TopRank Online Marketing is proud to be a founding sponsor of the first Minnesota Blogger Conference. Tickets for this event “sold out” within a few hours and there are over 100 people on the waiting list. Thanks to conference founders Melissa Berggren, Arik Hanson, Suzi Magill and Katie Schutrop, it’s already one hot event.
The date is Saturday, Sept 11 (the day I fly to Hong Kong) and the location is at CoCo MSP in Saint Paul. Topics to be presented range from “how to blog” to “how to get your blog published as a book” to “how to make money with a blog” to “blog analytics” to a “business blogging panel” that will include Adam Singer from TopRank Marketing.
If you’d like to attend this networking rich and information packed event, you can’t. It’s sold out!
However, what you can do is win a free pass from TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog.
All you have to do is:
Write a blog post explaining the most important thing you’ve learned from blogging yourself
Or if you don’t blog yet, write a comment below on one thing you’d like to learn
Also, why you should get to attend the MN Blogger Conference (instead of the other 100 people on the waiting list)
Use the MN Blogger Conference logo above in your post and also include a link to the page you’re reading right now: http://tprk.us/mnblog
All blog post entries must be published and we must be notified (mnblog at toprank dot org) by Friday 9/3 at noon Central. Once received, all posts will be linked to from the bottom of this page and the TopRank Online Marketing staff will read the entries and decide the winner. THE WINNER of a free pass to the sold-out MN Blogger Conference will be announced at 5pm on Friday.
So what are you waiting for? Get started now on a compelling, creative and persuasive blog post that explains why you should be the winner of a very rare MN Blogger Conference pass.
Aaron Goldman is an accomplished digital marketer that I know through MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit conference. He reached out to me while writing his new book, “Everything I Know About Marketing I Learned from Google”, and asked if I’d like to contribute. Such a request is a great honor to me but unfortunately, I never did end up sending anything to Aaron even though he was incredibly patient and went out of his way to make it easy.
I know what you’re thinking: Smart AND nice guy? Yes indeed, that’s Aaron and now he’s on a blog tour to promote his new book, graciously stopping by Online Marketing Blog with a video recognizing how TopRank Online Marketing “Acts Like Content” (Chapter 7) as well as offering insights from the book on the value of content for marketing. Overall, the book offers 20 lessons “straight from Google’s playbook” that I think you’ll get a lot of value from. Check out the video:
Aaron also talks about a blog post by TopRank’s Adam Singer, 10 Keys to Content Marketing, that offers specific tips and guidelines on how marketers can make their brands memorable. He finishes up with a freestyle rap that you’ve got to hear. Well done Aaron and thanks for the TopRank Marketing love.
Be sure to check out the Googley Lessons site and blog tour page to see where Aaron is going to show up next. You can check out his book at Amazon and anywhere else great marketing books are sold.
I was reading a copy of the Inc. 500 issue on my flight back from Dallas this weekend and came across an article about a seasonal online retailer that was “penalized” right before the Holidays for paid links. He estimated the revenue loss due to plummeting organic search visibility at $4 million in sales. Now he’s “thanking” Google for the spanking because he’s mended his ways and is reborn as a social media enthusiast.
I’m not sure I buy the “social media has turned things around” story exactly, but I do wonder how many companies and consultants roll the dice and take shortcuts and loopholes to get ahead only to find out later it’s worthless? The notion of paid links is an old story (Paid Links Evil? Dec 2005) but many of the tactics used to shortcut results for SEO will always be a fresh topic of discussion.
It turns out the retailer in the Inc. story was doing SEO internally then hired two SEO companies to help out. The story goes on to say that a SEO company was to “reach out to relevant sites and ask them for links. Instead, one of the companies admitted it was paying for links.” That’s worded in a way that makes you think maybe the retailer didn’t know the SEO company was buying links.
We don’t buy links at TopRank Marketing.
We never have. Not ever in 10 years of being in the search marketing business. As far as the retailer in the Inc. article, it’s surprising because buying links isn’t cheap. If a company didn’t know the SEO consultant was buying links, it’s peculiar any way you look at it. Where did the money come from to buy the links? How did the SEO company not report what it was doing? How did the company owner not know what the SEO company was doing?
I polled followers of @leeodden on Twitter whether they or someone they knew knew had ever been penalized for buying links. Almost all of them said yes. When I’ve mentioned that we never buy links to other search marketers, the disbelief was like I told them I didn’t need to breathe air.
The point of relating this story to you isn’t so much about the risks and rewards of paid links, defining exactly what “paid means” (what about a 3 way barter?) or even judging those that sell and buy links. The point is that the online retailer in the story says social media tactics were largely ignored and now they’re committed to blogging, Tweeting and being active on Facebook. He claims all is now well in their SEO world. “We’re back on top.”
The point: Why didn’t the online retailer commit to a better online marketing strategy in the first place?
It’s been promoted for years that paid links can carry consequences. People like Google’s Anti-Spam Czar Matt Cutts make their perspective clear and make it easy to report paid links. Right or wrong, it’s the way search engines want to play. Obviously, paid links with the right anchor text from very authoritative and relevant websites have a positive impact, or SEOs and website owners wouldn’t participate. It’s important to note that Google doesn’t have a problem with paid links per se, but with paid links that pass PageRank.
The question I have for companies that rely too much on shortcuts and loopholes is, “Why not suspend the “free money now” attitude and invest in a smart and competitive online marketing program that can get results AND stand the test of scrutiny?” Won’t a customer focused marketing effort that provides optimized and linkable content to a growing social network earn more links, more traffic and more revenue anyway?
I don’t think there’s much reason to put your brand and revenue at risk if you have a long term view of how the search and social web works. The investment in understanding and engaging customers plus the staff, software and time to implement content, analyze performance data and ongoing content marketing is well worth the cost and there’s virtually no risk.
“Don’t bring a sword to a gun fight”
Years ago at a search conference discussion about black hat and white hat tactics, Tim Mayer, ex head of Search at Yahoo! made the comment “”If you’re being entirely organic and going after ‘Viagra,’ it’s like taking a sword to a gunfight. You just aren’t going to rank” when discussing acceptable tactics in really aggressive industries like “PPC” (pills pron casino).
The temptation and pressures to profitability are great in industries that are flush with heavily optimized and marketed web sites. However, most companies don’t fall in that category and I think smarter and more creative marketing can still win for the vast majority of websites, especially in the long run. We’ve seen it happen with our own clients nearly 10 years.
Why rent when you can own?
The reason I’ve never participated in link purchases or endorsed the practice isn’t as much about Google’s rules on paid links that pass PageRank. It’s because I could never understand why anyone would “buy” something with such risk associated with it when they could “earn it and own it”? With roots in Public Relations, our online marketing agency has been accustomed to earning media placements and often times highly desirable links since we started the business in 2001. It can take more time to see aggressive results, but when you focus on making creative content and doing the hard work of promotion to earn traffic and links, the cost is one of investment vs. the often higher cost of advertising with no equity in what you’ve purchased. Then there’s the cost if the links are devalued by the search engines and subsequent lost revenue. I’d rather build, promote and earn those links that will be in place indefinitely.
Using that strategy, Online Marketing Blog has accumulated a substantial number and quality of links (according to Majestic SEO). The devil is in the details with this sort of thing of course, since it matters very much what the topic, anchor text and PageRank are of the link sources. But suffice it to say, we experience very good results in each of those areas as evidenced by over 21,000 different keyword phrases that sent organic traffic each month and top visibility for important and challenging keyword queries.
What’s your experience with managing risk with SEO tactics? Have you experienced what the online retailer above went through and focused anew on a sustainable and longer term online marketing strategy?
Army Golden Knights: SFC Dave Herwig (@gkdave), SGM Steve Young (@gksteve), LTC Joe Martin (gkjoe)
My presentation on how to leverage Social Media SEO to improve the reach and effectiveness of blog content for marketing at OpenCa.mp DFW this weekend ended up being a lot of information in a very short period of time. The use of a video interview I did with Brian Clark as the segue into my presentation ate into some of the 30 minutes I had to present plus I simply had too many slides.
(Thanks to Lt Colonel Joe Martin for the photo taken right after the presentation. His team were literally sponges for information at the event.)
The good news is that there’s Slideshare, so I’ve embeded a copy of that presentation below. Chris Pirillo and Brian Clark gave witty, informative and entertaining presentations on blogging and copywriting for blogs before me, so the stage was set to talk about marketing that blog content.
Marketers familiar with “Push and Pull” can relate to Social Media being the push, where (along with listening & engagement) you syndicate, update and share your content via social channels. The pull is SEO, where you optimize that content with customer centric keywords they can use on search engines to easily find your content ahead of the competition.
My presentation shared a model that I call the Cycle of Social & SEO that starts with creating, optimizing and promoting content along with listening to and growing social networks. As the relevant content gets shared socially and others link to it, the exposure and traffic builds momentum to a point where search traffic and the social community you’ve fostered provides priceless data via social media and web analytics on what content to create and share on a go forward.
Guessing what keywords and what social channels your customers are connected to is the reason why so many companies don’t see an impact from their efforts. Being smart from the start and planning on developing a cycle that continues to provide value and refine effectiveness at meeting customer search and social media needs is a win for all.
Companies in the marketing space like Marketo, PRWeb and our own agency at TopRank Marketing have made strong commitments to content as well as SEO and Social Media with the payoffs coming in the form of competitive search visibility and growing social communities.
We’ve recently been engaged by another well known company in the online marketing space that sees the value in both our strategic marketing & implementation expertise, but more importantly, is making a commitment to content and it’s role in customer acquisition and customer retention through Social Media & Search Optimization.
Check out the presentation below and let me know what you think.
OpenCamp’s Sunday schedule included presentations on blogging that included Chris Pirillo, Brian Clark and myself. I caught up with Brian before he gave his presentation to give us a little preview. John P. ended up using the video as the segue between Brian and I as we changed microphones.
Watch as Brian talks about the importance of planning content and understanding its purpose in order to be effective with blog copywriting. He also mentioned that traditional media is still doing some things right and we new media types would do well to identify what those things are and use that insight for our own publishing and content marketing efforts.
I think Brian’s presentation on content planning and editorial was a perfect setup to the marketing of content presentation that I gave afterwards, but of course I’m biased. Of course you can find a cornucopia of copy writing and content marketing advice at Copyblogger.
My next and last post from OpenCa.mp will include a summary of my presentation along with the actual PPT deck embedded within the post.
At the OpenCa.mp conference in Dallas this weekend I was able to re-connect with Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome and the Gnomedex conference (We’ve interviewed each other in the past). We both jumped out of the same airplane with the Army Golden Knights last week and are also speaking today about blogs at OpenCa.mp.
I caught up with Chris to talk about his take on SEO and social media. He had pretty strong opinions about people who are too aggressive and not always relevant in the social connections they’re making. This is what he had to say:
You can find Chris online by Googling “chris“. How’s that for the effect of links on search engine visibility?
The first content session I’m attending at OpenCamp is by Gio, aka Giovanni Gallucci, a longtime search and social media marketer based in Dallas. The topic is “Blackhat SEO” and the room is packed!
The session was cut a bit short due to technical difficulties with getting the conference started and Gio took it in stride and was both entertaining and informative – the right mix for a morning tech crowd.
Gio says “Black hat is simply another way to automate a time-consuming process. In other areas of marketing and life in general we encourage automation in order to maximize efficiency and get a leg up on our competitors”.
According to the conference session description, the nature of this session doesn’t allow liveblogging or tweeting, which i think is a load of crap, so I’ll liveblog it anyway.
Speaking of liveblogging, I am writing this on an iPad and the brilliant WordPress app deleted the first version, so I am writing now from memory on a notepad app.
The session is basically about what Gio does on a daily basis for his SEO clients. Based on insights from Woopra analyticz Gio says these are 5-6 social media sites you need to focus on to drive traffic and affect your search visibility:
- Media sharing: YouTube and Flickr
- Social Bookmarking: StumbleUpon
- Social Networks: Facebook & Twitter
When you undertake your social media marketing efforts, don’t let “little people” and naysayers hold you back. Gio gives Cali Lewis as an example with her growth of online shows and current success with GeekBeat.TV
As far as as Geolocation services like Gowalla, Foursquare, Whrrrl, etc Gio says these are cute and fun, but that there’s not much measurable social media marketing value to them. (If you don’t buy that, check out Mashable.com for FourSquare case studies)
We’re 15 min into the presentation and thee’s no black hat SEO yet
YouTube lists are unreal for driving search traffic. Organize your individual videos into lists and optimize them. Find other videos that are highly trafficked and add them to lists that include your own videos. If you’re not creating video, you’ve got to get started.
Tools: tubetoolbox.com (Now we’re getting into the automation and almost black hat stuff). With YouTube ToolBox, Gio says you create a message in 2-3 sentences, mail merge their username and then create multiple versions of the message with different content and the same call to action. Then you can schedule the sending of messages to YouTube users that have been harvested at the rate of about 20 messages per hour. Something like: Hey “username” I saw that you commented on a video about XYZ and wanted to let you know about another similar video and would love your opinion.”.
I have to note, using automation tools like this must be done by someone that REALLY knows what they’re doing or you will suffer consequences. Managing risk vs. reward is important and for the record, my agency doesn’t use automation in this way.
The key to getting YouTube videos ranked high is activity on YouTube. with Flickr, you can add comments with a link back to your content.
Take advantage of current events. Gio shows a video of ComicCon geeks talking about how comic are not geeky anymore. Thee’s some irony to a code geek making fun of comic book geeks.
When going somewhere offline to get photos or video for content, blend in. Gio tells a story of buying a cowboy getup to blend in at a rodeo or maybe it was somewhere else like that where there was a concentration of cowboy types.
Keep it fresh. For example, make a presentation the day you give it.
Tool: tweetaddr 3.0. Using this tool makes it appear as if you’re communicating with Twitter via a web browser (when you’re not and actually using an automated follow tool).
“Can’t is not an option”. Gio gave an example of a how a school with only 200 kids earned 68,000 votes on a list of top schools.
“Show up and just get it done”. If you look like you’re supposed to be there, no one will bother you. (Regarding collecting content or promoting online content in the offline world).
Tool: Bookmarking Daemon – Put in your social boomarking accounts and it will randomly pick your content and promote it.
According to the room monitor, that’s all the time we have. You can find out more about Giovanni on his blog: Blog.gallucci.net and get a copy of his social media manifesto at: gallucci.net/smm
Army Strong Stories is a program to draw attention to the real life and experience of being in the Army through soldier stories communicated via media socially. Recently Greg Swan of the Minneapolis Public Relations firm, Weber Shandwick, that is behind the Army Strong Stories campaign contacted me with a compelling opportunity to create my own Army story: “Would you like to go skydiving with the US Army Golden Knights?”
Who are the Golden Knights? In 1959 13 men joined together to form the Strategic Army Corps Sport Parachute Team, to compete in the communist dominated sport of skydiving. The team performed so well that on June 1, 1961 the Army maded them an official parachute team and the Knights (men and women) have been wowing audiences at air shows ever since.
Greg is a well known “social media guy” and works with the Army account for his agency. At first I was uncertain about the jump, but after looking at the competitive skydiving team’s website, YouTube channel and blog, I decided it was worth checking out.
One thing Greg didn’t know when he invited me was that I spent several years on active duty in the military. We later discovered I was stationed on the same base in Alaska as his Grandfather. My experience as a small town kid from Minnesota being exposed to a completely different world of the military allowed me to grow and mature in new ways.
My short experience with the Army exposed me to structure, challenge and reward in combination with raising my awareness of teamwork and a sense of purpose that was instrumental in the development of things like character, integrity and confidence – All essential for success as an entrepreneur and business owner.
Also, without the Army college fund program, I would not have been able to afford a University education. So, while it was by no means a career for me, my personal experience with the Army left me a different person, better in many ways, than before I joined. It is with that backround and my interest in the Army Golden Knights’ use of social media that I accepted the offer to jump from an airplane for the first time in my life yesterday.
Disclosure: The U.S. Army paid for my transportation and accomodations in Addison, Texas where the jump occurred and I agreed to write a blog post however I wanted.
Meet the Army Golden Knights
The competitive skydiving team of men and women that make up the Golden Knights are the best of the best skydivers in the world. These men and women have many thousands of jumps under their belts and participate in competitions all over the world, making them truly unique individuals and part of a very elite group.
I watched videos on YouTube of the Knights in competition as well as the tandem jumps I would be taking. These videos included VIPs like President George W. Bush, celebrities like Vince Vaughn and well known Digerati like John Pozadzides, CEO of Woopra. This gave me a pretty good idea of what to expect. As a marketer, I’m fully aware of how effective video can be at telling a story, but being able to watch videos of the Golden Knights do what they do was equally impressive as it was confidence building in that I would be in good hands.
The Golden Knights Use of Social Media
The Golden Knights have an official website as well as a blog, YouTube Channel, Flickr, Facebook & Twitter. Several of the Knights also maintain their own Twitter accounts and blogs. The content published on these social channels gives potential candidates great insight into the life of a competitive skydiver.
The Knights are a publishing entity like no other I’ve seen. On the day of our jump, nearly every Army Golden Knight had still and/or video cameras on their helmets. SFC Dave Herwig was busy all day editing videos as they came in for uploading to YouTube and posting online. The Knights clearly see content and engagement as the key to getting the word out and social media channels are a perfect distribution and community building platform to that end.
Skydiving with the Army Golden Knights
I was not jumping alone of course, there were several other digerati types like Chris Pirillo, Cali Lewis, Trey Ratcliff, Dave Curlee, Scott Ellis, Vi Kim Vu, Frederick Van Johnson, George Ruiz, Jay Batson, Pelpina Trip, John Pozadzides, and Giovanni Galluci jumping as well. Our itinerary called for us to get breakfast and meet early in the morning at the hotel and walk over to a soccer field area where the jump would occur.
This event never would have happened without Carolyn Sullivan from Weber Shandwick & SFC Dave Herwig from Army Golden Knights aka Army social media guy
SFC Mike Elliott starts off by giving a pre-jump briefing
This puts jumpers like Frederick Van Johnson, Vi Kim Vu & Pelpina Trip and the rest of us at ease.
Next we suited up as Scott Ellis has done here
Then we headed to the plane used specifically for tandem jumps
The Army Golden Knights showed their stuff
Whoo Hoo the view up here is awesome!!
A perfect landing just 20 feet from the spectators. Amazing accuracy from 2 1/2 miles up.
Media savvy Army Golden Knights like Staff Sergeant Jared Zell are well-equipped to document their jumps on video and photos
After the jump, off came the yellow jumpsuits, which were hot! Rachel, Pelpina & Cali
Major Smith & Lt Col Martin made sure everything ran smoothly.
For more photos, I’ve put some up on Flickr and Facebook. When the Army and Weber Shandwick share the video taken of my jump, I’ll post that here as well.
I have to say, this experience was a blast. The men and women of the Army Golden Knights are true professionals and it was a priveledge to have the opportunity to do a tandem jump with them as well as learn more about what they do.
Thank you to Greg Swan and Carolyn Sullivan from Weber Shandwick for making the offer. Thank you to the U.S. Army for having me along and for all that you do for our country. Thanks to the organizers of OpenCa.mp as well for such a great event.
Here’s a pre-jump interview Cali Lewis of GeekBeat.TV did with Mike and Dave of the Golden Knights that will give you even more info about the Knights and the event:
Next up: Speaking of which, OpenCa.mp and all the WordPress, Drupal, .NET and Joomla! education you can shake a stick at is where I’ll be this weekend. I’m presenting a session on Social SEO for Blogs after Brian Clark and Chris Pirillo give their presentations on blogging. It should be a great event and be sure to watch for a few liveblog posts on some of the sessions.
Dave Roth works as Director of Search Marketing at Yahoo. That means Dave is a Search Engine Marketer that works for a search engine. I’ve known Dave for several years and we finally decided to do a video interview. Watch the interview below to learn what a search marketer that works for a search engine does, especially the challenges and opportunities in communications on search marketing performance in a large company.
Of course, we couldn’t talk to someone like Dave at Yahoo without mentioning the transition of search results to Bing over on the Yahoo site. What does this mean for SEO? What does it mean for Paid Search? What’s the fate of Site Explorer and where does it fit within Bing Webmaster Tools? Is SEO good or bad for search engines? How much of a signal does social media provide search engines? We discuss these topics and more.
Last week the West Coast Search Engine Strategies conference moved from San Jose back to its roots in San Francisco. It was a well attended show (5,000+ in 2009 vs. 6,000 in 2010 registrations), despite the illusion created by the voluminous Moscone.
As part of Connected Marketing Week, SES included a great mix of sessions. In fact, there were quite a few new sessions and solo presentations such as the one by Andy Beal on Online Reputation Management and the one on Content Marketing Optimization by moi.
Networking events were popular, but of course anything with free booze and thirsty smart search marketers equals popular. Networking opportunities like the black hat / white hat brings an interesting mix of people together. There were specialized training sessions as well and a full exhibit hall. I thought the hall closed a bit early, 3pm, but hey – if the vendors want to go home, let them go home.
White Hat, Black Hat Who? - Mike Grehan & Matt McGowan
I talked to Mike Grehan, VP and Global Content Director for Search Engine Watch, ClickZ and Search Engine Strategies, who said the conference programming mix was well received. On the launch of Connected Marketing Week, Mike says,
“I’ll borrow the motto from the UK special air service: Who dares wins!”.
Mike’s partner in crime, Matt McGowan, who is Vice President and Publisher for Incisive Media’s Interactive Marketing Group, had a few things to say about the event:
“The Connected Marketing Week "test" has now been proven. While all of us @ Incisive Media were pretty sure it would work out (remember, it was past and prospective attendees who asked us to do this) we never really did know how it was going to play out until now... the response from delegates, sponsors and speakers has been resoundingly positive.
Most of the partner events in their own right had strong attendance with @ 200 people registered for 140Conf, 100 for IAB, 100 for the E-mail and Search Marketing workshops, almost 100 for OMS and just about 6,000 for SES SF. We plan to build on this year's success and we hope to see you at the 2nd addition of Connected Marketing Week in SF in 2011 (with many of the same partners and a few surprises) if not before!”
TopRank Online Marketing had a great experience at SES San Francisco with a mix of liveblogging, speaking and moderating 3 sessions as well as plenty of networking. I gave two new presentations: One for a long running session on Blog and Feed SEO and another for an all new session called Content Marketing Optimization that I gave solo. It was a full room and such great attendance was very much appreciated.
Here are a few of the blog posts published by other search engine marketing bloggers on the presentations given by TopRank plus one post from Yahoo.
aimclear blog – Think Outside the Blog: Tasty Tips for Feed SEO
PageTraffic – SEO Through Blogs and Feeds - SES San Francisco 2010
Bruce Clay blog – Content Marketing Optimization SES San Francisco
One of the great things about attending industry conferences is the opportunity to connect with our current clients and meet new companies to work with. Both PRWeb and Marketo exhibited at SES San Francisco:
TopRank Client Maria Pergolino and co-worker from Marketo
TopRank's Adam Singer & Client Meg Walker from PRWeb
Quite a few of the software and technology companies that exhibit at shows like SES are the kinds of companies we work with at TopRank Marketing, so spending time at the exhibit hall is very productive for multiple reasons.
TopRank's Mike Yanke diligently liveblogging SES
In the spirit of our conference liveblogging schedule post for SES San Francisco, check out the nifty Flash thingy below made by Thomas McMahon to navigate to all the liveblog posts Mike Yanke and Adam Singer put up during the week. Congrats to SES for a great show and to Mike and Adam who did a great job covering the event for Online Marketing Blog.
What’s up next? I’m looking forward to speaking at the next SES, which is in Hong Kong, on “The Business Value of Social Media”.
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I was reading a copy of the Inc. 500 issue on my flight back from Dallas this weekend and came across an article about a seasonal online retailer that was “penalized” right before the Holidays for paid links. He estimated the revenue loss due to plummeting organic search visibility at $4 million in sales. Now he’s “thanking” Google for the spanking because he’s mended his ways and is reborn as a social media enthusiast.
My presentation shared a model that I call the Cycle of Social & SEO that starts with creating, optimizing and promoting content along with listening to and growing social networks. As the relevant content gets shared socially and others link to it, the exposure and traffic builds momentum to a point where search traffic and the social community you’ve fostered provides priceless data via social media and web analytics on what content to create and share on a go forward.
OpenCamp’s Sunday schedule included presentations on blogging that included 
The competitive skydiving team of men and women that make up the Golden Knights are the best of the best skydivers in the world. These men and women have many thousands of jumps under their belts and participate in competitions all over the world, making them truly unique individuals and part of a very elite group.
