If you build it they will come? False.

The online world is a competitive place. In addition to having a killer website, you also need to update your website with great content. Blog posts are the most popular and one of the easiest types of content to create. But just because you’re blogging, it’s not like teenagers are going to flock to your site like teenagers would to a Justin Beiber concert.

You need a comprehensive plan that entails more than simply posting to your blog posts to your company Facebook Page and sending out a few tweets. Here are 5 creative ways to promote your blog content that you might not have thought of:

1. Google+ Communities

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Get on Google+.

If you’re not on Google+, we have a great eBook that can help you get started. In addition to posting your blog post to your company page, you can also add your blog posts to Google+ Community Pages.

If you aren’t familiar with Google+ Community Pages, they are basically forums to share posts, ideas, questions, trends and advice with people who have similar interests. You can even set up your own Google+ Community.

I like to add posts and engage with communities from my personal Google+ account, but you can also join and engage with Communities from your business profile.

So what kinds of people are using Google+ Communities these days? All different kinds of people, from runners, to soccer enthusiasts to tech geeks and everyone in between. Some communities have thousands of followers, which means you have the potential to share your blog posts with a great number of people who have already opted-in to learn more about the topic. Here are some examples of some booming communities:

• SEO and Internet Marketing Professionals (created by SEO.com)
• Skiing and Snow Sports
• Food Lovers Guide
• Real Estate
• Home Décor

When it comes to promoting your posts on Community Boards, here are some rules I like to follow:

• Make sure you’re not just dropping a link. Actually add value to the community.
• Provide a micro-post about what the reader should expect in the post.
• Make sure you post your blogs in a relevant community.
• Make sure you add it to the right topic (Moderators will delete your post if it’s in the wrong place).
• Be friendly and respond to those who comment on your post.
• Thank people for sharing your post.
• Don’t just promote your own stuff. Comment, like and share other’s posts too!

Here is an example of how I do it:

 2. Pinterest Community Boards

Pinning blog content to Pinterest is a great way to share your content, especially if it’s an inforgraphic or micrographic. At SEO.com, we create visually appealing images for our blog posts just to fit the Pinterest platform. Below is an example of an eye catching image we will use for Pinterest for this post:

Pinterest Community boards are little different that just posting images to your own Pinterest boards. These boards allow multiple (sometimes 1,000s) people pin images about a specific designated topic. The great thing about Community Boards is that your pins can reach a large audience. For example, SEO.com has 253 followers, but because we contribute to Community Boards with thousands of followers, we’re able to amplify our reach.

The Community Board we created, Everything Marketing has a greater follower number than our regular account. (If you would like to become a contributor to our board, feel free to leave me a comment or tweet @SEOcom).

3. LinkedIn

Some might think of LinkedIn as a place they only go when they need a job. If you think like that you’re missing a huge opportunity to connect with professionals and share you content with influential people. Here are a few places you should promote your blog posts on LinkedIn:

• Linkedin Groups
• Company Page
• Personal Page

LinkedIn is a place where people go to share content that they think is valuable and makes them look smart, (unlike Facebook where people tend to share “funny” content). LinkedIn Groups are a lot like Google+ Communities and the same guidelines I wrote about above apply.

4. Quora

I recently wrote a whole post about how great Quora is, and one of those reasons is because there’s a huge opportunity on Quora to establish yourself as an expert through content marketing. Using Quora to research topic ideas for blog posts is a great strategy because you’ll be blogging about questions that potential clients might have. You’ll also have an opportunity to go back and add a link to your post blog post for more thorough information and drive traffic to your blog.

5. Guest Blogs/Internal Blogs

Blog posts ironically are a great way to promote other blog posts. Linking to older blog posts in your newer blog posts will give your posts a new life, plus it’s great for SEO.  As a rule of thumb all internal blog posts your write should link to at least one other blog post. If you’re writing guest posts, it’s a good strategy to link to blog posts because they are the deeper links on your page that show Google and other search engines that you’re website is more than just a homepage. Linking to blog posts in your guest posts is also a great way to establish authority on a certain topic, and send signals about the connection between keywords, content and your brand to the search engines.

The side benefit of writing great content is that people will naturally promote it for you and link to you. If you’re spending a lot of time on content marketing, hopefully this post gave you some ideas about how to give your content the little extra push and love it needs to get in front of the people who will find it useful, read it and share it.

What creative ways do you promote your blog posts? Feel free to leave us a comment below and join our Google+ Community and Everything Marketing Pinterest Community Board.

5 Creative Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts is a post by SEO expert Rebecca Babicz. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

So you’ve started to invest time and money in social media.

Your followers are increasing and so is your website traffic. Your social media strategy is working, right? Well sort of. There’s no doubt that more followers, re-tweets and traffic are all good signs. But it’s easy for marketers and small business owners to walk blindly without having an actionable social media roadmap; a roadmap that tells them exactly which metrics indicate that they are getting closer to (or farther away from) their goals.

A Map to Growth

The first step to creating a social media roadmap is establishing your goals. Some common goals that companies hope to achieve through social media are:

• Increasing Brand Awareness
• Increase Leads/Sales
• Improve Online Reputation
• Retain Clients

Your goals for social media will vary depending on your industry and services. And to make sure your goals are on-point, you need to ask yourself why those are your goals, and what value they actually represent. Once you have established some good goals, you then need to set some realistic expectations.

“Social media doesn’t convert fans into customers!” Yeah, you’ve heard it before, and maybe read a post or two about it. Some of these posts are missing the point, so I created a graphic to explain how you should look at social media conversion so you’re able to set realistic expectations.

When it comes to social media, customers might jump right through the sales funnel and decide that, after they’ve had a positive buying experience with your brand, they want to opt-into your social media updates.

Social media can help people discover your product or service through a strong content marketing plan. Discovery of a service/product or company is at the very top of the conversion funnel.  This is where a lot of business owners and managers get confused. You see, just because someone likes your brand on Facebook, and RTs your content on Twitter, doesn’t mean they’re prospects; not yet anyway.  It’s a good start however, and by constantly engaging those who have already decided they want to hear what you have to say, you have a better chance of converting fans into customers.

The next steps for your social media plan should be to establish some metrics that help you understand how you are performing against your goals. We’ll call these key performance indicators (or KPIs). Here are 4 KPIs that will help you measure how successful your social media campaign is:

New Website Visitors

One of your KPIs that you should  track (using Google Analytics) is how many new visitors come to your website via social media outlets. Tracking new fans or followers is great, but tracking new website visitors is a better KPI. If new fans are taking action by clicking on your blog posts or other social content to discover more about what you have to say, it proves they are engaged. New website visitors is also a good KPI for expanding your reach, increasing brand awareness and increasing leads.

Repeat Website Visitors

Another great KPI to track using marketing automation software is repeat website visitors. Some might argue that this metric doesn’t matter if fans aren’t converting to customers. But if you take a look back at the social media conversion funnel, you’ll see that most social media activity starts at the top of the funnel, and the next step is “realization of need.” If you’re producing the right kind of content and fans are coming back to your website over and over again to consume that content, eventually (hopefully) a realization of need will occur and you’ve moved them further down the funnel.

The thing about Social media is that it doesn’t convert visitors to customers as fast as SEO does. When people are searching in Google, they know exactly what they want and already have a realization of need. They’re naturally closer to conversion than someone you acquire through social.

A great example of this for my current social patterns is HubSpot marketing software. I am not at the point in my career where I am making big company decisions about what software we should be using. But I like HubSpot’s content, I follow them on various social media platforms and I read several of their blog posts and eBooks each month. Maybe a few years down the road I might be in a position to make a decision about marketing software. Take a guess about which provider I’ll contact first?

People who continue to visit your website might simply think you’re smart and enjoy your content, but the bottom line is that repeat visitors shows you that your fans are actively engaged. And if they (or someone they know) ever needs your product or service, they’ll know where to go.

Time Spent on Website

With social media, or any form of inbound traffic it’s important that your visitors aren’t just clicking on your website and bouncing. This is a tricky metric because, if you’re website isn’t set up for conversion optimization, your visitors are likely to bounce no matter how much social traffic your bring in.

Time spent on website is an important measure to track because it will show you how well you are reaching your target audience through social media. It will also give you feedback about how effective your content marketing campaign is. If people from social sources are spending more time on your site, you’ll see how well you are integrating other parts of your inbound marketing campaign with social media.

Conversions

The last and most important KPI to measure are conversions from social media. You can track this by setting up proper conversion goals in Google Analytics. Some examples of conversions are:

• Opting into a newsletter list
• Downloading an eBook
• Downloading a Whitepaper
• Filling out a proposal
• Signing up for a free product trial (Our 14- day free trail of SEO Insight is a good example )
• Buying a product

Like I already talked about, you’re not going to have as many conversions from social media as you would from your SEO efforts, but backed with a solid content marketing plan, social media will bring in conversions.

Social media is all about engaging your followers so that when the need arises, they know exactly where to go. This need could arise a few weeks from now or take up to several years. These 4 KPIs will show you if you’re getting closer (or further away) from engaging your fans and reaching your potential of an effective social media campaign. Are there any other KPIs you would add to the list? Leave me a comment below!

How To Grow Your Business With REAL Social Media Goals and KPIs is a post by SEO expert Rebecca Babicz. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Are you a small business owner that is currently not using social media effectively to market your business? You’re not alone. A whopping 76% of small business owners are not using social media, according to this study. That’s an unfortunate statistic because small businesses have a huge opportunity to retain customers and build relationships with new prospects through social media.

“I just don’t know where to start” is one of the biggest reasons small businesses aren’t active on social media. That’s just not a good enough excuse, and I’m here to help.

Social media can be overwhelming, there’s no doubt about it: Facebook? Twitter? Google+? Foursquare? And the list goes on. It’s hard to know which platform is the best for your small business. For starters you need to establish what your goals are for social media. Ask yourself, are your goals:

• Lead generation?
• Brand awareness?
• Customer service?
• To show up in Google maps?

Once you’ve established your goals you also need to understand where your customers are.

If you fit into the “mom and pop” shop category (let’s say a local restaurant, auto body shop, handy man, coffee shop or car wash) a lot of your social media strategy should be around showing up on Google Maps and gaining positive reviews that show up in Search Engines. The same applies for a local law firm, medical practitioner’s office, dentists etc. If your small business can benefit from online reviews, you should encourage your customers to write reviews. Social Media and Local SEO work together to increase your visibility online and bring a flood of new customers via the power of the internet.

Here’s a list of sites where you should claim your listing or “business citation”:

• Google+/Google Local
• FourSquare
• Bing Local
• Yahoo Local
• Yext
• Yelp
• City Search
• Local.com
• SuperPages

Not all of these are considered “social media” sites, but one social media site you should absolutely should be active on is Google +. We have an awesome eBook you can download here about how to create and optimize your Google+ Business Page. FourSquare is a social media site that encourages those who visit your business to “check-in.” Although Foursquare lost a little bit of its novelty because now you can also check in on Instagram, Facebook, etc. small businesses should still take a look to see if Foursquare can work for them.

If you’re in the travel/activities/hotels/restaurant industry there’s new potential with Facebook since they rolled out their new Knowledge Graph Search. Some of the ways people will be searching on Facebook graph search will look like this:

• Where are hotels that my friends have stayed?
• What’s a new restaurants within 15 miles from my house that has drink specials tonight?
• What bar have at least 10 of my friends been to?
• What wineries in Napa Valley have my friends been to?
• What do my friends do when they go to Canada?

As Facebook Knowledge Graph evolves, the opportunity to gain new business through social media is huge. Take a look at how to optimize your business page for Facebook Graph Search. Also don’t count out Pinterest and Instagram to promote beautiful photos of your destination or fun lifestyle photos.

If your small business is in the technology/IT/computer industry you should consider using Quora to answer tough questions that people need solved that pertains to your product or service. Although you might consider your industry “boring” there are still people who need your product/service. Your challenge will be finding where those customers are conversing online, so you can be helpful to them.

If your small business falls within the home & family industry there’s huge potential to market your product or service on Pinterest. Let’s say you’re a wedding planner or make custom gardening supplies, Pinterest is a great visual platform where you can grab people’s with images. Those who own boutiques, jewelry stores or any other kind of small business retail store should also get started with Pinterest.

Not all companies are right for every social media platform. There’s really no question that you should be on Google+, and I would suggest testing Facebook and Twitter and seeing how you can make them work for your particular business. When it comes to Facebook and Twitter, a strategic content marketing plan is what will fuel your success.

Twitter is also a great customer service tool and conversing with current clients by re-tweeting and thanking them for mentioning your business. When you start using Twitter, remember it’s a dinner table, not a microphone. Place a priority on answers tweets that mention your brand and all direct messages.

Hopefully this post gave you an idea where to start. Once you’ve set up your Google+ Places Listing and added business citation (your name, address and phone number) to the sites listed above you should then dabble with other social platforms to see which ones work best for you.  After you’ve got your start with social media, come back and check out our content marketing eBook to learn about the types of content you should be creating for SEO and social media.

If you have any specific questions about how your particular business can get started with social media, feel free to leave a comment down below!

Small Business Social Media 101: How To Get Started is a post by SEO expert Rebecca Babicz. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

If you’re looking for a platform that will help broaden your online visibility, Quora is a great place to invest some time.

Quora is a Q&A community that’s highly underrated and underused in my opinion. This platform is all about building your authority on a specific topic and building relationships by answering questions with people who share similar ideas and interests.

As a small business owner, you need a well rounded inbound marketing strategy that encourages people to discover your product or service online. Quora can help you build your online reputation and guide prospects to discover you.

There’s a conversation happening right now on Quora with or without you. Joining that conversation can only benefit you. Here are 5 reasons why your small business should be active on Quora:

1.       Quora is a great inbound marketing tool

Customers inhabit different spaces online. They’re looking for reliable information from people they can trust. The developers of Quora understand this, and that’s why they’ve integrated a DIGG-like voting mechanism for the quality of answers where users can vote up an answer. Also unlike Yahoo answers, Quora integrates Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, so it’s easy to follow your friends, which builds trust and legitimacy for the user. As the internet gets more convoluted with low quality content, users flock to the places they know and trust. It’s up to you to build that trust by sharing your expertise.

Quora allows you to give direct answers to anyone asking about your product or service. The more answers you supply, the bigger your influence on Quora will become. You also have an opportunity to share links to blog posts, product pages or other helpful pieces of content on your site. It should be noted that the Quora Community doesn’t like it when users leave shallow answers just to link back to their site. Make sure that if you are doing a little self-promoting, that you’re actually adding value and benefiting the community. Not doing so can hurt your online reputation.

Quora links are marked as “nofollow” which means they don’t pass any “link juice” to your site. However, adding links to answers on Quora is a great overall inbound strategy because you’ll increase your authority, drive traffic to your site and raise brand awareness. Plus no-follow links can help build a well-rounded backlink portfolio.

2.       Search Engines crawl Quora’s content and add them to search results.

Because people are asking questions that are similar (if not exactly the same) as they are on Bing, Google and Quora, your answers to topic-relevant, keyword-rich questions, on Quora have a good chance of showing up in search results. This is especially true for longer, more specific queries. Here’s how the two search giants use Quora:

• Bing & Quora: It’s been about 7 months since the red-headed step child of the search world, Bing, announced that Quora questions and answers have been added to their Social Sidebar. Bing is using Quora as a platform to pose legitimate answers to search queries to help provide a well-rounded search result for the user.
• Google & Quora: Maybe you don’t care about Bing, you never use it and don’t think your customers are using it either. Guess what? Google’s Quora integration is also quite advanced. Unlike Bing, Google simply might grab from Quora what they feel is the single best answer, based on its algorithm for any questions you might ask. 

 3.       Quora can help you do competitive and industry research.

Although it’s important to actively engage with the Quora community, it’s okay to sit back and observe what’s going on. Become an investigator; are your competitors using Quora? How do prospects weigh your competitors’ product or service against yours? What are their pros and cons, verses your pros and cons? Maybe there’s an opportunity to chime in about your product or service and explain your unique value proposition (remember: make sure you’re adding value and not just dropping a link). Are people expressing a common problem they need solved industry wide? Maybe there are ways to expand your product or service that you never thought of. It’s amazing what you can find out if you keep your ears open!

4.       Quora can help you manage your online reputation.

Just like you can use Quora to keep an eye out to see what people are saying about your competitors, you can also set up Google alerts to monitor what people are saying about your own brand. Simply set up a Google Alert for the query “Quora Your Brand Name.” You can also monitor what people are saying about your industry, product/service and competitors with Google Alerts. Typically Twitter and Facebook are outlets that you should be using for customer service, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be keeping tabs on Quora and answering questions and concerns and responding to negative or positive feedback.

5.       Quora is great for Content Marketing ideas.  

As a small business, writing high quality content that speaks to your prospects and answers their questions should be the basis of your inbound strategy moving forward. It’s easier said than done, getting into the head space of potential clients and understanding the problems that they want solved. That’s how Quora can help. By searching through topics that relate to your product you will have a better understanding of the questions your prospects have and the language they use. Do prospects use industry jargon or are they using other words to describe your product or service? Here at SEO.com, we’re always learning the words that prospects use to describe SEO. Some might use phrases like, “how to rank higher in Google,” while others might associate SEO with “inbound marketing.” There might be questions that people are asking that are obvious to you but aren’t obvious to those not heavily involved in the industry. 

When you see these types of questions a little bell should go off in your head. These are the types of topic ideas you should be crafting your content strategy around. (Pro-tip: write a micro post to answer questions for Quora and go in deeper detail on your blog where you can link to).

Quora has remained relatively spam-free due to the community they’ve built and their employees who monitor the site heavily. The reason why Quora is underused in my opinion is because it’s takes some serious time to answer questions intelligently on Quora, and people aren’t always willing to put in that time. The truth is that if your a small business owner you’re probably an expert in at least a few things, so don’t be shy about your expertise. The internet marketing strategies that won’t get wiped out by the next Google update are going to be the ones that provide value to those searching on Google, and these are the strategies that take the most time. Hopefully I’ve convinced you to at the very least check it Quora and see what you can find about your company, product or service.

Did I miss anything? How else do you use Quora for online marketing?

5 Reasons Your Small Business Should Be Using Quora is a post by SEO expert Rebecca Babicz. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Internet Marketing is an extremely new industry.

Heck, Google is just 14 years old. So what does that mean about me and my two years working in this industry? It doesn’t make me ancient, but it sure doesn’t make me newbie either. Two years is a long time in SEO when you take into consideration the rapid changes, algorithm updates and the evolution of social media. The learning curve also isn’t so steep when you have a dozen of go-to blogs you read on a daily basis, surround yourself with SEO experts and attend Search Marketing and Social Media events with guest speakers like, Danny Sullivan, Rand Fishskin, Duane Forrester and Peter Shankman. With so much information out there, you would be foolish not to take advantage of it as a marketer.

I’ve taken advantage of all of the free information out there and in an attempt to solidify what I’ve learned I started writing. And didn’t stop until I got to 102:

Search Engine Optimization

1. SEO isn’t dead; it’s evolving.
2. The lines between PR, SEO and social media are becoming blurred.
3. SEO is a culmination of online marketing strategies that lets the search engines know you’re relevant, informative and worthy of being ranked.
4. Google wants to rank brands; not websites.
5. It’s not about how pretty your website looks; it’s about how well your website converts visitors to paying customers.
6. Everything on your website that doesn’t contribute to your primary objective should be eliminated.
7. Never stop A/B testing elements on your website. Doing your own A/B tests will give you data on what compels people to click and convert on your site.
8. Don’t count out Bing. With Bing’s social search they might close in even more on Google’s market share.
9. You should be tracking all of your online marketing campaigns through tracking URLs. (We can help you with this, by the way). The great thing about internet marketing is that everything is trackable.
10. Don’t get mad at Google. It’s easy to forget that they’re facilitating an immense amount of free traffic to websites every year. And the better they get at filtering out webspam, the more relevant legitimate sites like yours appear.
11. Even though Google doesn’t look at page descriptions as a ranking factor; your page description is still important because it’s what compels users to CLICK on your search listings!
12. Title tags, or the clickable links that show up on search results, are also really important. Limit them to 70 characters so the whole title will appear without getting cut off in Google or Twitter.
13. Optimize all of your photos! This is one simple thing that most people don’t do. When you upload a photo fill out the “alternative text” and “title” with a brief description of the photo and a call-to-action that will appear when users mouse over the image. Naturally, your description should include keywords.
14. Every single page on your website, and key content elements on those pages, should be shareable on the “Big 5”: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+.

15. Besides the Big 5, keep an eye out for Tumblr and Instagram. Depending on your industry, these niche sites could be where you put the most of effort and time to reach a relevant audience.
16. The 6 major “investment” areas for SEO are: crawlability, site structure, on-page optimization, content development, links and social media. – Duane Forrester at Salt Lake’s Search Marketing Event.
17. Content isn’t everything; there’s still a lot more to SEO that simply involves technically optimizing your site and existing assets).

Social Media

18. Engagement is the most important measure to track when it comes to social media. By keeping your followers engaged, they’ll know exactly where to go when the need arises.
19. You can’t control what goes “viral.” There’s no formula for making content spread virally. All you can do is know your audience and try your best to engage them.
20. It’s not about the amount of followers you have; it’s about how relevant your followers are.
21. “Everything you post, say, tweet or share on social media increases or decreases the credibility of your personal brand.” –Peter Shankman at Salt Lake’s Social Media Club event.
22. Sharing happiness is always good self promotion.
23. Being helpful is the most important thing on social media. This applies to both your personal or business account.
24. Social media rule of thumb: Listen before you speak. Don’t smother people. Earn some street cred before you engage in the conversation.
25. Don’t underestimate the power of your employees. They are the secret to creating great content and spreading that content socially to the right audience.
26. Social signals do affect your SEO campaign directly. They’re a sign of “topical authority” according to Bing.
27. Social signals remain only a few of the thousands of signals that Bing uses to rank websites. But they’re becoming more important every day and are here to stay.
28. At SEO.com we’ve never bought followers, shares, tweets, etc. Buying followers might give you a quick win, but it’s not a long term strategy. If you think Facebook and Twitter can’t determine unnatural social patterns, you’re wrong.
29. Social media’s indirect impact on rankings are more important than their direct impact. When you have people sharing your content, your brand is in front of new people. Plus, you’ll gain more qualified traffic to your website, repeat visitors and leads/sales.

Images

30. Don’t underestimate the power of images to drive traffic and sales. (How’s it going Instagram and Pinterest?)
31. Besides just Pinterest and Instagram, you also need awesome, engaging images for Google+ and Facebook.
32. Images are the hook to your content; the first think people see on a page. Put some effort into them, and make them good.

33. Don’t forget about images on your product pages and blog posts. Visual cues help the reader digest written content and stay on the page longer.
34. If you’re an eCommerce website, consider placing a “pin it” button on every single one of your products for Pinterest. It’s done wonders for Sephora.
35. Place this link in your browser and replace “YourWebsite” with your website to see which of your images are on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/source/YourWebsite (or your competitors…)
36. Pinterest just rolled out Analytics for their site, in preparation to monetize. First you need to verify your business account. Switch to the new look. Click on the Anlaytics tab and viola!
37. Pinterest boards rank in Google, not individual pins. Make your boards as specific as possible and add as much content that relates to that topic as you can.
38. Pinterest and Instagram contests are great, but make sure your end goal is relevant followers; not just “new” followers.

Google+

39. Google+ is a great way to build your authority within your interests and expertise.
40. Google+ is a better way to engage with influencers in your industry than Facebook or Twitter. Adding a person you’ve never met on Facebook is creepy; circling them on G+ is not. Unlike Twitter you have more than 140 characters to get their attention.
41. Google+ Communities are a great place to promote your work and grow your online network. (Take a look at our booming G+ Community).
42. The fact that Google hasn’t given up on Google+ means that you shouldn’t give up either.
43. Google Authorship is important, if you care about Google.
44. It’s important to build your Author Rank. Google is placing more emphasis on domain and page authority and the Google Authorship markup will help establish trust within your industry (and with Google). 
45. As YouTube, Google+ and Hangouts become more integrated, don’t be surprised if Google+ capitalizes on YouTube’s user base for Google+’s benefit.

Facebook

46. Affinity, Interaction and Timeliness are the three scores that affect your Facebook EdgeRank score. Not every single one of you posts (from your personal or business account) will reach all of your followers or friends.
47. If Facebook is an outlet where you want to reach all of your fans, you’re going to have to cough up some cash and pay to promote posts. Facebook is a business and needs to make money too.
48. Remember how quickly Facebook changed their site in the early years? Change is going to be constant. Facebook’s “Knowledge Graph” is in its early stages, expect quick and rapid updates that will make the search feature more useful. Also don’t expect Facebook to stop changing their Timeline layout.
49. Facebook Knowledge Graph is currently not all that helpful for all industries because we don’t “like” everything on Facebook that we like in real life.
50. The companies that can benefit from Knowledge Graph are in the entertainment, movies, TV, music, restaurant, travel, hotel and activities industries.
51. Just like you can optimize your website for Google, you can optimize your Facebook page for the Knowledge Graph.
52. Sometimes people just want a good laugh, especially on Facebook. Instead of trying to sell them something, try to get them to laugh. The end result will be the same: engaging your audience with your brand.
53. Pay close attention to what fans respond to. Duplicate and amplify your activity across those same lines.

Twitter

54. Tweet- Deck is the most effective way to use Twitter. It lets you organize your followers into lists. For example, at SEO.com we have lists for “competitors,” “influencers” and “engages with us.” For my personal twitter I have lists for “marketing,” “action sports” and “music.”
55. All social media platforms are an extension of your customer service department. This is true especially for Twitter because of its instantaneous nature.
56. It’s okay to post links to your blog a few times a day on Twitter. Understand that not all of your followers are paying attention to Twitter (or you) 24/7.
57. Mix up the title of your tweets that link to blog posts. “5 Ways to Beat EdgeRank,” might not compel someone to click, but “The Best Content to Create for Facebook” might. As a rule of thumb, create at least 5 different tweets for the same blog post.

Content

58. Your content will matter more 6 months from now; not less. Content is becoming the center of gravity for online marketing.
59. If you ever get writer’s block, check your keyword research; you might be targeting a topic nobody wants to search or read about, which means you’re talking to an empty room.
60. Create cool content that people want to share instead of “great” content that just fills up your site and social feeds. Utah based, Zagg is a good example of how to do just that.
61. You don’t need access to the journalist anymore: You are the journalist. Create great content and establish yourself as an authority.
62. By creating great content and establishing yourself as an authority, you’ll build an army of people (your audience) who will spread your content for free.
63. Timely blog posts around the holidays are effective. Who wouldn’t want to share a blog post about how SEOs say I love you on Valentine’s Day?
64. How Tos, Top 5/10/etc., Tips, Reviews, Definitive Guides and Top 102 lists (You’re already at 64!) are good ways to format blog content that’s scannable.
65. Create clickable titles for the user, not for Google. Google is smart enough to understand how the content inside your blog post relates to your title.

66. Bloggers should take note, and act a little bit more like Kanye West.
67. Context (noun): The parts of a written or spoken statement that follow a specific work or passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect. Context is everything in internet marketing.
68. Check your Google Analytics and see which of your blog posts perform well. There might be opportunity to update and re-publish them. (Like we did with 71 Chrome Extensions for Blogging & SEO).
69. Slideshare is a great way to breathe new life into your best content by repurposing it in another format.
70. Google can crawl Slide shares for links, which is why they can be a powerful part of your content/ link-building strategy.
71. We live in a digital world where a lot of information is re-packaged but in a different way. If you’re repurposing ideas, you better make them your own.
72. When commenting on blog posts, G+ Communities, etc. actually adding to the conversation goes a lot farther than a simple, “good post.”
73. Search engines REALLY DO respond to unique, useful content.

Link- Building

74. Links that are the hardest to obtain directly will normally benefit you the most. High-value publications place hurdles to filter out low-quality tactics.
75. Exact-match anchor text isn’t dead but it’s on a feeding tube. Google is smart enough to understand what a link is about without using the exact phrase you want to rank within the link, and it may hurt your rankings if you keep hammering the same phrase over and over.
76. Build links through already existing marketing strategies.
77. Google Instant’s auto-complete feature is great for keyword research.

Quora

78. Quora is an underrated social platform.
79. Quora is great for establishing your authority in a particular niche and answering questions that prospects might have which could lead to a backlink to your website.
80. Quora is also a great place to find content ideas. Look at the questions that people outside of your industry are asking. Pay attention to the language they use. Something that’s obvious to you, might not be so obvious to prospect. That’s why you’re the expert.
81. Quora shows up on Bing results as a part of their social side-bar which gives you a huge opportunity to rank on the first page of Bing for particular search queries.
82. Quora even pulls weight with Google. Unlike Bing, Google simply grabs from Quora what they feel is the single best answer, based on their algorithm for any questions you may ask.
83. If you’re providing topic-relevant, keyword-rich questions people are asking on Quora, there’s a good chance you will show up in Bing and Google results, especially for long-tail keyword phrases.

Inbound Marketing Execution

84. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.
85. Use the language that your customers are using so you don’t lose prospects with jargon; especially in the SEO industry. No one wants to hear you geek out about “meta” keywords and canonical tags.
86. We’re in the middle of a massive culture shift. Don’t get emotionally attached to tactics or platforms.
87. The ability to write, a once overlooked skill, is now one of the most important things a market can develop.
88. Authenticity will always win in the long run; it trumps everything else you do.
89. Don’t abuse sites like PRWeb.com for press releases unless you actually have something to announce. It’s only a matter of time before using press-release services as a link-building tactic will back fire.
90. The same goes for infographics. Use them for social media, not as a link-building tactic, if you want to fool-proof your strategy.
91. Help A Reporter Out (HARO), is worth signing up for. It’s free, and if you keep up on it, you’ll find opportunities to be interviewed by a reporter about a query you reply to which could be featured in an editorial story.

Mobile & Local SEO

92. People of the world are doing two things: they are becoming more social and more reliant on their smartphones. Don’t ignore the mobile space.
93. One key to ranking well locally is to have your business address citation (also known as the NAP- name, address, phone number) added to your website and have this citation appear with the same unique information on multiple sites across the web.
94. Another key to local SEO is receiving high- quality reviews from customers on sites like Yelp, City Search, Google+ Local and Angie’s list.
95. Google+ Local is also a big key to the local SEO game and showing up on mobile results for users in your geographic area.
96. Mobile user intent is very different than desktop user intent. How are people using their mobile device to search for your product? Think backwards, from search to site, when crafting mobile SEO and PPC campaigns.
97. Google OWNS mobile search. Look at what happened when Apple released Apple Maps.
98. Mobile ads are just getting started. Expect to be dished ads based on your location even more in the future.
99. Mobile SEO should no longer be an afterthought. By 2015, 2 billion people worldwide are expected to own smartphones and Mobile local search is predicted to surpass local desktop search by 2015.
100. A responsive website design is not always the best for mobile. It depends on the purpose of your website.
101. Things don’t happen overnight. There’s no quick and easy way to gain a following on Twitter or rank #1 in Google. Internet marketing is a marathon; not a sprint.

102. Companies like SEO.com exist because Internet Marketing is a big mountain for your company to climb on its own. With support from an agency, you’ll have the ability to reach new heights.

What are some quick tips you’ve learned about Internet Marketing that you would add to the list? Leave me a comment and let me know if you would like me to go into further detail.

102 Things I’ve Learned About Internet Marketing is a post by SEO expert Rebecca Babicz. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

In this 3-part blog series about the state of SEO, I set out to depict what real SEO is.

What strategies and aspects of SEO are important to your overall inbound strategy? Which tactics are outdated? How has SEO changed? And lastly, what will continue to be more important as the state of SEO evolves?

By now you should be aware that SEO is more than just, “link-building,” and I’ve hopefully debunked a few SEO rumors such as “SEO is dead,” (part 1) and “SEO is spam” (part 2). In the third and final part of the series, we’re finally addressing the disconcerting method of link-building. The experts also weigh in on 3 over-looked  aspects of SEO: digital media, web-development and e-mail marketing. Here’s what they had to say:

Dustin Heap, SEO Manager, on the state of Link-Building:

Since the beginning it’s been about links. Google became Google due to their ability to rank results in a more advanced way than meta-keywords and keyword stuffing. Despite the massive changes in the last year or two within the SEO industry, it is still all about links. But now it’s different.

No longer do manually built, low quality, perfectly matched anchor text links drive results like they once did. Rather, advances by Google and a more scalable enforcement of their guidelines means that link building has to be more strategic. For example,  a mere mention of a brand combined with the context of the content may already be impacting results or will down the road (co-citation or co-occurrence), and  anchor text, depending on who you ask, is either completely dead or simply more accurately used by Google. I believe the latter. Thus, the current state of link building requires that SEOs think and work like real marketers.  As Wil Reynolds has put it, do real company stuff.

Your new link-building mindset should be to earn links that are relevant and high quality in places your specific audience congregates online. Examples may include:  a local business listing, human curated resource list or even a legitimate guest post on a leading industry blog. On the other hand leveraging content marketing and social media will help you attract natural links and social signals that will impact your SEO efforts.  You’ll also attract real customers through links that aren’t “manually” built. SEOs should focus on efforts that are designed to attract potential customers and secondarily links. Don’t worry so much about controlling anchor text or building large quantities of links but focus on creating valuable content that will get shared.  Get your content (and company) in the places that your customers inhibit online. These links will, by nature, be natural and more relevant. Doing so will not only diversify your traffic sources but should future-proof your rankings from algorithm updates that go after low-quality and old-school link building tactics.

Darin Berntson, Community Manager, on the state of digital media:

It’s a digital world now, gone are the days of just building a website and visitors showing up. You need to have different inbound marketing strategies to gain a prospects attention. Digital Media is a form of content marketing, but because content marketing is synonymous with “blogging” in some minds, we needed another word. The two types of digital media content that I’ll be talking about that can help your SEO are webinars and videos:

• Videos: YouTube is your best friend. Creating compelling video, as well as optimizing your channel is key. YouTube being the second largest search engine magnifies the importance of getting on the service. Link juice from YouTube pointing to your site is gold. From here, you can embed this content on your site for additional views and context. But whatever you do, do not forget other video platforms like Vimeo.
• Webinars: If you are in the business of generating leads, webinars should be a part of your marketing toolkit. Webinars are a great way to introduce people to your product or service, continued education and lead nurturing.  If you promote your webinars properly on event sites (there are many) you will get some additional links coming back to your site, and a bit of social interaction as well. After you’re webinar is over, you can re-promote the recorded webinar and slideshare on your website. This gives you more content to let prospects (and Google) know that you’re relevant, informative and timely.  

Co-Marketing is a great way to promote webinars and videos. Basically co-marketing is a lot like when you were in college and worked on group projects. Two (or more) companies collaborate on a project, share the credit, and reap the benefits. Unlike college, you’re not stuck working with people you don’t want to, and get to work with people who see the great benefit in working with you.

As the Community Manager here at SEO.com we have seen a huge benefit from co-marketing our 2013 webinar series. It’s great to have a 3^rd party validation on a particular subject (we’ve had presenters from Avalanche Media and Search Engine Land). Our presenters also got our name in front of who they influence, which attracted social mentions, links and new prospects. We also did a co-marketing video series with Hubspot, and in that case we helped promote their project and brought them a new audience. The best thing about co-marketing is that it’s a win-win situation, and both companies strengthen by building authority and a new audience.

Danielle Statton, Marketing Coordinator, on the state of e-mail marketing:

The connection between old-school email marketing and new-age SEO doesn’t seem obvious, other than both existing under the marketing umbrella, but can make a powerful combination. With strong strategies behind each, these tactics have the potential to strengthen each other.

SEO-generated informational queries bring visitors hungry for the specific content you offer, an incredible asset for conversion. On-page elements are important as well—naturally, visually appealing, optimized pages with low bounce rates encourage more page views and interaction.

Email marketing is the means by which the value-added content we’re all striving to develop in this new age of digital marketing is delivered to the right potential consumers at the appropriate stages of sales-readiness. Not to mention, well-executed email nurturing programs (solidified by the development of genius content) keep consumers coming back for more, giving them power to choose to continue through the sales cycle rather than alienating potential customers through more aggressive tactics.

As with everything in digital marketing, this process can only happen if you’re continuously developing compelling, targeted informational content. Continuous keyword research can help you see what queries potential consumers are performing.  You can then fill the gaps with informational content in order to attract consumers. Both methods play equally important roles in a powerful content marketing strategy where the objective is to attract, nurture, and guide information-hungry prospects to become loyal customers.

Derek Perkins, Director of Technology on the State of Web Development

Search engines try to be as neutral as possible when trying to rank content in order to promote content over semantics, but they have to rely on certain signals and flags to help find the best content. A great website structure isn’t going to win you great rankings on its own, but a poor structure will penalize you for years to come. If you don’t have a website yet or are in the middle of a redesign, make sure to integrate the design into all of your search marketing strategies so that you aren’t swimming upstream. Web development has a love/hate relationship with the world of SEO. Developers often think that they know best and resent the suggestions from SEO experts that they haven’t implemented something correctly. On the flip side, many SEOs don’t truly grasp the full breadth that is involved with building out a site, and something that to them appears to be an easy change has implications far greater than they realize. When they don’t play nice, that can have a seriously negative impact on traffic and conversions, but when the website structure and deployment is strategically designed with SEO efforts in mind, both teams’ efforts will be magnified. Here’s are some web-development tips that can help SEO:

• Site Architecture - Before deciding on a structure, first decide what content you want to have on your site. Your site is just a showplace for your content, not the other way around. Always keep the end user experience at the top of the priority list. There are always ways to try and beat the system when you try to design for search engines rather than humans, and an arms race with Google and Bing is not a solid long term strategy. Make sure to include keywords in your urls without repeating or looking spammy, and nest them in categories that make sense for a human, not a robot.
• Crawlability - With more protocol standardization, from XML sitemaps and RSS feeds to publishing services such as Ping-O-Matic and pubsubhubbub, notifying search engines that you have new content is no longer the most important thing. The most important thing is to make them believe that your deep pages matter. A great way to build credibility for both humans and robots is by establishing solid content hubs. Linking to your relevant content to these hubs lets your users find all the related resources they want quickly, plus it lets crawlers jump to deep content in just a few steps instead of many.
• Site Speed - Starting in April 2010, Google announced that site speed was going to play a role as a ranking factor, albeit a minor one. I believe that influence will continue to grow, though in more of an indirect way. QuickSprout has a good infographic on how site speed affects rankings. Slow load times will often cause users to jump back to the search results as they look for a faster answer. As Google tries to compete with Facebook Graph Search, in my opinion they will start to weight human factors more heavily, thus increasing the importance of faster load times and lower bounce rates.
• Content Scrapers - Most of us have been ripped off by a scraper site at one point or another. All search engines are doing their best to combat bad content, but it’s impossible for them to be 100% accurate. Google provides some recourse by letting site owners report DMCA violations and file spam reports, and Bing offers similar resources at their infringement center. These don’t provide immediate relief, but luckily their are some options for fighting back. I’ll be writing a post soon with some fun tricks you can play on those sites to help you win the war.

That wraps up the 2013 state of SEO series. Is there anything at all we didn’t cover? Leave us a comment about anything else you would like us to talk about more in-depth!

The State of SEO: The Experts Weigh In – Part III is a post by SEO expert Rebecca Babicz. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

What do you think when you hear the acronym, “SEO”?

Do you think something like “rank higher in Google”? Or maybe you’re one of those industry people who thinks, “inbound marketing strategy.” I am fully aware that there are still people out there who have no clue what SEO means, as I constantly have to give the “SEO spiel” to my friends and family.

Let’s hope that you at least have gotten past the point of thinking SEO is spam. There are still a few companies out there that game the search engines to increase search engine traffic. They do so in way that puts websites at risk for being banned or penalized. Let it be known, that is NOT SEO, that’s spam.

True SEO is a culmination of online marketing strategies that send signals to the search engines and let them know you’re relevant, interesting and are worthy of being ranked. In part 1 of this series, experts weighed in on content marketing, conversion optimization and Author Rank. In part 3 of the series, experts weigh in on link-building, web development, e-mail marketing and digitial media.

In this post, SEO experts (including myself ) will be weighing in on social media, on-page SEO, local SEO and mobile SEO. All of these puzzle pieces fit together to create a picture of SEO’s future:

Rebecca Babicz, Social Media Manager, on the state of social media:

Social media directly and indirectly affects your search rankings. Things like number of Facebook fans, Google +1s and number of tweets directly impact your SEO. But the indirect benefits that social media has on your SEO are even more important. Google wants to rank brands, not websites. Social media is what will make your brand the complete online package; not just a website. The stronger social media presence your company has, the more customers will return to your website and the more loyal they become. This all means more leads, sales, social shares and guess what else? Inbound links! Which by the way, is still a major ranking factor for Google and Bing.

Here are some social media tips for business to consider looking forward:

1. Get on Google+ now.
2. Make every single page on your site shareable on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn.
3. If you run an eCommerce site, consider making every single one of your products “pinnable,” for Pinterest.
4. Create content that answers your potential customer’s questions and share that content through the appropriate social outlets. Not every piece of content you create is appropriate for all of your outlets.
5. Create fun content that’s shareable. Sometimes people just want a good laugh.
6. Written blog content is great, but don’t forget about visual content. As platforms like Pinterest and Instagram take off, don’t underestimate the power of images to drive traffic and sales.
7. Look at social media as an extension of your customer service department. Don’t just delete comments because you think they make you look bad. Deleting them and ignoring the issue will make you look worse.
8. Social media is a great way to attract new customers but it also should be used to promote and engage your employees. Your employees are key to the success of your overall social media strategy.

TJ Welsh, Director of SEO, on the state of on-page optimization:

On-page SEO has changed a considerable amount over the last couple of years due to major algorithm updates such as Panda and Penguin. These updates are targeting sites with duplicate or thin content along with sites that are over-optimized. Prior to the updates it was common to find sites that would “stuff” keywords in the title tag, description, H1/H2/H3 tags, throughout the content and anywhere else they could get keywords on the page. While you still see those sites from time to time in search results, it is becoming a lot less prevalent. Here’s a look at some new on-page SEO best practices:

• Title tags: This is a basic example but the point is to sound natural and entice a user to want to learn more; OLD Way: Snowboards, Snowboard Bindings and Snowboard Accessories | Brand Name. New Way: Great Deals on Snowboard Accessories, Bindings and More | Brand Name. TIP: Don’t focus on getting the keywords in the title 2-3 times but focus on user engagement. Follow this same pattern for other page elements like, description tags, H1, H2 and H3 tags.

• Alt Attributes and Images: If the image does not match up with the page information don’t force keywords into the alt attribute. Instead, find another image that makes sense.For example, when doing an image search for employee success related terms I came across an image of cherries. Not what I would expect to see and not relevant to the content. Use images that help tell your story and create an association between keywords and your brand.

• Other on-page elements: The phrase “content is king” is thrown around a lot in the SEO world but there is a reason for that. Google has always liked fresh, unique content but these algorithm updates have shown just how much Google cares about high quality content. Having great content on your website that matches the user’s intent will have a tremendous affect on your on-page SEO. Social sharing is becoming an even bigger ranking factor so it is important to encourage social activity on your site. Encouraging users to share articles, blogs and other resources on your site (through social sharing plugins) can have major ranking benefits from the search engines. For blog posts, it’s also important to focus on Author Rank, something my colleague covered in the first part of this series.

Although in the future the best practices for on-page SEO will change, the two things that will remain constant are giving your user’s the best experience possible while sending the proper signals to the search engines that tells them your website is worthy of ranking.

Tyson Hymas, Director of Local SEO, on the state of Local SEO:

Last year Google rolled out the Venice update and we started to see the integration of local results in our organic SERPs. With that, and with about 43% of searches including some sort of mention to local, it is very important for local and small businesses to start with the basics. By the basics, I mean:

• Keyword Research
• Siloing Content/Keyword Themes
• Site Optimization
• Google Places Optimization
• Link Building
• Social Networking and Content Promotion

Going forward, I think that every business owner needs to be actively engaged in social networking. It is important to understand where your customers are, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Yelp!, G+ or MySpace (Thank you Justin Timberlake!). Knowing this and strategically utilizing the free services, you can create an army of free marketers that will promote your product and content.

Greg Bay, Search Marketing Engineer, on the state of Mobile SEO:

Mobile SEO and local SEO are quickly approaching synonymous status and are becoming one of the most important yet overlooked parts of a local online marketing strategy. With smartphone adoption at more than 50% and rapidly climbing, mobile SEO is going to be the make or break for many local targeted companies like dry-cleaners  self-storage, restaurants and other product or service companies that serves a geographic market. Local mobile SEO is where we’ll see massive activity and growth. One of the easiest things that can be done early on is to make sure that your business is accurately listed. Claim your listings in Google Places, Bing Business Portal, and Yahoo Local.

What are your thoughts about the state of social media, on-page optimization, local SEO, mobile SEO?

The State of SEO: The Experts Weigh In- Part II is a post by SEO expert Rebecca Babicz. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Search engine optimization is an ever changing industry.

As Google’s algorithm becomes more refined, so does the approach we take to SEO. At SEO.com were hyper aware of what other say about “SEO” and we’ve seen our fair share of “SEO is dead” blog posts. Let it be known that SEO isn’t dead, it’s simply evolving. Now more than ever SEO has become an integrated marketing approach that encompasses public relations, social media and content marketing in addition to traditional SEO tactics. In the first post of this 3 part series (be sure to read part 2 and part 3), I interviewed SEO.com’s brightest and had them comment on the state of SEO, content marketing, Google Authorship and Conversion Optimization.  Here’s what they had to say:

Ash Buckles, President of SEO.com on the State of SEO:

“SEO is the culmination of strategy and tactics that prepare and promote your web-based assets (web pages and other content) for the greatest search engine visibility. This includes web pages, PDF documents, images, videos, blog posts, news stories, slide decks, Pinterest boards, product shopping feeds, social media updates, data sets, and every other form of content.

Until a few years ago, search engines displayed primarily web pages or documents and everything else was found elsewhere; think YouTube. Now, they embed videos directly in some of the search engines results pages (SERPs) depending on user intent and available video content.

Understanding the purpose of your content, and available distribution channels, is critical to integrating your marketing efforts. For example: you can produce blog posts to have fresh content for the robots/crawlers or deliver value to your subscribers and engage them by delivering consistent value; which in turn provides fresh content for the search engines to crawl, index, and rank.

Today, Google and Bing data power over 95% of U.S. search queries. This is more than any previous months in search engine history. Between these two data giants, more than 14 billion searches are performed every day. Yahoo is slowly losing market share even after attracting Marissa Mayer away from Google. They’ve partnered with Bing for its organic search data and just signed a non-exclusive deal with Google to display paid ads on some of its properties.

These search engines are including more media types in the SERPs, heavily testing user experience for organic results, and focusing on the mobile user experience.

It’s time to expand your online marketing efforts to include an integration of multiple media types and use every available channel to trigger the search engines to crawl and index your content.”

Paul Sanders, Content Strategist, on the state of Content Marketing:

“Every SEO realizes that content is an important part of what we do, even if they weren’t forced to think hard about it before. But Google is really forcing everyone’s hand with algorithm updates meant to target user experience and content quality.

A lot of the “left-brained” link-building side of SEO has been forced to adapt. But we content marketers have simply doubled down on the principles we use for more traditional marketing, injecting more rigor into modeling our audience and crafting content that sets our campaigns apart. But it’s not a quick fix. If a campaign is suffering, set your neurotic content strategist to work on it sooner rather than later. Your content will matter more, not less, six or twelve months from now.”

Andrew Johnson, Content Strategist, on the state of Google Authorship:

“AuthorRank is a way for authors of content to build up their authority, and for users to find that content. It’s also something that Google may be using as a ranking factor.

I believe content creation needs to play a key role in every SEO campaign moving forward, and businesses have a great opportunity to capitalize on their employees’ unique expertise. Curate their knowledge, cultivate a blog that answers your customers’ questions, and tie that content into Google+ through Authorship markup.

What we’re seeing now is SEO is more about increasing the domain and page authority through non-manipulative means, and high quality content from real people not only increases traffic from the search engines because it ranks higher, but it also is the key to establishing trust and authority within your specific industry.”

Shawn Barrington, SEO Manager, on the state of Conversion Optimization:

“SEO is so much more than just identifying keywords, link building and ranking for those terms. SEO is about driving traffic to a website and converting that traffic in to leads and sales. Conversion has always been important but in the last year and a half as different algorithms have came out and search engines have become smarter, they are focusing more on more on the user experience which means conversion is a larger priority in ranking a site.

Search Engines don’t simply look at whether or not your content and links are relevant for keywords. They pay attention to what people are doing when they come to your site.  This means it is more important than ever to ensure that the bounce rate of target pages and 404 errors are low.  This also means that you need to be paying more attention to how your visitors interact with your site, through  things like time on site, page views, social shares, and overall conversion.

There are a lot of different ways to do this but you should ensure that the keywords you want to rank for are mapped to the appropriate page on your site and that the page matches the user’s desired purpose for visiting your page.”

The State of SEO: The Experts Weigh In – Part I is a post by SEO expert Rebecca Babicz. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Valentine’s Day is the most dissenting holiday of all time.

Marketers tend to love it, jewelers and those who sell chocolate or flowers love it more. Some single people hate it, some are indifferent, and others find it a time to show love for their family and friends. Same goes for happily married people. Regardless of how you feel about February 14, I hope these images will brighten your day, help you embrace the inner SEO dork in all of you and make you say, “awhh.”

Happy Valentine’s Day. Love, SEO.com.

 You are the one I’ve been searching for.

 You .COMplete me

URL -y Amazing

‘

Your link-bait hooked my heart

You’re my trophy keyword

5 Ways SEOs say “I Love You” is a post by SEO expert Rebecca Babicz. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Have you ever wondered why some of your friend’s updates show up on your newsfeed, while others don’t? No, it’s not because some friends post on Facebook more than others (although, they do). This occurrence is due to Facebook’s internal algoritm, called, “EdgeRank.”

Simply put, EdgeRank determines which updates show up in a user’s news-feed. As a company, wouldn’t it be nice if all of your updates reached all of your followers? Before that can happen, you’ll need an understanding of how EdgeRank works. Much like SEOs need to understand the different factors that go into Google’s algorithm to rank higher, anyone running a Facebook Fan Page, needs to understand how Facebook EdgeRank works.

Here are the three “scores” that affect the overall EdgeRank of a post:

• 1. Affinity -This score is based on how often (if at all) a user checks your fan page. It also takes into account the time spent on your fan page looking through photos and/or newsfeed posts.
• 2. Interaction – This score is based on user engagement, and increases when a user likes, comments or shares your posts. A comment or share requires a higher level of engagement and thus will increase EdgeRank score, for that post and future posts more than a simple, “like.”
• 3. Timeliness – This score is based on when the update is published and how quickly it receives interaction. The more interaction that an update receives in a short period of time the better chance it has of showing up in other users’ newsfeeds and “sticking,” for a longer period of time.

Unless you work at Facebook it’s hard to know the exact percentages and values that Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm places on user actions. Businesses may be at a disadvantage when it comes to using Facebook fan pages because Facebook hopes to monetize their product by charging money to “promote” posts. If all of your posts automatically show up in all of your fan’s newsfeeds, then why would you pay for it? With all of this being said, marketers can still improve their chances of showing up in newsfeeds (without paying) by simply posting smarter updates. Crafting smarter updates means understanding Facebook psychology, knowing what types of content works and when to post it. Here’s a quick look at Facebook psychology:

[Click To Enlarge]

Infographic sources from Psychology Today and PewInternet.

Types of Content You Should be Creating

Gone are the days when it was okay for marketers to post mundane updates like, “It’s SNOWWINGG OUT!!!” or “Check us out!” with a link to the homepage. Now you need a real strategy, and it all starts with one thing: content.

Here are 3 types of content you should be creating for better Facebook engagement:

• Visual Content- Humans are visual creatures, which is why networks like Pinterest and Instagram (for which Facebook plunked down $1 billion) have exploded in popularity recently. Images also stand out on Facebook newsfeeds and receive 39% higher interaction on average than posts without images. Visual content can come in the form of memes, cartoons or just beautiful photos. Another idea is to take a small screen-shot of an infographic and turn it into a micro-graphic. Accommodate image posts with “Caption this photo,” and “fill in the blank,” to get the conversation started and receive better engagement. The Atlantic does a good job posting visual content and getting their fans engaged: 

• Entertaining Content- Facebook is a place where people go often just because they’re bored. They’re looking for a good laugh—something to brighten their day and entertain them. The psychology behind sharing an update on Facebook is simple: people share things that evoke emotion. People are likely to share content that entertains them because they want to share that entertainment with their friends. Entertaining content can come in the form of images or a simple but noteworthy text update, like a joke or a factoid. Updates that link to an entertaining blog post, video, SlideShare or GIF are also highly shareable. It’s important to remember when you create “entertaining” content, you should also strive to remain relevant. For example, a post about who won the Super Bowl is not something followers would expect from SEO.com. But a post about popular search terms on Google during the Super Bowl would be relevant to the SEO.com brand and would be something our followers would find entertaining. Here’s an example of an entertaining post that hit home with some SEO.com fans: 

• Educational Content- Besides just entertaining their friends, people on Facebook also want to share educational content that makes them look smart. Share an image with a compelling statistic or piece of data on it. “Did you know…” and “What do you think about…” are good conversation starters for informational content that will encourage users to engage with your post. The New York Times naturally posts educational content that receives a lot shares. Think about your company as a newspaper. What kinds of  content can you share with your followers that will educate them?

By creating visual, relevant content that adds value to your fans, you’ll earn the right to promote your product or service some of the time without seeming too pushy.

The Best Time to Post

Knowing the best time to post updates to Facebook is half the battle of engagement. If you post at a time when none of your followers are on Facebook, no one will see your updates. If you’re posting when there is a high volume of updates, you risk being in direct competition other posts that will naturally have a higher EdgeRank. So how do you know when to post to updates to Facebook? For starters, if you are managing a business page, dive into your Facebook analytics and see what time your most popular posts were published.

A lot of data has been collected about the best times to post, but in my opinion companies should constantly be testing their theories because every industry and audience is different. Recent studies have shown that “non-busy hours” from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. generally receive a better engagement rate than “busy hours,” from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. (Yes, you read that right! Overnight posts are the ideal time to post.)

Weekends, according to the study, are also great days to post content, especially on Sundays when Facebook users spend more time using the site. I’ve tested that notion for SEO.com’s Facebook page, and it hasn’t really been that effective. As it turns out, the time we receive the most engagement is from 3pm- 6pm on weekdays. For highly newsworthy updates, I’ll publish them within the 9am hour so we’ll show up earlier in the day. Ideal post times are likely different for everyone.

When it comes to the number of updates you should post, be weary of “over-posting,” and being too promotional. People are smart enough to know the different between a post that adds value and a post that is contrived. As long as you have quality, timely updates (think: like newspapers do) it’s okay to post several times a day to keep fans updated with fresh content in their feed.

That being said, there’s no right or wrong when it comes to marketing on Facebook, as long as you can prove it works for you. Competitive analysis can also help you gauge your audience’s tolerance. Test different theories until you have enough data to understand what works best for your brand and industry.

Pro-Tips

Marketers walk a fine line when it comes to social media, and the line is thinner on Facebook. On one side, you want to drive traffic to your site and improve your ROI by letting your fans know about your offerings and steer them to your product. But you need to do that while not intruding on their personal space with too much promotional content. It’s annoying to have updates show up on your newsfeed that you don’t really care about. A fan will hide your updates or “un-like” your fan page if you’re not relevant, entertaining or informational.

In my opinion, engagement is the most important measure to track on Facebook because, at the end of the day, it’s what fuels revenue. Without engagement, you’ll never have the chance to build your brand and advocates. By keeping your fans engaged, you won’t fall off their newsfeeds. And when the need arises (i.e., a need your product or service), they will know exactly where to go.

How have you increased Facebook engagement? I would love to hear your comments below.

How to Become More Visible on Facebook’s Newsfeed is a post by SEO expert Rebecca Babicz. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.