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Don’t be That Company on Facebook

May 21, 2013 by Leave a Comment

When you receive a new follower on Facebook, you’re being allowed into someone’s social space. You have, in essence, been invited to the party. How you behave will dictate whether you are invited back next time, which in Facebook currency means whether your followers will stay followers, and whether they will interact with you and share your content with others.

Just like no one wants to invite “That Guy” to the party, no one wants to interact with “That Company” on Facebook.

Marketing on social media – and on Facebook in particular – sits more in the realm of public relations, truth be told. You’re there to get to know people, and to let people know the personal side of your business. There are tons of personalities out there to choose from when creating your company’s Facebook persona, but we’d recommend you steer clear of these . . .

facebookscumbagThe Facebook Self-Promoter

It’s called social media marketing, right? Well, this guy is definitely here to market . . . exactly the way he has always marketed before.

We all know how to recognize this particular That Guy at the party. He can’t seem to talk about anything but himself. He doesn’t want to carry on real conversations, and he’s convinced that nothing anyone else has to say could possibly be interesting, so he keeps talking about the one topic he does find interesting: himself.

If every link on your Facebook page is self-promotional, you’re That Guy. Facebook isn’t about shoving your message down people’s throats. They already like your company or they wouldn’t have followed your page in the first place. Instead, it’s about building relationships and having conversations, so treat it like a conversation. Don’t be that jerk who talks about nothing but himself. Nobody likes that guy.

The Loud Drunk

The ability to interact with your customers through Facebook is as dangerous as it is powerful. We were recently treated to a view of the downside of these interactions thanks to a business that appeared on Gordon Ramsay’s show Kitchen Nightmares.

Of course, telling you to keep your cool and avoid going ALL CAPS on your customers is kind of a no-brainer, but the loud drunk commits another social faux pas: he talks at people rather than to them.

The Facebook equivalent here is posts with no context. Title of article > link to article > done. Let’s wait for the likes to roll in!

. . . Except they don’t, because you didn’t walk up to people and start a conversation. You shoved a newspaper in their face, bellowed the headlines at them, and then walked away.

The Socially Awkward Facebooker

What this version of That Guy lacks in knowledge, he makes up for in enthusiasm, with cringe-inducing results. He pastes a url in the status window, sees Facebook use that information to create an attractive visual link, and it never occurs to him to delete the url. Sometimes he even uses a service to shorten the url that doesn’t have to be there in the first place.

He also likes his own status updates. Every. Single. One.

Listen, I’m all for socially awkward dorks. I’ve even been known to be one on occasion, myself. That still doesn’t make it a valid marketing strategy. Enthusiasm is wonderful so long as it’s tempered with a willingness to slow down, pay attention and learn something. So look around at the companies and entertainers you follow on Facebook. If the page is popular and successful, chances are you won’t be seeing a lot of urls in statuses, nor will that company like its own posts.

Just be a human

It really is as simple as all that. On Facebook, you’re relating to human beings as human beings. Social media isn’t advertising, and it’s not direct mail. In the often-impersonal world of the internet, Facebook is the most human interaction available to marketers. So just . . . be a human.

Filed Under: Online Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: , , ,

Directory Submission Dos and Don’ts

May 3, 2013 by Leave a Comment

As with just about every SEO and online marketing method ever developed, the practice of directory submission has seen its share of controversy. Unsurprisingly, this controversy started with the black hats.

The practice of directory submission developed organically the way things do when the internet hive mind is involved. People started making lists of their favorite websites on personal pages, then companies started building these sorts of pages as a service to visitors. Then, the less scrupulous among the SEO and online marketing world joined the fray, buying and selling directory links with no vetting process to speak of. Eventually it became difficult to discern a quality directory from an ad repository with no intrinsic value.

directorysubmissionThese sites have been hit hard by Google’s algorithm updates, as have the companies that use them, but that doesn’t mean that directory submission isn’t still a viable strategy. You may be looking to hire a directory submission service, or you might wish to handle your own submissions. Either way, there are a few things you should know.

Don’t: Use Services that Offer Automatic Submission

If you come across a site offering to submit your business to hundreds of directories at once, run. Fast. These services play the numbers game, and the inherent risk in that game is incredibly high.

If your site starts showing up in directories that are inappropriate, or on pages that are otherwise filled with above-the-fold advertising, it says nothing but bad things about your business. Online, as in the real world, you have to be mindful of the company you keep.

Do: Check the Page Rank

When your goal is to increase your authority and visibility on Google, one of your first steps should be to determine what Google likes and what they don’t. A directory with a poor page rank, or with none at all, won’t bring you up in the SERPs, and could drag you down on other ways.

Don’t: Trust a List of Best Directories

Even when these lists are made with the best of intentions, the internet is far from a static medium. Sites that slid past Google just a few months ago could get hit any day. Your safest bet is to do your own legwork to find individual directories, or to hire a trusted source to make your submissions manually.

Do: Track Your Submissions

You can streamline your process and avoid duplication by tracking directory submission as part of your link-building efforts.

Don’t: Try to Do it All

Make sure the directories you submit to are niche-appropriate. Ten quality links are going to do a lot more for you than 100 bad ones. Be selective. Otherwise you risk wasting effort, not to mention what happens if Google catches you running with a bad crowd.

Do: Realize that You Get What You Pay For

If your plan to save money on directory submission is to hire the cheapest company out there, you’re better off not doing it at all. When you hire Dirt Cheap Submission, Inc. (not a real company), you aren’t hiring experts to find the appropriate directories. You’re hiring a computer program to input your company information and blast it out to every corner of the internet, including the seedy underbelly.

Directory Submission is Part of the Bigger Picture

Where once directory submission was a quick-and-dirty practice for bringing in both good and questionable links, it is now part of a targeted online marketing strategy. Not only do you have to submit to the right directories, you have to make sure that what visitors – and Google – find there is a quality website that answers a need.

Keep that in mind, and you can successfully integrate directory listings into your overall online marketing and SEO efforts.

Filed Under: Online Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

It’s Not Really SEO That You Hate

April 26, 2013 by

SEO-provides-actionsI had an interesting experience the other day while doing some online research. I ran across a website discussing why writers and content marketers hate SEO. As a writer myself, that was news to me. Hoping it was a lone opinion I did some searching. I discovered pages upon pages of discussions about how SEO forces writers to create bad content and punishes those who write well.

Now, I know I don’t hate SEO, so I asked our Senior Copywriter Nathan Williams, who leads content marketing initiatives for clients in a wide range of industries, for his feelings on the subject. Here’s what he had to say:

“It’s interesting that a copywriter would say they hate SEO, because the two work hand-in-hand, at least in my experience. From the copywriting perspective, SEO is the afterthought. If the SEO tactics are on the level, the copywriter just has to make sure the keywords won’t disrupt the flow or distract from the point.

It’s not fair to say that copywriters hate SEO, because that opinion is painting with a really wide brush. And there’s no need to feel that way. SEO provides actions, targets and priorities, and copywriters use that information to tailor the content. The two sides must work together, or both fail.”

What SEO Copywriting Isn’t

Nathan’s point really emphasizes what separates true SEO from the kind of black hat tactics that give websites a brief bump followed by a long, hard fall. There’s a mindset out there that search is a system to be gamed, and for some reason a terrifyingly large number of people in the SEO biz think that gaming that system is a better choice than working within it.

That’s why you’ll still find sites out there hiring bargain basement copywriters with no real skill or experience, and using spinning software to create meaningless, garbage content. Meanwhile behind-the-scenes they are buying links, hiding keywords in code, and participating in all sorts of unsavory practices meant to trick search engines and serve up content that does not answer the question posed in the search query.

The real irony in this is that they are likely putting more effort into those tactics than we on the white hat, ethical SEO side are by just following the rules and creating quality content.

It’s Not SEO’s Fault

Keyword stuffing and creating nothing content around random terms is not what we signed on for, and the results are not what clients sign on for, either. Any copywriter is going to be unhappy in a system like that.

But what Nathan talked about, and what the rest of us who work on the copywriting side here at SEO Advantage know, is that when your behind the scenes SEO and coding folks are doing their jobs well, all you really have to do is write relevant content with a few placement adjustments here or there. We probably spend less than 10% of our copywriting time thinking about keywords, because if what you are writing truly speaks to the question asked in the search query, the keywords don’t have to be stuffed. They flow organically.

If, as a copywriter, you find yourself at odds with SEO, then the problem likely isn’t with the system itself, but with the way you are being asked to manipulate it.

Filed Under: Copywriting/SEO Content Development, Online Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Friday Trivia: Saying Goodbye to Google Reader

March 29, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Welcome to SEO Advantage’s Friday Trivia feature, where we discuss, dissect and comment on the internet and marketing, and how the two intertwine.

We recently learned that Google Reader will be going dark on July 1st, but do you know what year it was created?

  1. 2001
  2. 2003
  3. 2005

Answer: C

Although Google Reader has gained prominence in the RSS world, it’s actually among the newer feed readers. The service was first launched in 2005, and will have been in operation for not quite eight years when it goes away this July. In those years it became one of the top RSS readers in existence, offering a clean, easy-to-organize method for viewing news and blogs.

Google Reader and the Online Marketing Connection

Arguably, even as a relative late-comer, Google Reader can be given at least some of the credit for the popularity of RSS, and hence the popularity of blogs, which have become a mainstay of online marketing. Gmail is one of the top free e-mail services on the web, and many Gmail users became Google Reader users by default because of the connected service. For a fair portion of users, Google Reader offered their first experience with an RSS aggregator.

As more people began to use RSS as part of their daily lives, blogs became even more popular. They shifted from a method primarily used for personal expression to a near-requirement for businesses looking to grow customer engagement. Some blogs themselves became businesses, garnering deals for books and television shows.

While personal blogging still exists, the blog has now become a powerful business platform. With the loss of Google Reader, however, some users are moving away from RSS altogether, and instead continuing a trend that had already begun to gain traction. As online marketers, we need to be aware of this shift and account for it. That means realizing that consumers who are leaving traditional RSS readers behind aren’t leaving blogs behind. They still want the kind of engaging content and conversation that springs from blogging platforms, and businesses need to provide an easy way to track that content.

Social Media: the New RSS?

The reason so many are finding it easy to move away from RSS is that forward-thinking businesses are already providing an alternative method of tracking updates to favorite blogs: social media.

At SEOA, for example, every blog post we publish is immediately shared on our Facebook page. Chances are that’s how you ended up here reading this. This practice gives you a way to track us without an RSS reader, not to mention an easy method for sharing posts you might find interesting, and multiple options for joining the conversation.

This type of change is part and parcel for the online marketing experience. The dynamic landscape of the internet is what attracted so many of us to the field in the first place. From the perspective of an internet user the loss of Google Reader may be a disappointment, but from the perspective of an online marketer, it’s an opportunity to move forward, adapt, and develop new approaches.

Filed Under: Friday Trivia, Online Marketing, Social Media Tagged With: , , , ,

Friday Trivia: Understanding Bounce Rates

March 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Welcome to SEO Advantage’s Friday Trivia feature, where we discuss, dissect and comment on the internet and marketing, and how the two intertwine.

Ah, the dreaded bounce rate. It’s that unpleasant little number that lets you know that no matter how many visitors you get to your page, some just aren’t going to stick around to see the rest of your site. This can happen for a number of reasons, though, and not all of them are bad. Do you know the average bounce rate for web pages?

  1. 20%
  2. 40%
  3. 60%
  4. 80%

Answer: 40%

According to Google, Kissmetrics and just about every other source on the internet, the average bounce rate for a web page is about 40%. Whether that’s higher or lower than what you usually see, though, is less important than determining what that bounce rate means for that specific page.

When high bounce rates might not be so bad

Sometimes a high bounce rate might actually mean you’re doing something right. This is especially true of informational pages like knowledge centers, blog posts and even directory listings.

If you’re putting information out there on a page optimized for search with content that directly answers the question posed by the keyword phrases you’re targeting, then you’ve given visitors what they want. They search, come to the page, get the answer to their question and leave satisfied. This isn’t bad from a marketing standpoint, either, because the next time that visitor has a question or needs what your business offers related to that topic, chances are they’ll remember you.

In some cases, bounces might also indicate quality leads. If you host an offsite blog linking to your business home page and that blog has a high bounce rate, visitors may very well be bouncing right where you want them to go. Are you getting a lot of referrals to the main site from the blog? If so, then your blog is doing its job.

A high bounce rate may also be benign for a business website. If you’re observing web design best practices, your contact information is prominently displayed on every page of the site. Bounces in this case could indicate that visitors liked what they saw and took the next step.

In short, if your content is robust, high-quality and relevant to the keywords that are bringing in visitors, a high bounce rate is likely nothing to worry about, and possibly even a good sign.

When to worry about a high bounce rate

Reassurances aside, there are some situations where a high bounce rate really is a no good, very bad thing. The most common occurrence of this: the landing page. If you’ve created a page specifically to bring in visitors with the intention of having them purchase a product or sign up for a service, and those visitors then bounce without buying, browsing or signing up, it’s time to optimize that landing page.

You should also be concerned when high bounce rates correspond with shorter visits. If you’ve written a robust information piece but visitors are spending an average of 30 seconds or less on the page and then leaving your site entirely, it usually indicates that you are either offering information that’s irrelevant to the keywords or your content itself is problematic. It may be too generic, or it may simply be poorly written and difficult to read. If you really want to fix these types of issues, get ready to set aside your ego and get self-critical.

Every page is different

What makes understanding bounce rates so confusing for some is that every page and type of content is different, and you won’t learn anything from analyzing bounce rates in a vacuum. You need to understand how to interpret bounce rates as they relate to your other metrics and the page’s purpose and content.

So, did you guess the right answer? How do you use bounce rate to help you optimize your SEO and online marketing?

Filed Under: Copywriting/SEO Content Development, Friday Trivia, Online Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,
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