Managing Twitter followers can become a time consuming task, taking time away from actually sending messages and growing your influence. Here are six tools to save you time.

Twepe

A little gem of a tool. Twepe, for a small cost, sends you a daily summary email of your Twitter follower activity, including new followers and lost followers, and alerts you immediately with an email of any mentions. The one alert it doesn’t send is favorite tweets.

Twitter can do some of these things – but individually, so you receive an individual email for each follower gained (but not any lost) and any mentions. This can become overwhelming – personally I turn most Twitter notifications off and use Twepe instead.

Uses of Twepe include analyzing who you should follow back and spotting Twitter bots that follow you one day, and unfollow the next in the hope you have followed them back.

Usequitter

Similar to Twepe, but sending a weekly summary. Free now – with a planned paid version for multiple accounts.

Followerwonk

Followerwonk offers several tools. You can analyze and chart your followers by age, message volume and other metrics; view and sort all of your followers in a spread sheet format, allowing you to see the most influential or least active; search Twitter bios of your followers and their followers; compare followers and analyze their activity, and unfollow without leaving the site.

There are free and paid versions of the product, the latter with more features.

Here’s an example analysis for @SEWatch

Manage Flitter

Most Twitter accounts will be following accounts that don’t follow them back or are inactive. These reduce the ratio of followers to followed accounts and make the account look less influential in the eyes of many. Finding and removing those that have no value to you manually is a waste of time.

That’s where Manage Fitter comes in. This free tool scans your account (once you’ve given it permission) and then lists all of your followers. You can then sort them by volumes of followers, accounts they are following, the number of lists they are in and the volume of tweets they have sent. There are also filter options for accounts with no photo, that aren’t in English or are quiet or very talkative.

Once you’ve sorted your followers the way you desire – I suggest inactive, no photo and not following back as three to start off with – you can then tick and bulk unfollow accounts in one go.

If you want to know more about an account, including volume of followers, following and messages, this is available by hovering the cursor over the username. It is useful, but annoying at times – I’d rather see this next to each account on the page, as opposed to having to move the cursor to each listing.

Tweepi

Tweepi is another tool for finding people who don’t follow you back and unfollowing them, with features including the ability to enter a username, sort their followers or who they follow and then follow some of those accounts, follow accounts on another member’s list or paste in a list of user names and review those accounts. These features are useful for growing the list of accounts you follow in the hope of gaining followers back.

Some of the more advanced features – including some Manage Flitter offer for free – are paid-for. Personally I find a combination of the two works best without paying a fee, based on what I’m trying to achieve.

Contaxio

Contaxio works across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ to varying degrees, determined by the functionality their individual APIs support.

Contaxio feels a more “serious” a product than some of the other Twitter tools out there – clean interface, support for multiple platforms and the ability to export data. As with most tools there are free and paid versions.

Features include the ability to analyze followers and your following and take action against those you select. There are a lot of features here worth checking out – the one “missing” sophisticated feature is the ability to see the overlap between profiles across networks, and added accounts on one platform you already follow on another.

The tool has free and premium versions.

Summary

Plenty of other Twitter tools are available – these are just a few that have useful features or have proved stable over time. No matter what tools you use, check what permission they request of your account before granting them, and, if you stop using them, log in into the Twitter site and remove their access. Watch out for tools that send a message from your account saying you are using the tool – there’s normally a tick-box.

Want to recommend a tool? Leave a comment below.

Image Credit: Free Social Icons

SES Toronto 2012 is June 11-13. Register before May 11 and save up to $300!

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2175789/6-Tools-to-Manage-Your-Twitter-Followers

Over the past two years, Pinterest has become a major factor in the online social space. The growth of Pinterest has gone from just over 4 million active users at the end of 2011 (according to their Facebook page) to just over 8.3 million active users currently.

Pinterest is the third most popular social website (Experian traffic report April 2012), just behind Twitter and Facebook. In just over six months, Pinterest has become more popular than LinkedIn, Foursquare, Instagram, and Google+ (based on traffic volume).

Pinterest Audience Is Growing

With all the growth Pinterest has received domestically, the company is now looking to go global. Currently, they are looking to add French, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish.

Also, another factor to consider is the growth of the male demographic on Pinterest. In September 2011 74 percent of the user base on Pinterest was female and 25 percent of the gender was male.

Fast forward to March 2012, the numbers are starting to shift to a more balanced gender viewership with 65 percent of the base being female, and 35 percent of the base being male (according to comScore March 2012). Also, during this time you will notice on the graphs below that overall age range of users in the 35-54 range has grown five percent.

Pinterest is growing in overall volume, becoming more gender balanced, increasing its age group range, and building out a global community. Much as Facebook and Twitter are a general part of your SEO/social strategy, so should Pinterest.

Social Link Signals From Pinterest

Our SEO team conducted a study recently to see the impact of Pinterest and the potential social link equity, one can generate from “Pinning” pictures. The results are quite interesting.

For the sample test we took a domain with very little equity (0 inbound links) and created a Pinterest account for it. Our team then pinned two recipes to share with people on Pinterest.

Within one week of pinning to the Pinterest wall, the site accumulated over 150 links.

The site previous only showed up for one keyword query. One week after pinning, the site was indexed for 25 queries (mostly long tail keywords, low competition terms), according to Google webmaster tools.

Pinterest pins for the two recipes were few and far between, however by merely pinning these two recipe pages to Pinterest, links from other sites such as WordPress blog sites, Tumblr, Google images, posted new backlinks. Thus, we were creating social buzz, and more visibility for the site overall.

Value of Pinning

Will this strategy necessarily bring massive boost for established brands or highly competitive keywords? Probably not!

Will this help diversify your backlink profile? Yes.

Does Google like fresh content from social sharing? Yes.

Is this an easy way to inject some fresh content and new social citation for your site? Yes.

If you create creative and interesting images, and have some influence on Pinterest, could something go viral? Yes.

Should companies and sites invest in using Pinterest? Absolutely!

Top Brands on Pinterest

Obviously due to the nature of the medium, lifestyle type brands do extremely well on Pinterest such as:

• Whole Foods
• Travel Channel
• Better Homes Gardens
• West Elm
• Martha Stewart

Brands that are not Lifestyles…Doing Well

Here is a list of some other brands you might not expect to do well but are:

• Oberlin College
• MLB
• Wall Street Journal

Pinning is Winning

Clearly, Pinterest is becoming a major social medium to build your digital strategy around. Creating interesting and creative images to share with others is the key to success.

You don’t have to be a lifestyle type site to win on Pinterest, you merely need to figure out a way to creatively make your brand fun. Also, from the above case study, there are other benefits as well, such as social links generated from content shared on Pinterest.

For the modern SEO/social strategy you should look for ways to use Pinterest, because Martha Stewart does “and it’s a good thing…for you brand.”

SES Toronto 2012 is June 11-13. Register before May 11 and save up to $300!

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2175367/Why-Your-SEO-Social-Strategy-Should-Include-Pinterest

Social media advertising revenues in the United States will grow from $3.8 billion in 2011 to $9.8 billion in 2016, according to BIA/Kelsey’s U.S. Local Media Forecast (2011-2016). The leap would represent a compound annual growth rate of 21 percent. The measurement firm expects the local segment of social advertising to grow from $840 million in 2011 to $3.1 billion in 2016, representing a CAGR of 29.8 percent.

The report forecast a $4.8 billion social media ad spend in 2012.

BIA/Kelsey defines social media advertising as money spent on advertising formats across social networks, including native formats such as Facebook’s Sponsored Stories and Twitter’s Promoted Tweets.

The lion’s share of that will come from national advertising spends, according to the research firm; however, local’s share will increase from approximately 22 percent in 2011 to more than 32 percent in 2016.

That growth is to a great extent thanks to better geotargeting capabilities from social networks, notably Facebook and Twitter. At the same time, the report said, “Smaller businesses will learn how to better leverage multi- and micro-targeting to optimize results, while national brands will drive more traffic to individual store locations and target consumers with more personalized offers.”

Better performance, richer media and wider creative options such as video also will drive this market growth, according to the report, released today. Display remains the dominant social ad unit.

SES Toronto 2012 is June 11-13. Register before May 11 and save up to $300!

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2174994/Social-Media-Ad-Spending-Forecast-to-Hit-9.8-Billion-by-2016

Author’s Note: This is a technical post on how to use visitor intelligence data to analyze SEO performance. The concepts in this article can be transferred to most marketing and CRM solutions but require basic understanding of SEO and CRM.

In order to understand the impact your SEO efforts have on your business, you first need to make sure you are collecting the right data and attributing it to the right sources. This is why it’s important to use visitor intelligence to analyze your SEO performance and ensure your SEO efforts are producing the right results.

How your data is structured is critical to enable accurate analysis and reporting. It will allow you to build five advanced, but simple, SEO analyses that you can perform with visitor intelligence.

Laying the Groundwork – Choosing the Right Systems

Almost every SEO solution will give you search volumes, keyword ranks and even traffic volumes, but are these the metrics that matter to you?

Most B2B marketers care about leads and opportunities, while every business cares about revenue. What are your KPI’s (key performance indicators) and more importantly, what are they being measured by? Is it leads, opportunities, ROI, annual revenue or LTV (life time value)? Whatever it is, make sure your SEO plan has a clear path focusing on how to bring you there.

When you select a marketing software solution, make sure it can provide you with the metrics that align with your company’s goals. This doesn’t have to be a native feature of the software, as it can be delivered through integrations, but you do want to make sure it’s possible. Otherwise, you will spend hours every month building Excel spreadsheets and trying to align data from different source to connect the dots.

The right system will provide a comprehensive solution, giving you the ability to report and analyze your data in one place. It might take some upfront work to set up the systems and customize them to your liking, but every minute you spend upfront will save you hours of work later.

Building Your Analyses – Start from the End Work Your Way Back

It’s often easier to plan and build your analysis if you first look at the final product – the recommendations.

It might sound counterintuitive to think about analysis from the recommendation aspect, since you run an analysis to come up with a recommendation, but most studies start with a hypothesis, so a simple SEO analysis should follow the same logic. This exercise will also help you rationalize some of the metrics and KPI’s you initially thought were important, and uncover a few you might have overlooked.

Start by writing down what type of recommendations you’d like to be able to state after you conclude your analysis. For example, “The Keyword ‘Online Marketing’ drove 300 leads in April but only 3 opportunities (1 percent conversion rate) at a total over $30,000 annual contract value.”

Using this recommendation, you know that the data points you want to have in your analysis are leads, opportunities and revenue. Those will give you the ability to calculate ratios and conversion rates. You also know that you want to be able to look at them as they relate to a specific keyword and to a specific time frame.

After you have the list of data points you want to collect, think about naming convention. A lot of analyses and data models fall apart due to the most mundane reasons; naming is a major one. Make sure you keep a legend or a coding directory that will help anyone make sense out of your naming convention.

Analysis 1 – Funnel/Goal

This is the most important analysis you should do after connecting SEO, visitor intelligence and sales data. At the heart of this analysis is the question “what keyword drove the most revenue for my business?”

You want to be able to look at all your referring keywords and directly connect them to revenue. To do this you will need your SEO, traffic and sales data to reside in the same system.

Looking at your marketing-sales funnel from the perspective of referring keywords will pinpoint any issues you might be having with your marketing-sales process.

If your top-of-the-funnel numbers are healthy (traffic, leads, conversion rates) but something breaks between leads and opportunities, you might have an issue with your inside sales team or with your messaging.

If you’re driving enough traffic but visitors are not converting, you might have issues with your website performance and need to look at your landing pages.

If you’ve set your marketing solution provides more SEO data than just referring keyword, you can apply this analysis to that metric as well – search engines, geo-location, browsers, devices, you name it.

Analysis 2 – Audience 

Visitor intelligence data lets you analyze elements of your audience per keyword, search engine, geo-location and other SEO metrics. Are your keywords driving the right audience?

Look at company size, industry, titles, and other visitor profiles your system collects to determine if your SEO efforts are driving your target audience or if you need to readjust your target keyword list.

If your marketing solution provides lead scoring, you can use it to assign a single score to a keyword based on the average lead score of all the leads/visitors that came from that keyword. You can use that single score to rank your target keywords and evaluate their effectiveness.

Analysis 3 – Engagement 

Page views, time on site, number of visits, and other behavioral data that your marketing solution collects from your visitors and leads will allow you to analyze how your SEO results translate into engagement.

Similarly to the Audience Analysis, if your marketing solution offers lead scoring, you can use it to assign a single score to keywords based on the engagement levels they exhibit and rank you keywords to reveal the most engaging keywords. Combine this with the audience analysis to learn if your most engaging keywords are also driving the right audience and vice versa.

Analysis 4 – ROI 

This is a simple analysis to measure the return (in revenue) on a referring keyword or any other SEO metric you want to measure (keyword group, search engine, geo-location, etc.). You can apply this analysis to organic or paid traffic, but in essence it will tell you if you’re targeting and ranking for the right keywords and where you should concentrate your efforts.

Analysis 5 – Correlation 

This is the most sophisticated analysis out of the five. It will be based on all the above analyses and will also give you the most insight into your visits and leads. This will be most likely done in Excel or a different statistics software, but you need to make sure that the marketing software you use allows you to export the data or has an API you can use.

The basic concept is to examine a keyword group by ranking its various terms for each of the above analyses in addition to their rank on the SERP, and then run a correlation analysis to learn about the relationships between each attribution. You might learn that this keyword group has a low correlation between engagement and ROI, which means that you need to optimize for faster conversion and quick touch.

Summary

For the marketing-scientist, visitor and lead intelligence provides an analysis paradise, but be aware of the infamous analysis-paralysis. At the end of the day, remember what’s important for your business and optimize for it.

SES Toronto 2012 is June 11-13. Register before May 11 and save up to $300!

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2174328/5-Advanced-But-Simple-SEO-Analyses-You-Should-Perform-With-Visitor-Intelligence

How do you ensure a brand with a somewhat peculiar name has prominence in search results for its brand terms, while not attracting irrelevant clicks to the site that will increase bounce rates, and waste ad budget in pay-per-click (PPC)?

One famous example of search ambiguity is Apple – are searchers looking for the corporation that sells computers, iPhones, iPods, and iPads, or are they searching for the fruit? Granted, by now Apple is head and shoulders above most brands. The Apple name is so well known that consumers instantly know who they are, what they do, and if their site is the right one to answer the question they’ve posed to Google or Bing.

The same isn’t true for most ambiguous brands – they need search listings to make clear what they offer and pre-qualify clicks. Examples include

• “Cobham”, a defense contractor that is also a UK town
• “Yellow Door”, a PR agency
• “Snog”, a frozen yogurt brand or social network
• “Fopp”, a record shop.

What’s a marketer to when managing a brand with an ambiguous meaning? Here are nine tips.

1. Clear Tag Line Descriptor

Obvious for any brand, but vital when there’s ambiguity. These need to make clear succinctly what the brand does, and should be part of the wider brand guidelines to ensure the branding flows through all channels.

2. Pick a Qualifying Domain Name

Pick a domain name that clarifies what the site offers. Snog (of the frozen yogurt sort) uses “IFancyASnog.com” – which works, if you know what they do. It does convey their “cheeky” branding, and they use the next items on my list to qualify clicks further.

3. SEO Titles Descriptions

We all know titles and descriptions influence what appears in search listings – and ideally they should also reflect the first item on my list. Both “Snog” the social network and “Snog” the frozen yogurt take away any ambiguity with theirs.

4. Schema Markup

Using schema and micro data also helps clarify who you are and what you do. Although there is no schema markup for the industry you’re in, there are markups for local business types, founder names, addresses, articles you’ve written, events you’ve run or attended, and many more.

5. Google Places

If your business has a physical address (even only a back office), consider making sure it’s listed and optimized in Google Places. Make sure to use all of the relevant fields.

6. Social Profiles Vanity URLs

Another series of pages/profiles that can appear in search results for the ambiguous term – not to mention their obvious role in social campaigns and SEO. Make sure you set up clean vanity URLs while there – they’re more likely to attract inbound links as well as looking more professional.

7. Industry Profiles

Most industries have industry associations that offer profile pages. Listings on these are important as potential customers will see them, but also because, again, they’re another page that search engines will find.

8. PPC Setup

Getting the setup of PPC campaigns wrong on an ambiguous word can waste time and money. Researching keywords and negative keywords and the right match types is key to striking a balance to cast a wide enough net to capture any relevant long tail searches – while not capturing impressions that are irrelevant and reduce click-through rate or waste ad funds. Copy is vital too – you need to make sure in those few, squeezed characters, what the site offers – ideally in line with the brand’s tagline/descriptor and with an eye to the supporting SEO listing, too.

9. Beyond Search: Wider Marketing PR

Wider marketing and PR efforts can create a strong reaction between an ambiguous brand name and what the company does. For example, if you walked up to any adult in the UK and said “What do elephant do?” you would, jokes aside, be told they offered car insurance. Wider marketing efforts have create a clear association – and that has translated into both specific search strings with volume (“elephant car insurance”) and a position one listing in results for “elephant”.

Conclusion

If you find yourself working with a brand with an ambiguous meaning, you can carve out a strong presence in search listings and attract qualified clicks and resulting sales; but it does take time and patience.

Educate the client/manager you’re working for about the challenges ahead. Managing their expectations is key. Like any search campaign, the more it’s worked on in cooperation, the better the results.

SES Toronto 2012 is June 11-13. Register before May 11 and save up to $300!

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2173665/SEO-Search-9-Tips-for-Managing-an-Ambiguous-Brand

Some businesses are so concerned with getting social media followers that they forget that what’s really important is keeping these social media followers. Social followers aren’t locked into any kind of contract. It’s just as easy to unfollow a brand in social media as it is to initially click the “Like” or “Follow” button. The key to social media success is keeping your social followers happy and engaged, which will improve the chances of these followers becoming something more like a client or a customer. Here are 5 tips to engage and keep social media followers:

Find a the Right Posting Frequency
It’s important to be active in social media, but you also can’t go overboard. Posting just once a day might mean that you will get lost in the shuffle, but posting five times a day might annoy followers. It’s important to find that sweet spot somewhere in between. Posting frequency can vary from one network to another. If you find that Twitter converts better than Facebook, post a few extra times on Twitter and leave it to once or twice on Facebook. Understand where customers are most receptive to your message.

Build a Strong Content Marketing Foundation
Without content (blog posts, pictures, articles, albums, videos, etc.), what are you sharing in social media? Social media is a great place to have a conversation, but essentially followers want something more. It’s the content that you create and share that really fuels a social media strategy.

Keep Content Relevant
People have decided to follow your brand for a reason and are expecting posts to be related to what you offer in some way. If you are a software company, don’t go on a rant about the latest news in politics or start telling jokes. It’s OK to be funny or edgy at times, but only if it’s in line with your brand and what you offer and is appropriate.

Actually Be Social
Seems like a no brainer, but so many businesses that use social media continue to use it as simply another place to promote and don’t engage in any actual dialogue. Social media followers are a captive audience and you should use them to your advantage. Ask them for their opinions and respond to their questions, comments, and concerns. If you ignore your followers, they won’t be followers for long and probably won’t even buy from you either.

Share the Work of Others
In order to improve your visibility in social media, it’s important that your followers share your content with their connections via a Share or a Re-Tweet, etc. However, you can’t expect them to do it for you if you never do it for them. It’s a two way street. If your social connections share something great that resonates with your target audience, don’t be afraid to pass it along. Then, the favor may be returned.

Source: http://isedb.com/20120509-16622.php

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most efficient but also most complex online marketing channels for the acquisition of new customers. For many companies who want to and can acquire new customers via the Internet, SEO can be the most efficient customer acquisition channel if its particularities and complexities can be coped with continuously.

The SEO channel can either be tapped into with one’s own employees – so called in-house SEOs – or by working together with a SEO agency.

But how should one approach it? Have one or more in-house SEOs or collaborate with a specialized SEO agency? Or does a combination provide crucial advantages? How does one get to good, reliable and sustainable SEO?

A combination of those two options is not only possible but recommended if SEO is an important marketing channel for the respective company. 

Let’s look at the arguments for both options and hints on how to find the right mix for your own SEO.

Reasons For In-house SEO

1. Speed

A SEO in steady employment will try to implement projects as fast as possible. After all, he is motivated by promoting the SEO channel and convincing the company about its importance.

An agency, on the other hand, is often paid per time so there is a risk of it artificially expanding the extent and length of projects. The only way to minimize this risk is to explicitly address the issue during the process of becoming acquainted.

2. Costs

When comparing hourly rates the cost for an in-house SEO is lower than that for a SEO consultant. Additionally when working together with an agency there are costs for communication and coordination since the agency first has to get to know the company as well as its products and services.

3. Integration

SEO can be regarded as the most integrative marketing channel. Unlike other online marketing channels SEO doesn’t just send new customers to special landing pages that may not even be integrated in the regular product and website of the company.

Without solid interaction and integration between product management and IT, it’s impossible to deliver good SEO, and it’s obvious that an in-house SEO can get acquainted with colleagues much easier than an agency can. A core task of an in-house SEO is to establish a certain consciousness and awareness for SEO topics within the company’s collective body of thought, and someone who is permanently present is likely to succeed in this task.

The in-house SEO must know about every change on the website to be able to deliver information on what the impact of these changes could be from an SEO perspective and also how certain amendments in specifications may have to be executed in order to achieve ideal results for SEO.

4. Responsibility

It’s crucial that someone is responsible for the improvement of SEO in a company. An in-house SEO is very likely to care more for the advance of the SEO efforts than a SEO agency.

5. Development of SEO Competence

If a competent SEO is permanently present in a company he is likely to raise the whole company’s knowledge regarding SEO. If IT, product management, marketing department and executive develop a good basic knowledge of SEO, new potentials and ideas can be uncovered in the respective departments which even the in-house SEO wouldn’t have been able to expose.

For example, every aforementioned department has contacts to many service providers and customers who would be happy to help the company with valuable links or complex marketing strategies where applicable.

6. Competence Regarding Products Customers

An in-house SEO is more acquainted with the products and services offered by the company as well as with its customers. He is therefore likely to be faster and more skilled when it comes to SEO-specific tasks like keyword research.

7. Credibility

Some methods and strategies regarding the acquisition of links and social signals can practically not be outsourced to an agency. Those can only be acquired by an employee or sometimes even only by the C-level.

Reasons For an SEO Agency

1. Avoid Organizational Blindness

Since the in-house SEO mainly deals with the company’s website it gets harder in time to completely avoid organizational blindness. In order to discover problem areas as well as new chances it can be helpful to consult a qualified SEO agency on a regular basis. Though the in-house SEO could have also discovered these flaws and chances, he is sometimes too much trapped in his daily routine to notice them.

2. More Extensive Multilateral Expertise

The in-house SEO tends to just keep an eye on his own company as well as on its direct competitors. Employees of SEO agencies on the other hand often work on many different subjects in many different countries. Therefore the SEO agency can provide a completely different service than an in-house SEO possibly could.

3. Availability

Over the last years a distinctive excess demand regarding the job market in the field of in-house SEO could be stated. Nowadays it’s not that easy to get a good in-house SEO.

Most companies have difficulties in evaluating the qualification of applicants for internal SEO job vacancies. This, too, is a field of activity in which a SEO agency can help out.

4. Efficiency

Some companies don’t pay much attention to SEO so for them it is hardly possible to keep an employee fully occupied with it. Our experience shows that one should rather rely on an external professional in such a constellation than on an employee who is much more familiar with other topics and does SEO as a side job and with doubtful quality.

5. Flexibility

When collaborating with a SEO agency that works sustainable, it’s even possible to completely dispense with SEO investments for a couple of months in difficult times. Later on, these activities can be continued afresh.

6. Speed

A SEO agency of at least average size has quick access to a wide variety of different resources to improve the company’s SEO.

7. Scaling

A good SEO agency is able to scale smoothly. For example, due to its network of contacts and its experience it is easier for the agency than for an in-house SEO to increase the monthly SEO budget over a year and still invest reasonably.

8. International Perspective

Very few in-house SEO have broad experience with international SEO efforts. While they can often handle the on-page part well based on what they know from their home country the off-page part looks a lot different.

The different possibilities and habits for link acquisition are quite varied from country to country. Specialized agencies can help avoiding pitfalls and getting the best local links fitting the industry sector, language, and country.

9. Focus on core business

Every basic book on business studies mentions that all successful companies do focus on their core business. In SEO context this means that the company should let a specialized SEO agency take care of all SEO topics that can be outsourced.

10. Continuity and certainty

An in-house SEO is often the only person in a company who has a lot of know-how concerning SEO. It would therefore have a serious impact on the company if that person were to quit his job. A well-sized agency with a good employment structure, on the other hand, guarantees continuity and as a consequence a high level of reliability.

The Ideal SEO Situation

A collaboration between SEO agency and in-house SEO. When it comes to weighing the advantages and disadvantages of in-house SEO and the cooperation with an agency against each other, not every point has the same importance for every company.

Many factors (e.g., the size of the company) play an important role in the process of decision-making. Furthermore the role of SEO in the whole marketing mix and the age of company have to be taken into account.

But not only specific points of view that can differ from company to company play an important role in the question: “In-house SEO or SEO agency?”. In fact the different domains – on-page and off-page SEO – should be evaluated separately by the management.

Having an in-house SEO is often advantageous when it comes to on-page topics in order to enhance technical optimization measures and to integrate SEO processes in the whole company’s conception. Off-page SEO on the other hand is often better conducted by an agency than by an in-house SEO.

The collaboration with many successful online companies has shown that a combination of in-house SEO and agency conveys the best results provided that the company can afford to finance both. This way it is possible to enjoy the advantages provided by both options and also to make use of synergistic effects.

Summary

This article presented the arguments for a collaboration with an in-house SEO and an agency respectively. However, as made clear in the article, there is no such thing as a general “best practice”, whether one is working with an in-house SEO or an agency. Every company has to evaluate that on its own behalf.

Meet Andre Alpar at OMCap SES Berlin, taking place on Oct. 11, 2012.

SES Toronto 2012 is June 11-13. Register before May 11 and save up to $300!

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2173282/In-house-SEO-SEO-Agency-or-Both-17-Points-to-Consider

The best time to post content with a link on Twitter is 1 to 3 p.m. EST Monday to Thursday. Over on Facebook, between 1 and 4 p.m. mid-week is the sweet spot, while Tumblr users are more likely to click after 4 p.m. and especially on Fridays. How can these networks be so different?

URL shortening service Bitly has released a series of graphs demonstrating the optimal time and day to post on each of these three social networks.

“By understanding the simple characteristics of each social network, you can publish your content at exactly the right time for it to reach the maximum number of people,” Bitly advises in their blog post announcing the data.

Friday a Dead Zone on Facebook Twitter, Optimal for Tumblr

Posting a link to Twitter after 3 p.m. on a Friday is pretty much pointless, based on their cumulative data on the number of clicks on bitly links from each social network. Over on Facebook, traffic peaks mid-week, with Friday and weekend posts apt to receive far less attention. Posts between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. any day of the week are fighting an uphill battle for clicks.

On Tumblr though, Friday is a great time to post, says Bitly. Here, they actually recommend waiting until after 4 p.m. to post.

The traffic peak on Tumblr occurs between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, with Sunday just slightly behind. In fact, posts made after 7 p.m. receive more clicks over 24 hours, on average, than links posted during the week, mid-day. This runs counter to what you see on Facebook and Twitter, thanks to the culture and behavior patterns of each network, they said.

Early Afternoon a Great Posting Time on Twitter Facebook

Early afternoon from Monday to Thursday are optimal times to post links to Twitter, specifically between 1 and 3 p.m., says Bitly. The peak traffic time runs from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., but posting later in this window increases the likelihood of content going viral.

On Facebook, links posted between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. get the most clicks, with the absolute peak being Wednesday at 3 p.m.

Bitly’s latest look into time and day posting trends expands upon their September research into the half-life of links posted through Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. In that study, they found that their links have, on average, a 3 hour half-life (the point at which the link has received half of all clicks it will ever receive). See the original post on the half-life of links for specifics on links from each network.

Bitly on understanding their charts: “Day of the week, starting with Monday, is on the Y axis, and hour of the day, starting with midnight, along the X axis. For the first plot in each section, the darker the blue block, the more traffic on average links posted during that hour received in the following 24 hour period of time. White blocks show when links got less traffic.”

SES Toronto 2012 is June 11-13. Register before May 11 and save up to $300!

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2173631/When-to-Post-on-Facebook-Twitter-Tumblr-for-Maximum-Effect-Study

Social media presents great risks as it does rewards for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Among social media’s shortcomings: it doesn’t convert prospects to customers with the same ease that search does. Fortunately, as Facebook continues to open up more opportunities for local targeting, social media is becoming more feasible.

With an increasing number of SMBs exploring the power of social media, here is a list of potential pitfalls to avoid with guidance from aimClear Co-Owner and Founder Marty Weintraub, author of “Killer Facebook Ads.”

1. Social Media Managers Aren’t Always as Brilliant as You Think

Just because you’ve hired the sharpest 20-something in the world doesn’t mean they understand the nuances of managing a brand and its community.

“You are essentially putting a college student in charge of your public brand,” Weintraub said. “You need a person who can be as close to the brain trust and heart of the organization as possible. These are the thought leaders and true evangelists of your company.”

Solution: Find community managers who best represent the image and smarts behind your organization. It’s important that managers have expertise and perspective, in addition to experience working with social media. Hiring digital natives will also strengthen your bench.

2. Making People in Your Social Media Community Look Presidential

When SMBs are managing a community, it’s easy to make individuals who comment about your brand or retweet your tweets look powerful.

“Don’t forget that your social media profile belongs to you, and you are the one who should be deciding what the conversation should be,” Weintraub said. “There is a fine line between censorship and free speech, which has the potential for user backlash. Knowing when to shutdown blabbering malfeasance can make all of the difference.”

Solution: As a community manager, it is important to know when to cut conversations off. If someone is complaining unreasonably about your brand, it’s time to shut down their access to your community.

3. Conversations Taking Place When SMBs Aren’t Listening

Community managers are potentially losing control of their brand as soon as conversations go from public to private. Every company, irrespective of size, has a social brand. A one-person plumbing company can be as badly impacted by an out-of-control social conversation as an airline.

“Conservations that SMBs cannot hear can hurt them,” Weintraub said. “SMBs have to understand their reputation management universe and do whatever it takes to listen to what people are saying about a brand.”

Solution: Research and plug in to all social media channels that may have something to do with your business. Don’t be afraid to engage in a conversation if it has implications for your brand.

4. Behaving in a Patronizing or Gratuitous Way

As community managers, there is a tendency to take on lofty tones in tweets, blog posts, etc … when you may not truly understand the vernacular of a particular subject or community.

“In real life, most people don’t tell complete strangers on the street that they are dressed beautifully,” Weintraub said. “But if you understand the vernacular, you can truly push the limits of criticism and commentary.”

Solution: Lurk in communities where you want to get a better understanding of the vernacular. If your business is launching a new widget, listen to how professionals in the field are talking about the very same widget. Once you have a sense of the appropriate use of verbs, adjectives, and nouns, join the conversation. Bottom line: Unless you plan to retire sometime in the next week or two, you have to get involved.

5. Advertising, Marketing Public Relations Agencies That Have Hung a Social Media Shingle

It doesn’t mean they understand content that engages, promotes, or converts prospects to customers.

“There are very few experts in social media,” Weintraub said. “It takes a lot of time and work to develop such expertise, especially now that social communities are turning off the ability to market to anyone other than friends.”

Solution: You may have to spend a little more money to hire people who truly have expertise in their field. In the meantime, SMBs should set up their own Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages to get the ball rolling. Once you’re ready to build a community, start off on the right foot by finding the right help.

SES Toronto 2012 is June 11-13. Register before May 11 and save up to $300!

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2173278/Top-5-Reasons-Why-SMBs-Should-be-Afraid-of-Social-Media

In Google’s recent earnings call, the question was posed, “If you think of the future of Internet search 3 or 4 years out, how important will the social signal be and how important (will) personalization be?”

CEO Larry Page responded by explaining how he might search for one of his friends who had a common name.

“For the first time, the search box isn’t really searching a string…it’s actually searching for that person that I know,” Page said. “Having real feedback from users…is very useful for search…we have a lot of those signals already, but we can always use more…we can always use better relevance and we can always use more data to generate that.”

Page’s response reveals two insights into how Google is thinking about big data:

• Page’s anecdote is a direct reference to Google’s increasing focus on enhancing the search experience by leveraging semantic content. 
• It provides insight into how Google values the social web: as data – a means to an end; not as an end in and of itself.

What Does Big Data Mean Anyway?

Generally speaking, big data refers to the processing and analysis of large data sets to support better real world decision-making. Here is what makes big data both timely and unique:

• Increased data generated by individuals via social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
• Migration of data from local storage to the cloud, where it can be more easily shared and analyzed in aggregate.
• A growing acceptance of openness and transparency, resulting in increased access to institutional and organizational data.
• Increased potential for analyzing distinct data, resulting from the growing adoption of data standards.
• Increased access to infrastructure needed to process large datasets.

Why Does Big Data Matter for SEO?

Big data has always been relevant to search marketers because Google is the original big data company. They have become the institution they are today by analyzing enormous sets of data, making automated inferences, and providing intelligence back to consumers. By studying Google’s methodology and applying their findings, search professionals have been intimately involved with big data for quite some time.

Google is a big data company. The future of search is going to be informed by the field of big data. This is important to understand.

Framed in this context, what can search professionals expect?

The Continued Evolution of Content Into Data

Content is published information. For a search engine to make sense of content, a lot of work has to be done. Data, on the other hand, makes analysis easier for search engines and brings them one step closer to an eventual answer.

Already, Google has begun using semantic information to analyze content and structure search results through rich snippets.

If they haven’t already, search marketers should begin familiarizing themselves with the various schemas that search engines have begun adopting and begin thinking about content in semantic terms.

Think Like An Editor – Not a Machine

There is debate over how Panda actually works but little debate over its purpose: to promote quality. As Google continues to tap into big data, they will make increasing use of the vast repository of user-driven data amassed by their portfolio. Basing your strategy around adding a Google+ widget to your site will be the same as doing nothing. Between Chrome, Android, DoubleClick and more, Google will be able to make far more accurate inferences to guide the answers they serve to search users.

As primary user data becomes more impactful, the onsite optimization playbooks that we’ve carried for years will become dead weight. The journalists and editors who once made a living by engaging and keeping readers will once again become relevant.

In an ironic twist, big data will make search less about machines and more about people.

Big Will Be the New Small

As the pendulum shifts from content to data, the logic that once guided our thinking about search will change and our hesitation to limit what we show Google will fade.

To help illustrate this point, let’s say a website contains information on more than 1.8 million businesses. A large percentage of the profile pages that have been set up for these businesses would qualify as original content; however the total volume of information available on these pages is limited.

By leveraging a local information API (e.g. Yelp, Google Places, CityGrid), this site could append a large percentage of those profile pages with review content that would significantly enhance the user experience while increasing the percentage of duplicate content that existed throughout the site.

Based on user-focused metrics like time-on-page and bounce rate, initial testing seems to indicate that users far prefer the version on the right. Yet the decision to layer in duplicate content seems to contradict what we have come to believe about how to structure content.

This doesn’t mean that content spamming or link farming will somehow become acceptable (it won’t). It means we should spend less time worrying about how to sculpt PageRank and hide duplicate content and more time thinking about how to maximize the user experience and structure the data held within the site properly.

Big data has the potential to change everything in our industry (again). If we wanted something safe and boring, we probably wouldn’t be in this field in the first place.

SES Toronto 2012 is June 11-13. Register before May 11 and save up to $300!

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2172922/Google-Big-Data-What-it-Means-for-SEO