their check-in to Facebook and Twitter, and they may leave a comment about your business and maybe even upload some photos as well. Social word of mouth does not get any better than this.

There is somewhat of a game element to Foursquare, and it all started out by allowing users to become “Mayor” of a business. I bet many of you:

• Did not know you were already on Foursquare (bet if you look will find your business)
• Did not know you probably have a Mayor of your establishment (shame, as you should treat your royalty well)
• Did not know you are ignoring this valuable platform (it’s OK, that is why I am here to help you)

At the moment, Foursquare has a lot of FREE tools they offer, and all you need to do is claim your spot, and start offering specials.

As I mentioned earlier, you may already be on the platform since Foursquare users create the locations. So get going! Claim and verify your location and you will be off to the races.

This is what the dashboard looks like for SEO.com.

Get a special at Jiffy Lube – Save some money? OK!

While we do value repeat business, we do not have walk-in traffic, so I am usually the mayor (where’s my crown?). But let’s say you are a resturaunt, a dry cleaner or a flower shop… from here, you can create specials such as:

• Discounts
• Freebies
• Loyalty Specials

Where Foursquare has hit he nail on the head is with their search capabilities. Foursquare has one of the most up-to-date local listing directories out there. Some may say it rivals Google. In fact Foursquare’s local listings power many other mobile phone applications such as Path (and many others).

Listings are first created by users. Superusers keep tabs on things like address changes, or if a business has closed, and can suggest changes be made to the listing etc. There are different ways to search:

• Best Nearby
• Specials
• Food
• Nightlife
• Coffee

But you can search for whatever you want… so let’s look at a couple of searches:

As a pure discovery engine, Foursquare is amazing. One night I may want to try a place friends rave about. And on another night I may want to try something new. Maybe it is a new pizza joint with a check-in deal to make it more enticing. And to you dear business owner, entice myself and others to try your place out and folks like me will spread the good word!

Foursquare is like having in-store Google analytics, but for humans!

Back in your admin area of Foursquare, you get some pretty cool data. You can see all sorts of visitor activity such as:

• Check-Ins at your venue
• Unique customers
• First time customers
• Top Visitors
• Recent Visitors
• People who liked your Venue
• And more

Do you get it? This is VERY valuable data! You can use this information to engage with your customers, learn what you do well, see where you can improve etc. But most of all listen, thank, and engage. If you have a great business, word will spread!

As an avid Foursquare user, I am always bummed because I do not see as many local businesses taking advantage of this platform. I am a “check-in-o-holic”, and I am always looking for a good deal, or a reason to try someplace new.

I know I may live in the Internet bubble, but I am not hearing your ads on the radio or TV, nor am I seeing them in the paper. Reach out to me where I am, where many more customers are. Build a legion of raving fans for your business, and  watch what can happen. And you can start doing that right now with Foursquare.

Now do not just claim your spot, and set up specials and call it good. Train your staff so they know to expect people coming in. Also, let current customers know you are on Foursquare. Maybe have a POP display at a table. Have staff let them know that if they check-in there is a discount. Get people engaged with your brand!

As with anything, there is no magic bullet. If you build it they will not necessarily come. Take advantage of Foursquare and other tools to help make your company more top of mind when someone says to themselves… “I want to try ___________, where should I go?”

I hope you enjoyed this post and, and I hope you now see why your business should be on Foursquare! Now get out there and start using this awesome platform.

If you have any other questions regarding Foursquare, leave them in the comments below and I will do my best to answer them for you.

You can also hit me up on all the major social networks.

Until next time…

Doc

Why Your Business Should Be On Foursquare Now! is a post by SEO expert Darin Berntson. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Does the loss of Google Reader mean the world is ending for people of the internets?

As you all know by now, Google’s popular RSS reader (or shall I say not as popular as Google would like it to be) is getting beheaded on July 1^st. The service will no longer exist, it’s going be-bye, sayonara, in other words it is going to the big Internet graveyard in the sky… I say Bohoo! Why is everyone thinking the sky is falling? (okay, maybe not everyone).

Personally I rarely used reader… it was worse than my email box. So full of feeds that I never got to. It was a mess. But I know a lot of people did use it, and relied on it for their daily fix of their favorite subscribed blogs. So to you folks I say, I feel you. But you will find a new reader. Life will go on!

 In Fact, here are a few RSS reader options to get you started:

• Feedly: This is a pretty cool reader. It displays magazine style, and is pretty to look at. It was heavily tied into the Google Reader feed (so I bet they are bummed) but you can add feeds direct to the platform as well. It is available on the web, iOS and Android.
• Microsoft Outlook: For those of you still in the stone age using this platform, did you know you could use it as an RSS reader? Yup you can!
• Google Currents: (iOS/Android) This is pretty neat, and a joy to look at content. But, it’s a Google product, so you may not want to get too attached. =) #JustSayin
• FireFox Simple RSS Reader: Do you use Firefox for your browsing pleasure, well now you can add RSS feeds here too.
• Chrome Store RSS Options Galore: The world of open source on chrome has you covered my friends… click that link and explore all the options other coders have developed for you.
• Flipboard has you covered: Similar to Feedly, different wrapper.
• Digg: While this is not available yet, Digg has come to save the world from RSS catastrophe.
• Alltop: This is a great site where you can create your own feed. As a curator of content, I use this site often.
• And there are many, many more.

Now go, fall in love with a reader that will love you back. A reader that it’s programmers will not ignore like cousin Bart (sorry Barts of the world).

At least we can pre-mourn the loss of the ill-fated Google reader. Knowing now that the end is near makes it easier to say goodbye. Maybe this post should have been its obituary… but I will leave that to its Google family to write. It’s only proper don’t you think?

Google Reader, you were loved by many, just not by your makers. I’m sorry you will not be around to see the 4^th of July, or the many posts I had hoped to send your way.

Now… let’s get back to work people. If I see one more post about Google Reader is dead, I may go crazy. It is not the end of the world. I promise.

Until next time…

Doc

Google Reader is DEAD! #BooHoo: Get Over It! is a post by SEO expert Darin Berntson. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

No matter if your business is big or small, you cannot avoid creating a strategic social media plan to compliment your SEO and other marketing efforts.

Let’s go over why… right now!

Real-Time Search Engines Want FRESH Content And They Want It Fast!

Fast content doesn’t mean crap content. Search engines are becoming very smart. They want authoritative content, and they will use social media as a signal for this type of content.  As they say, cream will rise to the top!

How and where users click and specifically share your content via social media are all cues to search engines to validate authority of your word on the web.

What kind of content is good?

• Content that answers popular questions: Hang out with your sales teams and your account executives for a day and see the questions they get asked over and over again. If clients or prospects are asking questions on the phone, they are likely asking Google or Bing as well. So have the answers there for them to click on and take action!
• Newsworthy content: Create your own news that people could care about and share. Do not try and be too self promotional here though. No one likes “look how neat we are” content.
• Ride the news, a.k.a “News Jacking”: Current events, holidays or breaking news. What spin can you take, so that your customers and prospects would thank you for what you wrote and be willing to share?
• And so much more…

What Search Engines Look At In Regards To Social Media

Are you familiar with the Social Graph and social patterns? Here are just a few signals that search engines look at to “rank” the content on your website:

• Your social followers, who you follow, your likes, your replies.
• How many social followers/fans you have.
• How many re-tweets, shares, +1s, etc.
• Who is sharing your content, and what is their authority and reputation.
• Popularity of particular content as well as the quality of it.
• Timeliness and trust of content.
• Patterns: Both natural and unnatural.

Pro Tip: Don’t be unnatural in your social sharing. You remember link farms right? Well, now many people have created social farms to help spread their content. Do you think the search engines like Google and Bing do not notice this? Think again! It stands out like a sore thumb to Google and Bing. If you get caught, you may as well kiss your hard work and rankings good-bye, as well as the money or leads associated with those rankings. There is no room for being shady in today’s marketing world!

Invest In Social:

Social media should no longer be an afterthought for businesses. A successful social media campaign takes time, strategy, planning, testing and attention. Here’s a brief outline for how to “invest” in social:

• Create a social media plan
  • Create a content production calendar.
  • Produce engaging content: Blogs, videos, digital downloads, etc.
  • Monitor and see what works, check trends, and produce more of that content.
  • Monior important metrics.
• Make sharing easy
  • Make sure you have social sharing buttons on your site.
  • Share your content on the main networks you plan on using (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)
  • Monitor those sharing your content, and reward them. (A simple “thank you” goes a long way and helps to build trust.)
• Be the expert in your field
  • Share related content and ideas that users can trust. Don’t be a fire hose of “me-me-me” all the time.
  • Answer questions and address comments you get as fast as you can.

The Future of Social & SEO

Look what is going on now with Facebook. They are rolling out their own search engine. Twitter has had something people could use for quite some time, and LinkedIn and Quora have search capabilities too.

SEO will become more than just traditional on-site SEO (in my mind)… yes, the basics will always have to be done, but I think that if there is a search box on any site or platform, there will always be something to optimize within that particular search engine optimization strategy.

The Future Is Relationships!

Breaking News: Business 101 comes to search engines. Build out REAL relationships and trust with people. Focus on building content people care about and want to know. Create content that someone would thank you for, and content that compels people to click the “share” button.

Social word of mouth: What was the old saying- one unhappy customer tells ten how awful their experience was, but one happy person usually keeps it to themselves, or tells only few? In this social age, you can flip that script, and put the odds back in your favor! There are many ways you can do this, and I will focus more on this in future posts.

However, one thing to do right now, is set up your Google authorship profile, and make sure your Google+ page s up to date, and that you have your author pages tied to your G+ profile marking where you contribute. You can read more on how to do that here.

With all this being said, social signals are only a few of thousands of signals for organic ranking… but is it something you should ignore? Is social a fad that will go away? The answer to both is NO!

Looking at what Google and Bing are doing now, you can bet that social media will become more and more a factor in the SERPs in the weeks, months and years to come.

Lastly, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Diversify your social portfolio.

Now it’s your turn. What do you think on the subject?

Do you have a topic you would like me to cover?

Hit me up in the comments below, or on Twitter.

Until next time…

Post by Darin Berntson, Senior Community Manager at SEO.com.

How Do Social Signals Influence an SEO Campaign? is a post by SEO expert Darin Berntson. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

SEO in 2013 is shaping up to be more diverse and holistic in nature, and the old search engine optimization methods are quickly finding themselves kicked to the curb with each of Google’s algorithm updates.

What once were tried and true tactics for increasing traffic, leads and sales are now causing pain points for many businesses involved in SEO.

Fortunately, SEO.com has consistently stayed ahead of the curve, and continues to employ quality, holistic methods for helping businesses achieve their goals. Our account managers pride themselves on creative and strategic campaigns that are built around long term objectives, and won’t be victims to future search engine algorithm changes.

Think of SEO similar to building a community of followers for your blog or Facebook page,” says TJ Welsh, Director of SEO at SEO.com. “A long term SEO campaign takes time to build before you may potentially see the rewards. Algorithms will change but it won’t be much of a concern because you have a solid foundation.”

Here are 5 things to abandon, and how we are moving forward with quality search engine optimization methods in 2013:

While link-building is still an integral part of an SEO campaign, scoring quick links through “blog networks” and low quality article sites is exactly the kind of method Google is targeting with their Panda algorithm update. Rather than targeting opportunities for easy and quick links, the best use of time is through building relationships with bloggers and websites, and writing guest blog posts for them. In the process, we add valuable content to their website, while increasing the brand’s exposure to their readers.

In the past, websites potentially had the ability to rank for different keywords simply by creating a separate web page for each keyword they were targeting. All they had to do was “spin”, or reword the content slightly, and insert the right keywords into the copy. Today, website content needs to be written for the audience, yet still optimized for the search engines to ensure accessibility and indexability. Plus great content can help your brand, drive sales and increase the opportunity for great links.

At SEO.com, we provide clients round the clock access to their rankings anytime they choose through our integrated reporting system. We believe in this level of transparency, because businesses choose to invest their time and money with us, and we want to prove our value. But since ranking reports don’t adequately communicate the true value of an SEO campaign, we instead focus on driving relevant traffic to the website, capturing those visitors and turning them into leads or sales. SEO in 2013 should be comprised of strategies to meet our clients’ goals, not simply moving keywords.

Websites with high quality, engaging content have the ability to capture a high percentage of visitors arriving from Google’s search engine, but it should not be the only source of traffic. Sustainable SEO strategies should include driving traffic from a number of sources, including social media, webinars, direct traffic, video, news sites and more.

It’s relatively easy to just set a campaign on auto pilot and just “build links”, but it’s vitally important to track the outcomes of these initiatives through website analytics. If the goal is to increase the number of leads coming in to the website, specific strategies to increase traffic to the website should be implemented and measured in order to prove value. If a certain method isn’t working, analytics will bring this to attention, and the strategy can be adjusted.

Don’t be fooled by promises of quick rankings. SEO in 2013 is a long term investment in the future, and while the dramatic performance of a website can be achieved within the first few months of a campaign, a holistic approach to SEO will ensure the sustainability of the website through any algorithm change the search engines decide to make.

Client Spotlight: Speed trap and road hazard app uses search marketing to continue growth

What’s better than a fellow driver flashing his bright lights to warn others about a police speed trap? An app that exposes speed traps, road hazards and enforcement cameras. Trapster, the social networking app that documents traffic and speed traps, allows motorists to warn drivers of potential problems on the road.

The Trapster app launched in 2008 and became an instant hit. Today, it has more than 17 million total users. According to Stefanie Frederick, Trapster’s community product specialist, the startup’s fame was fast and furious.

Because the company was just a fledgling at the time of its big boost, it was doing its best with their limited resources to keep up with the popular pace.

The company website was created hastily and updated on the fly as Trapster’s popularity and success grew,” said Frederick. “While the website offered lots of features, most of them were not easily found or deeply buried.”

Once Trapster was acquired by Navteq, the company was capable of growing its staff to meet the needs of its dedicated users. One of the first steps toward helping the company continue to thrive was utilizing internet marketing.

Our primary goal was to create a seamless experience between our app and the website. We also wanted to create more brand awareness and unify our users across various social media channels,” said Frederick.

Trapster selected SEO.com to secure their competitive online edge. SEO.com created a strategy to assist in content creation and improving the company’s overall online presence.

Frederick openly touts SEO.com’s success for Trapster. The year over year organic traffic is up 88.81 percent with a 103.53 percent increase in the number of unique visitors going to their website.

With SEO.com’s help we reduced crawl errors, launched six infographics, and increased our search ranking,” said Frederick.

SEO Tip: Social Timing Matters

Creating a content strategy is great, but don’t waste away hard work by sharing content at the wrong time. By perfectly planning the release of your content on social media services and different platforms you can amplify your exposure and ensure more engagement.

When it comes down to it, social timing is a science. It’s key to realize that 50 percent of the U.S. population lives in the Eastern Time zone. If you combine the Eastern Time zone with the Central Time zone, you will cover 80 percent of the U.S. population.

According to research, differing platforms have optimal times for the best reach.

Twitter

• Best time to get a retweet is 5 PM EST
• Best days to get a click-through for links is generally mid week or during the weekend
• Best time to get a click-through is during lunch at noon or after work at 6 PM EST

Facebook

• Best day to get a share is on Saturday
• Best time to get a share during the week is at noon or after 7 PM EST

Blogging

• The highest percentage of readers is in the morning
• Blogs get the most traffic on Monday
• Traffic tends to peak at 11 AM EST

If you want what you post to become share-bait, try to go live with your content at active times.

Industry Events

• Social Media Strategies Summit: Las Vegas; February 5-7, 2013
• Online Marketing Summit: San Diego; February 11-13, 2013
• SearchFest 2013: Portland; February 22, 2013
• SMX West: San Jose; March 11-13, 2013
• SES: New York; March 25-26, 2013

The Link: SEO.com’s Newsletter January 2013 is a post by SEO expert Darin Berntson. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

2013 Is Here… Is Your Search Marketing Strategy Ready?

From multiple Panda and Penguin updates, and the exact match domain crack down, 2012 turned out to be quite a stunning year in the world of search engine optimization.

In this video, Ash Buckles, President of SEO.com will briefly highlight 13 predictions you should be aware of for 2013

Topics Covered In This Video:

• Author Rank
• Co-occurrance
• Facebook Edgerank
• Local SEO
• Google+ Communities
• Link Earning
• Link Removal
• Mobile Search
• Site SEO & Page SEO
• Social Signals
• Repurposed Content and Video Infographics

It will be interesting to see how Ash’s predictions stack up this time next year.

What do you think 2013 will bring to the world of SEO? What will the all mighty Google do next? Will other search engines finally rise to the occasion?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments or questions in the comment section below.

Until next time…

PS: To get even more information, you should check out this blog post: SEO Tips for 2013: Author Rank, Co-occurrence and More

13 Predictions You Should Be Aware Of For 2013 – Video is a post by SEO expert Darin Berntson. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

8 Things That Changed the Internet Marketing Industry in 2012

In just this past year, there have been remarkable changes and challenges in internet marketing. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) became the largest protest in the history of the internet. Google’s Gmail became the world’s most popular email service. China blocked the New York Times from their searches and social media. Facebook became a public company, and Apple Inc. became the largest company by market capitalization in the world.

Search engines and social media sites also made changes that altered the entire digital landscape. Here are at least eight game changers that rocked the internet marketing industry:

1. Google+ Gained Traction

Google Places became Google+ Local, which changed the approach to local SEO. Users who log into their Google+ account while performing a search will see personalized results based on social data from Google+. Google+ Local has aimed to make reviews, recommendations and opinions of those in a user’s Google+ Circles a central part of their search experience. Bing also provides what’s known as “social results,” but because Google is still the search giant, users have more incentive to use Google+ more than ever before.

 2. Author Rich Snippets

Author Rich Snippets have given internet marketers the opportunity to build their author rank by linking their Google + page to the content they write through what’s known as rel=author. Utilizing rich snippets allows the author to have their photo show up in the search results next to their content, and build author authority which increases click-through rates on those pages.

3. Social Media Accommodations for Brands

Throughout the year many of the big players in social media have made numerous updates to better their platform for users and businesses. One common change was making it easier for brands to standout:

• Facebook created Global Pages so brands can manage multiple accounts using one central dashboard
• Twitter announced cover photos so brands have more real estate to promote the company
• LinkedIn designed new company pages to showcase more company information and logos
• Pinterest allowed businesses to set up official business accounts     

4. Panda Update

To continue the crusade against webspam, Google launched a number of Panda updates throughout the year. One of the major things that these updates cracked down on was page layout. The algorithm adjustments targeted sites with low quality content and ad-heavy page layouts. The update encouraged websites to deliver high quality content “above the fold.”

5. Penguin Update

In another step to reward high quality websites, Google introduced Penguin updates. The first Penguin update hit hard against “over-optimization.” Google cracked the whip to punish spam-like keyword stuffing, exact match anchor text, low quality content and other practices that attempt to manipulate the search engines.

6. Knowledge Graph

In an attempt to start building the next generation of search, Google rolled out the Knowledge Graph. The Knowledge Graph offers additional search results to help users find the right thing faster and receive a bigger summary that is relevant to the search topic. The idea is to help people do less time searching and more time discovering.

7. Google Disavow Link Tool

As the search engines get better at evaluating links, Google introduced the Disavow Link Tool to help websites clean up any suspicious and spam-like backlinks. Websites that receive warning concerning “unnatural links” can use this tool to remove the low quality links to their site to prevent penalties.

8. SEO.com’s 5^th Year Anniversary

Okay, so maybe our anniversary didn’t rock the foundation of internet marketing—but it was a big year for our skilled teams and clientele. We’ve been in the industry for five fun years adjusting and anticipating changes all along the way.

Moving Forward

As the way we communicated and even marketed continued to change throughout the year, one thing remained constant: the need for high quality content. The most effective (yet most difficult) SEO tactic of the year was content creation. Honest content marketing assists with social media and SEO efforts, and will surely be one of the best practices to follow in the upcoming year.

Client Spotlight: Thanksgiving Point Uses Digital Marketing to Remain a Hot Community Spot

In the hustle and bustle of modern life, many of us have lost our connection to nature, history and the world around us. A desire to re-establish those connections is why, more than a decade ago, the nonprofit Thanksgiving Point Institute was established. The grounds offer a family-friendly experience nestled in Utah that strives to change lives through education, family experiences and interaction with the community. Offering gardens, museums, an emporium, restaurants and shops, this Wasatch Front destination provides a vast array of fun things to do in Utah, every season of the year.

Visiting Thanksgiving Point is not just for families, the expansive property offers venues and programs for corporate events, parties and even weddings. As a nonprofit organization, the institute’s mission is to foster learning, bring families closer together and give opportunities for people to form lasting community connections.

In an attempt to continue to fulfill their mission and give back, Thanksgiving Point decided to increase their digital marketing efforts, and they enlisted SEO.com to help them raise the online profile of the property’s best features.

Our main goal for the 2012 campaign was to increase attendance to our venues, events and catering bookings,” said Thanksgiving Point’s marketing manager, Emily Duffy.

SEO.com built an aggressive campaign for the organization prioritizing certain search terms to improve their rankings online, and a year later organic web traffic to the site rose 22 percent. Seventeen specific keywords for the organization have risen to the first page of search engine results, and most have increased as many as 20 to 40 positions.

Thanksgiving Point is a stunning venue for weddings, and one of their marketing goals was to increase their search rankings for wedding-related keyword terms.

While most of our chosen keywords have seen significant movement, we also had a very successful summer of wedding bookings at Thanksgiving Point,” said Duffy.

While the organization has plenty to do to prepare for the upcoming holiday season, during which their popular Christmas light display attracts thousands, their search marketing efforts are in good hands. The team at SEO.com is working to continue their success with online marketing for all of Thanksgiving Point’s unique venues.

Hiring SEO.com allowed us to draw from a pool of industry experts who have the ability to monitor our rankings while keeping us apprised of changes that may need to be addressed,” Duffy said.

The dedicated experts at SEO.com will certainly be on top of things for Thanksgiving Point, and work to help them see even more success in the year to come.

SEO Tip: Personalize Your Follow-Up

A study about the effect of dinner mints proved that a personalized follow-up (post-purchase) can affect a customer’s perception of service. According to the research, waiters who left dinner mints saw an increase in tips. But, there’s more.

• The group that received mints from the server with the check, without the server actually mentioning the mints, saw a small 3 percent increase in tips.
• The group that received mints that were mentioned by the server (ex. “Would you like a mint?”) saw an increase of 14 percent in tips.
• The final group received mints with the check, but also received another set of mints a short while afterward in case they wanted more. Here, the tips increased by 27 percent.

In the final group, the difference was not the extra mints. The difference was the post-purchase personalization with the seemingly genuine concern for the customer. This connection can be used to your online advantage as well.

A highly effective method for increasing the value of an online customer is a personalized follow-up. Personalization can have a positive and direct impact on customer loyalty, conversion rates and customer retention.

To get it right, personalization is more than sprinkling a customer’s name on an e-mail. Better personalization dives into what your customer likes, when they want to hear from you and how they want to hear from you. In essence, it’s about delivering the right content to the right potential customer at the best time possible.

Some examples of post-purchase personalization can be offers for free training and support for your product or service, a complimentary guide that is related to the product or service or a reward for trying your product or service.

Industry Events

New Media Expo: Las Vegas; January 6-8, 2013
Affiliate Summit: Las Vegas; January 13-15, 2013
Online Marketing Summit: San Diego; February 11-13, 2013

The Link: SEO.com’s Newsletter December 2012 is a post by SEO expert Darin Berntson. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

8 Things That Changed the Internet Marketing Industry in 2012

In just this past year, there have been remarkable changes and challenges in internet marketing. The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) became the largest protest in the history of the internet. Google’s Gmail became the world’s most popular email service. China blocked the New York Times from their searches and social media. Facebook became a public company, and Apple Inc. became the largest company by market capitalization in the world.

Search engines and social media sites also made changes that altered the entire digital landscape. Here are at least eight game changers that rocked the internet marketing industry:

1. Google+ Gained Traction

Google Places became Google+ Local, which changed the approach to local SEO. Users who log into their Google+ account while performing a search will see personalized results based on social data from Google+. Google+ Local has aimed to make reviews, recommendations and opinions of those in a user’s Google+ Circles a central part of their search experience. Bing also provides what’s known as “social results,” but because Google is still the search giant, users have more incentive to use Google+ more than ever before.

 2. Author Rich Snippets

Author Rich Snippets have given internet marketers the opportunity to build their author rank by linking their Google + page to the content they write through what’s known as rel=author. Utilizing rich snippets allows the author to have their photo show up in the search results next to their content, and build author authority which increases click-through rates on those pages.

3. Social Media Accommodations for Brands

Throughout the year many of the big players in social media have made numerous updates to better their platform for users and businesses. One common change was making it easier for brands to standout:

• Facebook created Global Pages so brands can manage multiple accounts using one central dashboard
• Twitter announced cover photos so brands have more real estate to promote the company
• LinkedIn designed new company pages to showcase more company information and logos
• Pinterest allowed businesses to set up official business accounts     

4. Panda Update

To continue the crusade against webspam, Google launched a number of Panda updates throughout the year. One of the major things that these updates cracked down on was page layout. The algorithm adjustments targeted sites with low quality content and ad-heavy page layouts. The update encouraged websites to deliver high quality content “above the fold.”

5. Penguin Update

In another step to reward high quality websites, Google introduced Penguin updates. The first Penguin update hit hard against “over-optimization.” Google cracked the whip to punish spam-like keyword stuffing, exact match anchor text, low quality content and other practices that attempt to manipulate the search engines.

6. Knowledge Graph

In an attempt to start building the next generation of search, Google rolled out the Knowledge Graph. The Knowledge Graph offers additional search results to help users find the right thing faster and receive a bigger summary that is relevant to the search topic. The idea is to help people do less time searching and more time discovering.

7. Google Disavow Link Tool

As the search engines get better at evaluating links, Google introduced the Disavow Link Tool to help websites clean up any suspicious and spam-like backlinks. Websites that receive warning concerning “unnatural links” can use this tool to remove the low quality links to their site to prevent penalties.

8. SEO.com’s 5^th Year Anniversary

Okay, so maybe our anniversary didn’t rock the foundation of internet marketing—but it was a big year for our skilled teams and clientele. We’ve been in the industry for five fun years adjusting and anticipating changes all along the way.

Moving Forward

As the way we communicated and even marketed continued to change throughout the year, one thing remained constant: the need for high quality content. The most effective (yet most difficult) SEO tactic of the year was content creation. Honest content marketing assists with social media and SEO efforts, and will surely be one of the best practices to follow in the upcoming year.

Client Spotlight: Thanksgiving Point Uses Digital Marketing to Remain a Hot Community Spot

In the hustle and bustle of modern life, many of us have lost our connection to nature, history and the world around us. A desire to re-establish those connections is why, more than a decade ago, the nonprofit Thanksgiving Point Institute was established. The grounds offer a family-friendly experience nestled in Utah that strives to change lives through education, family experiences and interaction with the community. Offering gardens, museums, an emporium, restaurants and shops, this Wasatch Front destination provides a vast array of fun things to do in Utah, every season of the year.

Visiting Thanksgiving Point is not just for families, the expansive property offers venues and programs for corporate events, parties and even weddings. As a nonprofit organization, the institute’s mission is to foster learning, bring families closer together and give opportunities for people to form lasting community connections.

In an attempt to continue to fulfill their mission and give back, Thanksgiving Point decided to increase their digital marketing efforts, and they enlisted SEO.com to help them raise the online profile of the property’s best features.

Our main goal for the 2012 campaign was to increase attendance to our venues, events and catering bookings,” said Thanksgiving Point’s marketing manager, Emily Duffy.

SEO.com built an aggressive campaign for the organization prioritizing certain search terms to improve their rankings online, and a year later organic web traffic to the site rose 22 percent. Seventeen specific keywords for the organization have risen to the first page of search engine results, and most have increased as many as 20 to 40 positions.

Thanksgiving Point is a stunning venue for weddings, and one of their marketing goals was to increase their search rankings for wedding-related keyword terms.

While most of our chosen keywords have seen significant movement, we also had a very successful summer of wedding bookings at Thanksgiving Point,” said Duffy.

While the organization has plenty to do to prepare for the upcoming holiday season, during which their popular Christmas light display attracts thousands, their search marketing efforts are in good hands. The team at SEO.com is working to continue their success with online marketing for all of Thanksgiving Point’s unique venues.

Hiring SEO.com allowed us to draw from a pool of industry experts who have the ability to monitor our rankings while keeping us apprised of changes that may need to be addressed,” Duffy said.

The dedicated experts at SEO.com will certainly be on top of things for Thanksgiving Point, and work to help them see even more success in the year to come.

SEO Tip: Personalize Your Follow-Up

A study about the effect of dinner mints proved that a personalized follow-up (post-purchase) can affect a customer’s perception of service. According to the research, waiters who left dinner mints saw an increase in tips. But, there’s more.

• The group that received mints from the server with the check, without the server actually mentioning the mints, saw a small 3 percent increase in tips.
• The group that received mints that were mentioned by the server (ex. “Would you like a mint?”) saw an increase of 14 percent in tips.
• The final group received mints with the check, but also received another set of mints a short while afterward in case they wanted more. Here, the tips increased by 27 percent.

In the final group, the difference was not the extra mints. The difference was the post-purchase personalization with the seemingly genuine concern for the customer. This connection can be used to your online advantage as well.

A highly effective method for increasing the value of an online customer is a personalized follow-up. Personalization can have a positive and direct impact on customer loyalty, conversion rates and customer retention.

To get it right, personalization is more than sprinkling a customer’s name on an e-mail. Better personalization dives into what your customer likes, when they want to hear from you and how they want to hear from you. In essence, it’s about delivering the right content to the right potential customer at the best time possible.

Some examples of post-purchase personalization can be offers for free training and support for your product or service, a complimentary guide that is related to the product or service or a reward for trying your product or service.

Industry Events

New Media Expo: Las Vegas; January 6-8, 2013
Affiliate Summit: Las Vegas; January 13-15, 2013
Online Marketing Summit: San Diego; February 11-13, 2013

The Link: SEO.com's Newsletter December 2012 is a post by SEO expert Darin Berntson. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Hubspot Teams Up With SEO.com For FREE SEO Crash Course Video Training

From SEO basics to advanced strategies, this 3-part video series has it all.

>> Enroll In The Crash Course TODAY

Search engine optimization is a critical part to any business marketing strategy, and it is important to keep up to date with all of the changes happening with the Google algorithm, as well as other search engines.

If you want to be found online, you must be aware of all the critical steps that will help your business succeed.

IN THIS COURSE YOU WILL LEARN:

• Introductory: How to improve on-page SEO
  Featuring Rebecca Babicz 
• Intermediate: How Social Media Impacts SEO
  Featuring Darin “Doc” Berntson 
• Advanced: Deep Dive Into Google’s Algorithm Changes
  Featuring Preston Van Dyke 

WHO SHOULD ENROLL?
Business owners and marketing professionals wanting to learn more about SEO

Embed our SEO Crash Course Infographic:

<a href="http://www.seo.com/blog/seo-crash-course-3-part-video-series/"><img src="http://www.seo.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/SEO-Crash-Course-Video-Series-Graphic-500x1024.jpg" alt="SEO Crash Course – 3-Part Video Series - Infographic "width="width="500" height="1024" border="0" /></a>

We are thrilled to be a part of this SEO crash course video series with Hubspot.

Each course has a short video that is delivered via email each week. You will also receive some great action items, best practices, and additional resources from Hubspot.

What are you waiting for?

>> Click Here To Enroll In The Crash Course TODAY!!

When you have completed the course, or any time before then, we would love to get your feedback in the comments below.

SEO Crash Course: 3-Part Video Series is a post by SEO expert Darin Berntson. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Recently, our friends at Hubspot reached out to me and asked if we would like to be a part of a new ebook they were putting together called SEO Tips From Industry Experts… and of course I said “absolutely, we would love to!”

Our topic to cover was Mastering On-Page SEO, and for this we had our VP of Client Services, Greg Shuey provide the content.

Other topic covered in the eBook are:

• Keywords: Understanding Fundamentals by Rebecca Churt, Hubspot
• The Right Way to Build Links by Stephanie Chang, Distilled
• How Social Media Influences SEO by Darmesh Shah, Hubspot
• How To Increase Clicks In SERP by Rand Fishkin, SEOMOZ

After the Infographic below you will have an opportunity to download the new 61-page eBook.

We are honored to be a part of this revised guide that Hubspot has published, and to be in great company with Distilled, SEOmoz and of course Hubspot.

If you would like to get your hands on this new Learning SEO from the Experts ebook, download it now. This will be one eBook you will not want to miss!

And be sure to let us know what you think in the comments below.

>>Download The Guide Here

SEO Tips From Industry Experts: An Infographic And Ebook is a post by SEO expert Darin Berntson. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

A Lesson in SEO from the Presidential Debates

Politicians may be the ones using fighting words during debates for next month’s election, but it’s the search engines that are doing damage.

When you enter the search query “completely wrong” on Google Images, the results are dominated by pictures of the presidential candidate Mitt Romney. With a similar story, if you search on Google Images for “debate fail,” you will find pictures of President Obama.

Who is responsible for detonating what seems to be Google bombs? Find out.

What in the World Happened?
At first glance it might seem that someone had manually done some dirty SEO work to manipulate the search engine results page. However, these photos were attached to legitimate online new resources where Romney discusses being “completely wrong” about a quote. Likewise, Obama was associated with “debate fail” as a results of a variety of new sources analyzing his first presidential debate performance.

Technically, both instances are not traditional Google bombs and here’s why.

Traditional Google Bombs
A Google bomb is when someone attempts to make a webpage rank for a term that the page is not relevant for. The first Google bomb was back in 1999 for the search term “more evil than Satan himself,” which revealed results for Microsoft.

Here’s a look at some traditional political Google bombs:

• Senator John Kerry was a target during his 2004 presidential campaign. Conservative bloggers used his name as a synonym and search term “waffles” to refer to his flip-flop campaign statements.
• In 2007, the White House biography for former president George W. Bush was ranked number one for the phrase “miserable failure.”

As far as Google is concerned, they don’t meddle with the results page just because it may ruffle feathers. Google states, “we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the page.”

What This Means for Image SEO
With the clarification of a Google bomb, the Romney uproar and Obama outrage is not in the precise definition—but the instances still reveal a lot about SEO. The situations are natural results of the flurry of news articles associated with the candidates. The fresh content and images connected to the story happened to dominate the results. Both circumstances reinforce the importance of inserting title tags on images, and how the words surrounding the photos are very important. Not to mention the great power of credible sources.

Your Image SEO
Although we can see what the picture represents, search engines require help from SEO to determine the pictures relevance.

When it comes to helping your images grasp more attention for the search engines, here’s a checklist of things to do:

1. Include keywords in the image filename, this also becomes the image title tag. For example, if it’s an image of a cup of coffee name the image ‘cup-of-coffee.jpg.’ Dashes work better than underscores.
2. Use image ALT tags. Further describe your image in detail in the ALT text. For example, “drinking a cup of coffee.” Five words or less works best.
3. Place the image close to the most relevant content. If you have a headline that reads “The Nation’s Best Coffee,” be sure to position the image nearby.

Now What?
The presidential candidates’ search engine troubles prove that images are more than aesthetics, and that brands should be leveraging their power for good. Images hold a fair amount of SEO weight and the right image SEO can open up new opportunities for people to discover your brand.

SEO Tip: Improve Your Checkout Process

After you utilize search engine optimization to pull in more website traffic and you’ve done what you can to your landing pages to encourage conversion, don’t stop there. Too often websites drop the ball on the checkout process, but the checkout process is still a very vital part of your conversion.

The checkout process is just as important as the landing page, if not more. If something goes wrong during the process, or it becomes too complicated, customers will leave and never turn back.

To drive better conversion rates for your website, show them that they can trust you. Consider the following techniques:

• Showcase SSL certificates and badges. When it comes to an eCommerce website, this element lets customers know their credit card information is safe at all times, and protected from hackers. If you have a SSL certificate, put the security badge on your cart and checkout page. Buying a SSL certificate can start at around $50 and will increase depending on the level of security you need for your website.
• Include Testimonials. Studies have shown that 57 percent of online shoppers look for reviews or testimonials prior to their purchase. It helps to place a powerful testimony close to the source of reconsideration—like during the checkout process. Putting client logos or pictures of the source of the testimonial will also add credibility to testimonials. Not very many customers will openly provide you with a testimonial, but do not be afraid to approach customers and ask them for a review.
• Offer a Guarantee. Even after filling a cart, customers still need convincing your product is the right choice. If you can, provide a 100 percent money back guarantee to help pacify any anxiety. A satisfaction guarantee can give the customer an extra sense of trust.

These three suggestions are small and simple elements any eCommerce website can implement. Tweaking your checkout process can help you with cart abandonment issues and improve conversion rates. Addressing the customers’ fears and doubts will prove to go a long way.

Industry Events

ad:tech: New York; November 7-8, 2012
SES: Chicago; November 12-16, 2012
SMX: Las Vegas; December 5-6, 2012

The Link: SEO.com's Newsletter November 2012 is a post by SEO expert Darin Berntson. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.