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Boy, don’t you just love to hate my article titles? I know this topic has been discussed numerous times. Seriously though – for all the short term talk that happens every time we take a hit from someone who gives our industry a bad rap, we’ve never yet come to a clear consensus as an industry on how to properly deal with the ramifications. I for one think it’s time we find a way to address it. And I have a proposal on how we can work towards such a seemingly impossible goal… The SEO
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Today I discovered a Twitter tool called Trendistic.com and some interesting research by Dan Zarrella. Combining the tool and Zarrella’s reasearch can produce some interesting insights for those Twitter users looking to reach a larger segment of the Twitter audience. First the Trendistic tool. Enter any keyword to see how frequently its has been used on Twitter within the last 24 hours, 7 , 30, 90 or 180 days. Trendistic Zarrella has researched the most retweeted terms and produced a Top 20 list. Most ReTweetable Words & Phrases Inputting some of Zarrella’s terms indeed confirms a high percentage of use within the Tweet Stream. Although Zarrella’s data doesn’t correlate directly with the Trendistic tool’s data, his keywords do provide a starting point for understanding which type of language is most often used in both regular Tweets and Retweets. Consider combining Zarrella’s list and the Trendisitc tool when preparing to target segments within the Twitter audience.
The rest is here:
Hacking The Twitter Audience
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I already looked at some useful things you can do with Twitter lists . Today I am sharing another tool that makes sense of Twitter lists and lets you track updates by any group of Twitter users united in the same list. Listiti is a new tool that sends you an email alert once a word is used in Twitter list. Here’s how it works: 1. Create a Twitter list of people who Tweet about the topic you are interested in; 2. Go to Listiti and create an alert by providing: The Twitter list slug, Key terms (you can choose to track the exact match or any of the words); Your email to send the alerts: 3. You should now go to your email box and confirm the alert: 4. After confirming you will see your alert status: 5. Now, once the Twitter users within the list (or any of them) mention the word you are tracking, you’ll receive an email alert that looks like this ( yes, this is me mentioning the word just for the sake of the test ): I haven’t used the tool long enough to share some success story, but this seems like a very useful utility that can be used both in keyword research and reputation management. The tool was reviewed under SEJ policy . Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . How to Track a Keyword within a Twitter
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Agency side, it’s not unusual to find yourself going up against a fellow SEO agency for new business. What factors will ensure you capture this new business opportunity and leave your competing agency in the metaphorical dust? I recently read The Perfect Pitch by Jon Steel of WPP, and it’s got me thinking about how I sell my agency when presenting to potential clients. Namely, that it’s of the utmost importance to go in understanding (to whatever degree possible) what a client is looking for and customize your pitch to fit their needs. Below are some of Steele’s main points: Practice . Have at least 2 practice pitches before presenting to a new business opportunity. Steel even advocates writing scripts so Bobby knows he’s talking about the agency’s blue chip PPC experience while Amanda is confident in detailing Social Media opportunities. By practicing, everyone knows what to expect when the actual pitch occurs and no one will be re-hashing points others have already made. Many Slides Does Not a Presentation Make. In the past, I’ve worked at agencies with a long standard “This is How SEO works” presentation chalk-a-block full of text and ripped SEOmoz images. While it’s great to prove to the client “we know lots of stuff “ to follow that with “And now, we will have an SEO brain dump on you to prove we know lots of stuff” isn’t going to leave new business opportunity gasping for more (probably just overwhelmed). Steel wants to make sure the presenter is the focus of the presentation, not the slides. He argues that in PowerPoint presentations the “bullet point dilutes thought,” and suggests the majority of text be deleted in favor of images. This way, the presenter is the focus of attention and not the words behind them, which appear by tacky transitions and are often accompanied by cheesy Clip Art. Owning the Room . Don’t be afraid to move furniture and reconstruct rooms to fit your needs. If the projection screen points to an awkward wall, ask to have it repositioned, if the chairs are uncomfortable ask for different ones. Organising the chairs “in the round” encourages audience participation while the typical speaker standing in front of the audience is less engaging. Best Sellers May Not be the Most Senior People Office politics often dictate who should meet and present to a client, but you may be loosing out on some of the best talent in your agency/department! Have the presentation given by those who present best, who appear naturally confident in front of an audience, who deal well under pressure and can think on their feet when the questions start rolling in. This may be a mid level PPC expert, and not the assumed Senior Search Marketing Consultant. Encouraging and handling questions . Make a list of popular questions clients ask with correct answers (“Our competitors have a blog, do we need one?” “If we had to pick PPC or SEO…”). Whether you prefer to handle questions at the end of a presentation or encourage them to be asked as they pop into clients heads – be careful not to go off on too far a tangent. This can kill the sense of direction of an otherwise strong pitch. Thank You. The next day, be sure to send a card or make a phone call which reiterates your agency’s core message from the day before. This is also an opportunity to address any concerns the client raised which perhaps couldn’t be answered during the pitch. Ultimately, there are a million ways to customize a pitch for a client which this post barely skims the surface of. A pitch, like any good content, is about holding a conversation with the receiving end, not talking them to death with how well qualified your agency is. Please let SEJ know what your tips are on how to improve an SEO pitch? If you’re an SEO client, what was it about your SEO agency that really grabbed your attention? Looking forward to your comments! Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . The Perfect SEO
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This is a story for the ‘Seed Man’. I do not know, nor do I have any affiliation with, the aforementioned ‘Man of Seeds’. However, if you read this Mr. Seedman, please feel free to use this strategy and profit from your increased traffic. Would Senor Seedman rather see a ranking like this (I know, #1, pretty good)? Keep in mind that the arrow pointing to ‘Results 1-10’ does have a purpose to be revealed shortly. Or would our seed selling friend rather see a ranking like this? Also, notice that little red arrow now points to ‘Results 1-20’. All things considered, I’d say he’ll get more seed buying folk to come visit his site with the #1 and #2 (or #1, #1A) ranking than with the standalone #1. Note: It is for example purposes only that I’m going to say Slim Seedy wants the second listing to be ‘Unusual Medicinal Plant Seeds’ (as seen above). I would probably not think this is the real world case. He more than likely would want a different page to appear. How did I get the indented listing to appear in the SERP? As it turns out, Google likes to combine results from the same site (sub-domains are treated differently) that rank on the same page. Meaning: If you rank #1 and #10, you will appear #1 and #2 when Google combines the two. The reason the first example only has 1 Seedman.com result is that I used a standard search query (seen in the top right of the page) showing only results 1-10. In other words, I searched for ‘plant seeds’ the way anyone would. However, I wanted to see if there was an opportunity to plant more seeds on Page 1. To do this, I need to see if there is another Seedman.com page liked by Google in the vicinity of Page 1 (or just get one there, but that’s another post). So, I appended ‘&num=20 ’ to the search string causing my Page 1 to now display 20 results. If Seedman.com has a second listing, which he does in the second photo, I know that he must have a result on Page 2 since Google has now combined the two (Note: Any number can be appended to see as many or as few results as you’d like). google.com/search?hl=en&q=plant+seeds&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS345US345&ie=UTF-8 &num=20 Aside from this little trick, I would highly suggest using some of the more sophisticated free for 30 day SEJ Tools to help identify areas of opportunity. Matt Leonard currently directs SEO, SEM and Revenue Management for Cruise Critic, the world’s largest cruise site and part of the Trip Advisor Media Group . You can follow Matt Leonard on Twitter to keep up with his updates. Feel free to ask about his latest charity project, ‘Tweet for the Cure’, to benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure. The opinions expressed are that of Matt Leonard and not necessarily those of Expedia, Trip Advisor or Cruise Critic. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . How to Identify Indented Listings
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SEJ tools have a very handy SERPs tracking option that allows you to track rankings of multiple keyword sets in Google, Yahoo! and Bing. But beside just monitoring your keyword positions, the utility gives you one more really useful option: compare your rankings with your closest competitors. Here’s a quick how-to: 1. Start by adding the keywords to the tracker: there are several ways to do that: Add keywords manually: go SERPs > Keywords and add one keyword per line or upload a CSV file; Analyze your on-page keywords and generate keyword suggestions from there: go RESEARCH > Research Assistant , provide your URL and let the tool extract keyword from the page. Now just select those you find useful enough and add them to the tracker; Analyze your domain rankings: go RESEARCH > Research Assistant , provide your domain and let the tool check your current rankings. Choose the words you want to track and / or improve rankings and add them to the tracker: 2. Once the list of the words to track is more or less complete, add your competitor(s) you want to compare: go SERPs > Competitors and add your competitor. Now, go SERPs > SERP tracker and enjoy a handy interface that will allow to easily compare your rankings: Enjoy! Try 30 Day Free Trial of SEJ Tools with No Credit Card needed to Sign Up … You’ll LOVE SEJ tools ! Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . How to Track Competitor Search Engine Rankings with SEJ
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I have already looked at most important factors to take into account when analyzing search engine results page ; this week I am taking a bit more practical approach reviewing (and comparing) tools that will help you to analyze SERPs. They all work as FireFox addons (so you will hardly be abe to install all of them because we need to be very selective when it comes to browser plugins to allow our FireFox to work fast), so I suggest reading through the post to decide which one(s) of them you feel like trying: Tool Major features Most outstanding features Drawbacks / bugs SEOquake Lots of SEO-relevant information for each listing in Google search results Sort Google results by any of the parameters, export search results, create your own parameters May insert its own ads above the search results; got some problems with updating it SEO for FireFox Quick and easy to use, minimum bugs – Search Cloudlet Most frequently ranked domains within one search results page – SERPs Analyzer Estimated number of clicks and PPC revenue per month; Google PR, Yahoo backlinks. etc SERPs stats Beta mode (buggy, non-customizable) 1. SEOquake Inserts lots of data under each listing in Google SERPs: Google pagerank, Google index, Google cache date; Yahoo! index, Yahoo! linkdomain, Yahoo! link; Bing index; Dmoz listing; Webarchive age; Alexa rank; Delicious bookmarks; Technorati index; Digg index; Domain IP; Link to Robots.txt, Sitemap and Page source; SEMrush info (traffic, traffic value, rank); Compete Rank, More! Moreover, you can sort results by any of the parameters and export all the results along with the retrieved data. This is the most customizable addon I am aware of: not only it allows to hide any of the data item but it also enables you to create new parameters by using the following variables: 2. SEO for
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