Lorna Li | Green Marketing 2.0

There’s a lot of resources that list all the on-page and off-page ranking factors that are important to search engine optimization. There’s only one list out there that is worth paying attention to: SEOmoz’s Search Ranking Factors V2.

Google’s ranking algorithm takes into account approximately 200+ attributes when determining the position of websites in search engine results pages (SERPs). In April 2007, SEOmoz published Search Ranking Factors V2, a survey of 37 leaders in organic search engine optimization on the most important factors in Google rankings. Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz CEO maintains that 90-95% of what you need to know about the Google algorithm is contained in the study. While a year old, most of this information is still valid.

Search Ranking Factors evaluates both positive and negative search engine ranking attributes on a scale of 1-5 (5 is “Exceptional Importance), and also indicates the degree of consensus between SEO respondents. Comments from the respondents also yield nuggets of juicy information that can help you refine your SEO and help you avoid landing in Google’s supplemental hell (index).

If you have a limited amount of time for SEO, be sure to focus on the factors that are given the greatest weight by Google’s algorithm. Below is a summary of the top 10 factors that influence Google search engine rankings:

Google’s Top 10 Search Engine Ranking Factors

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag (4.9)
Exceptional Importance and High Consensus

Placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page’s HTML header.

If you only have time one SEO action on your site, make sure to create a good, description title tag that starts with your target keyword.

2. Anchor Text of Inbound Link (4.4)
Exceptional Importance and High Consensus

Inbound links that contain your target keyword in the anchor text will give you a strong boost in ranking for that keyword. While keyword rich anchor text is hugely important, the text adjacent to the link plays a role, as well. A wide array of naturally occurring inbound anchor text is the best scenario - inbound links that are close to identical could invite penalties. So if you’re dropping links…be sure to mix up your anchor text a little!

3. Global Link Popularity of Site (4.4)
Exceptional Importance and Average Agreement

This refers to the overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity). I like Lucas Ng’s description, because it refers to Amazon tribes!

“Think of a web page as a town. If a city has freeways, airports, train stations, bus shelters and a port, that’s a good indicator that it is an important hub. That orphaned web page with no links pointing to it? It may as well be a hidden tribe of Amazons that no one has discovered.”

4. Age of Site (4.1)
Exceptional Importance and Average Agreement

Age refers to the date indexable content was first seen by the search engines (note that this can change if a domain switches ownership), NOT the date of original registration of the domain.

Age is a huge factor, which is the reason why a lot of crappy, old, barely relevant sites are hard to knock out of SERPs. According to Todd Malicoat, “The older the berry the sweeter the link juice.”

5. Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure (4)
Exceptional Importance and Average Agreement

Refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page. While somewhat masturbatory, internal link juice is a strongly weighted factor and, most importantly, one that you can control, especially with regards to the choice of anchor text.

According to Scott Smith, a.k.a Caveman, “Factors considered by Google include: Number of inbound links, importance (placement) of the inbound links within the linking pages, anchor text patterns, nav versus text links, and the content of linking pages.”

6. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site (3.9)
High Importance and Average Agreement

This refers to the subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword. Highly relevant links, from trusted, topically related sites carry more weight.

7. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community (3.9)
High Importance and Average Agreement

Refers to link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world. Link love from the popular kids in the hood helps. A few links from authority sites can help a niche site rank above the authorities for niche-related keywords.

8. Keyword Use in Body Text (3.7)
High Importance and Average Agreement

Using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page.

Target keywords in the title need to be included in the page, especially in starting and ending paragraphs. Focus more on semantic variations than keyword density - repeating the same keywords over and over again, can result in ranking suppression.

9. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site (3.6)
High Importance, But Highly Disputed

In general, a links from popular sites are better, but it’s hard to get an accurate read on how valuable this is.

10. Topical Relationship of Linking Page (3.5)
High Importance and Average Agreement

While all links help, links from topically related sites help more, though it’s hard to measure exactly by how much.

Other Important Search Engine Ranking Factors

11. Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages (3.5)
High Importance and Average Agreement

Do links on the page point to high quality, topically-related pages? According to Aaron Wall http://seobook.com, “Your outbound links help define what community your site belongs in.”

Benefit can be derived through anchor text tunneling, that is, when Site A links to site B with the keyword “widgets”, and site B links to site C the keyword “widgets”.

12. Age of Document (3.4)
High Importance and Average Agreement

Older pages may be perceived as more authoritative while newer pages may be more temporally relevant. An older document on an older, more trusted site will rank better than one on a newer site.

Says Aaron Wall, “Older documents may be trusted more, especially if they are well cited and do not have many broken links in them. For blogs and news sites new documents may tend to have high PageRank values due to internal site structure. New documents may also be given a freshness boost.”

13. Keyword Use in H1 Tag (3.3)
High Importance and Average Agreement

Creating an H1 tag with the targeted search term/phrase

14. Amount of Indexable Text Content (3.2)
High Importance and Average Agreement

Refers to the literal quantity of visible HTML text on a page. Sheer volume of content isn’t that important, but it is good to have some indexable content as opposed to all flash and images. Chris Boggs http://chrisboggs.blogspot.com thinks that content of 75-100 words can be effective in scoring points with Google. However, absence of indexable content can be mitigated by other factors, such as quality inbound links, quality outbound links, and intelligent keyword deployment across title, meta, hx, etc.

15. Age of In-Bound Link (3.2)
High Importance and Average Agreement

Age matters

16. Topical Relationship of Linking Site (3.1)
High Importance and Average Agreement

It helps

17. Relevance of Site’s Primary Subject Matter to Query (3.1)
High Importance, But Highly Disputed

The topical relationships between the full content of a website and a user’s given query. References to the Google’s neutering of the Google bomb effect, caused by complaints from miserable failures in high places, indicate a belief that this factor is more important now than before. However, the dominance of Wikipedia in SERPs is a powerful counter-example.

18. Keyword Use in Domain Name (3)
Moderate Importance and Average Agreement

Including the targeted term/phrase in the registered domain name, i.e. keyword.com. Having your keyword in your domain name has little bearing on its own. The benefit comes from its propensity to attract inbound links with your keyword in the anchor text. You can use hyphens to separate works, but your url will look yucky, and it kills your branding.

Technorati Tags: search engine ranking factors, google, seo, search engine optimization, search marketing, serp, lorna li

by Lorna Li

Search engine marketers, bloggers, and social media fanatics wore their favorite hats at Search Marketing Salon’s “Wear Your Favorite Hat” Launch party at the chic and intimate Otis Lounge in San Francisco. Tips were swapped, secrets were traded, and product ideas were bounced around that would take search marketing to the next level.

Forest Kolb, Sharon Lin, and Julie Blaustein.

“We need a Google Adwords Editor that also includes Yahoo and MSN on a single UI,” stated Clay Schulenburg, Interactive Marketing Manager for Healthline. “This will take search to a whole new level.”

F*ck the Yahoo bulk upload, is what I say to that!

Hear that, web entrepreneurs? That’s big bucks for you!

Jacob Morgan, Search Marketing Alchemist and Nicolette Toussaint

Search-obsessed bloggers that dropped by included Michael Brito, who writes a fantastic blog about Social Media & Conversation Marketing, Lisa Whelan social media queen on Vox, Jim Yu on how to be a Search Marketing and SEO Maven, and Andy Kaufman, the real estate blogger and Twitter king.

William Gauthier, Alicia Lin, Damon White, and Lorna Li.

e-Storm’s William Gauthier, Lisa McGuire, and Daniel Riveong

Leon Krishayana and lovely lady in black beret

Leon Krishnayana of iSpionage, offers a technology platform that helps search engine marketers track competitors’ PPC ads on Google, Yahoo, and MSN ads daily. It allows you to see the ad copy, keywords, and average rank on the major search engines side by side. Very handy indeed.

Vera Belenky and Alex Gamburg

Other attendees included Mark Fiske, Senior Online Marketing Manager at Gap, Pete Park of web advertising agency Vectorhaus, Yan Rozovsky VP of LeadClick Media, Jason Hart of the search-focused Online Marketing agency Domain Methods, Jeff Rohrs, VP of search marketing agency ExactTarget, Leo Haryono, Head of Natural Search of Shopping.com, Josh Pierry and Clay Shulenburg of Healthline, Biren Talati, of Sandalstore.com, Peter Koontz, Founder and CTO of Sprenzy, Vera Belenky of Walmart.com, Alex Gamburg Search Marketing Director of Trulia, specializing in real estate search, Gabriel Carrejo, the original sinner, Forest Kolb of BizzFlip who has cracked the secret of the Digg first page, Sharon Lin, Online Marketer for Web 2.0 companies, Irina Greenman, and Danny Cheung, who is about to revolutionize the world of WordPress publishing the Good Magazine way.

More pictures can be viewed on the Search Marketing Salon Flickr album.

Join Search Marketing Salon on Facebook!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: searchmarketing salon, e-Storm, iSpionage, Domain Methods, Good Magazine, Sandalstore.com, Michael Brito, Andy Kaufman, Jim Yu, Lisa Whelan, Sharon Lin, Josh Pierry, Clay Shulenburg, Peter Koontz, Jeff Rohrs, Biren Talati, Jason Hart, Gabriel Carrejo, Pete Park, Mark Fiske, Yan Rozovsky, Leo Haryono, Leon Krishnayana, Vera Belenky, Nicolette Toussaint, Lorna Li, Jacob Morgan

It’s time to wear your favorite hat, because Search Marketing Salon launches this Thursday. White hats, grey hats, and black hats are welcome - we do not discriminate.

If you are obsessed about search engine rankings, gaga about the SEO benefits of social media, and have a tale or two to tell about how you dominated the SERPs, have a drink with us!

When:

Thursday March 27 6:00pm - 9:00pm

Where:

Otis Lounge

25 Maiden Lane (b/w Grant & Kearny )

San Francisco, CA 94108

Join Us!

RSVP via Eventbrite for Search Marketing Salon’s Wear Your Favorite Hat Launch Party.

To become an official member of Search Marketing Salon, join Search Marketing Salon on LinkedIn.

You can also connect with Search Marketing Salon on Facebook.

Technorati Tags: search marketing salon, search engine marketing, search marketing, sem, seo, ppc, social seo, web 2.0 marketing

presented by Giovanna & Aaron Wall

Tuesday night I went to one of the first SF Blogger Meetups to gather after a long hiatus and it was well worth the wait.

The group practically took over Amici’s pizzeria on Lombard and, with the exception of my bub.blicio.us buddy Victor Karamalis, included no one I recognized from the Web 2.0 circuit.

But it did include a treat - I got to meet, sit next to, and pick the brains of Aaron Wall and his wife Giovanna. Yes, THE Aaron Wall, of SEO Book and one of the most well known SEOs of our time. In fact, the couple is so successful with building monetizing blogs that they now occupy the ranks of the New Rich - a term coined by Tim Ferris of the 4-Hour Work Week. Both Aaron and Giovanna are seasoned veterans of blog monetization - they’ve optimized and monetized websites so that several of them bring in over six figures in income. Sharing their blogging secrets, as well as picking up the tab for 40+ attendees, was their way of giving back to the community.

They also threw in a free resource The Blogger’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization.

Alas, if only I could spend an ENTIRE DAY learning from Aaron or Giovanna!

The Blogger Meetup was largely made up of novice bloggers, and folks unfamiliar with the term SEO. Most of what the Walls shared was pretty general knowledge, seasoned with nuggets of valuable insider wisdom, some of which they urged, to keep to ourselves.

Topics covered were:

1. How to Generate and Grow Traffic

Content is King

Write good content that caters to your target audience - ideally content that is so good that it redefines the industry. Be sure to create a unique angle the reflects your personality. Mention and link out to other blogs - the owners will notice the incoming link, and often they too will share some link love.

A good tip from Aaron on scrapers stealing your unique site content is to create links to older articles in your blog post. That way, if scrapers pick up your content, at least they are providing links back to your site

Community Participation

Start online friendships by in conversations on blogs, forums and social networks related to your topic. Try to have a popular blogger mention you and link to you - this can bring considerable traffic to your site. You can also offer to write for other well-known bloggers.

Create a community project related to your topic and ask web-savvy experts to give their opinion about it. If your project is buzzworthy, all of the sudden you will have organic citations from thought leaders in the field pointing to your site from around the Web.

Pay Per Click

Use PPC to build traffic. My take on PPC is that it’s worthwhile if you have a product to sell that would at least enable you to generate some kind of ROI, otherwise buying this kind of traffic can get very expensive very quickly.

However, Aaron and Giovanna maintained that even if you’re not selling anything, buying traffic through PPC can be powerful, because, if your content is good, it can go viral. And niche keywords can actually be very cheap - around 5 or 10 cents a click, so if you have a small budget to play with, PPC traffic can be relatively inexpensive and worthwhile.

StumbleUpon Ads

For a nickel a visitor, StumbleUpon, a social search application, can drive considerable traffic to your site. StumbleUpon allows users to discover Web sites, people, videos, online communities, product information and more in a manner very much like channel-surfing, but for the Web. You can use StumbleUpon as a social media marketing tool for free - join a Stumble group for maximum impact - or as an advertiser. Other Stumblers vote your content up or down - the more positive votes you get, the more the StumbleUpon recommends your site to other Stumblers.

Paid Reviews

Solicit paid reviews from other bloggers through ReviewMe.com and PayPerPost.com.

2. Building a Large Subscription Base

RSS

Encourage RSS subscriptions by promoting RSS buttons aggressively. Create a page that explains what RSS is.

Create Brand Evangelists

Make your email accessible or use a contact form. Aggressively solicit comments and answer every real comment.

Encourage Registration

Encourage registration if you want to build a community and offer bonuses for registering.

3. Monetization Strategies

Adsense

The easiest way to monetize is Adsense, which is good for setting a baseline. Aaron recommended staying ad-free in the beginning and to avoid putting ads on your homepage unless you are very well trusted.

Affiliate Offers

Make sure that they are selective and relevant to your topic - and put the offers section on another part of your site.

Create or Sell a Product

Create or sell a product that is relevant to your topic; this works best if you are a recognized expert in your niche. You can also try to sell information-based products created from your intellectual capital, such as e-books, videos, or DVDs, or consulting services and speaking gigs.

Do not pollute your blog with advertising - it becomes a roadblock.

4. Technology

Aaron and Giovanna’s recommended blog platform of choice was WordPress, Drupal if you want to start a community. They also recommended Google Analytics or HaveAMint.com for site stats.

5. Other Takeaways

Trendspotting

One of the key takeaways from the Meetup was the value of spotting trends. According to Giovanna, “The best way to make $ out of blogging is to spot trends and be an early adopter.”

Here’s how to do it:

1. Research trends

Tools you can use to spot upcoming trends include Google Trends, trendwatching.com, ebay’s Marketplace Research Pro, which for $20/month gives you access to what people are searching for on eBay.

2. Keyword Research

Once you’ve zeroed in on a new trend, research the keywords around those trends, buy a domain name with those relevant keywords. Remember:

• Make sure the keyword is in the url
• Hyphens are branding suicide
• It doesn’t matter if your domain is a .biz, .org, or .net

3. Launch a blog about it.

Now all you have to worry about is creating a continuous stream of compelling content. Good luck!

As a blogger, creating quality content is probably the most difficult and time-consuming aspect of blogging, and not all of us have budgets to hire writers.

But according to Aaron, if you have a niche site optimized for niche keywords you can still receive a healthy stream of organic search traffic without the need to aggressively create content. The need for fresh content depends, a great deal, on the market.

Aaron, “I would never start a blog about SEO now - it’s too saturated a field.”

Giovanna, “If you are starting a blog about mortgages now - good luck!”

Given that the blogosphere only seems to be expanding exponentially, like a rogue galaxy hurtling out into space, it seems nearly impossible to gain any traction at all on anything, let alone monetize it.

Following these tips from Aaron and Giovanna Wall, you too, can earn money from your blogs. May the force be with you.

Technorati Tags: sf blogger meetup, blogging, blog monetization, blog seo, seo, search engine optimization, aaron wall, giovanna wall

“Buzz marketing” is a hot buzzword I hear a lot of these days. Being an analytical type, I want to really understand what it means, before I sling it around like corned beef hash.

Buzz marketing, word of mouth marketing (WOMM), guerrilla marketing and viral marketing are often used interchangeably to describe marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness through self-replicating viral processes.

While Seth Godin, author of Unleashing the IdeaVirus, states that viral marketing is, technically, not the same as word of mouth:
From sethgodin.typepad.com:

Word of mouth is a decaying function. A marketer does something and a consumer tells five or ten friends. And that’s it. It amplifies the marketing action and then fades, usually quickly. A lousy flight on United Airlines is word of mouth. A great meal at Momofuku is word of mouth.

Viral marketing is a compounding function. A marketer does something and then a consumer tells five or ten people. Then then they tell five or ten people. And it repeats. And grows and grows. Like a virus spreading through a population. The marketer doesn’t have to actually do anything else. (They can help by making it easier for the word to spread, but in the classic examples, the marketer is out of the loop.) The Mona Lisa is an ideavirus.

most marketers will not debate the difference.

Buzz marketing can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet. In this series of posts, we are going to focus on the viral effects of a buzz marketing campaign that leverages social media networks, as opposed to viral advertising strategies and tactics.

What is Social Media Marketing?

Buzz marketing that leverages the network and conversation effects of the social web is often referred to as social media marketing.

According to a great series of posts on Do It Yourself Social Media Marketing by Stepforth Web Marketing:
From www.stepforth.com:

Social media marketing (SMM) or social media optimization (SMO) is a method of promoting your brand (be it yourself, a product, a service, or a company) by strategically making your presence known across various social media networks (such as Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, MySpace)

Do not expect your social media marketing campaign to immediately drive business – it’s best used for branding or online reputation management, that will indirectly convert your target audience into fans, and your fans into customers.

Why do Social Media Marketing?

Every day, someone out there, somewhere is discussing something important to your business. They could be discussing your brand, your company executives, your competitors, or your industry.

Either they are hyping up your company and generating positive buzz about your products, or they are criticizing your service and sowing the dissention over the value you bring to your industry, and humanity in general.

According to internet marketing expert Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim:
From www.marketingpilgrim.com:

A great brand can take months, if not years, and millions of dollars to build. It should be the thing you hold most precious.

It can be destroyed in hours by a blogger upset with your company.

A new product launch could take hundreds of TV commercials, dozens of newspaper ads, and an expensive ad agency.

It can also spread like a virus with the praise of just one customer, at one message board.

A company can dominate market share, throttle competition and hold the #1 brand in the world.

It can also crash in months if it fails to listen to what its customers want.

This is happening whether you like it or not, so why not join in on the discussion? By participating in online conversations you can contribute your valuable expertise, quell misconceptions and doubts about your company, product, or industry and grab some more valuable web real estate in the process.

What are the SEO Benefits of Buzz Marketing through Social Networks?

When users search on your company name or targeted keyword phrases, search engine results pages (SERPs) will frequently display threaded discussions on social networking sites like Ning, forums like Webmaster World, and user review sites like Yelp. If there’s a lot of activity on these threads and, thus, continuous, freshly updated user-generated content, these threads will often rise to the top of SERPs.

These discussions can often include positive as well as negative opinions about your company or organization. Therefore, defensively, you want to be sure that you are doing your best to manage your online reputation, and diffuse or bury any negative publicity that could appear on this valuable SERP real estate.

Pro-actively, you should absolutely capitalize on the positive buzz, establish yourself as a thought leader or industry expert and generate as much brand awareness as possible. All the while, you can scatter valuable target keyword phrases and links to important web resources, especially your own, all over the social web and blogosphere. This can drive a great deal of traffic back to your website or other online locations where your product is sold.

If you have not included buzz marketing into your online marketing strategy, then you should. Otherwise, you are missing out on a great opportunity to generate a brand awareness and search engine optimization benefits for a fraction of the cost that online and traditional advertising requires.

Technorati Tags: social media marketing, SMM, social media optimization, SMO, buzz marketing, word of mouth marketing, WOMM, viral marketing, search engine marketing, SEM, search engine optimization, SEO, search engine results pages, SERP, seth godin, andy beal, lorna li, lornali

I was reading Steve Rubel’s blog Micro Persuasion and came accross his article “The Geek Marketer“.

I realized his blog post totally described trajectory I’m currently on and it put into perspective some of the challenges and triumphs that come with this hybrid role.

What I observe most frequently in my job are the tensions that arise between my company’s Marketing Department and our Internet Group. At the heart of the matter is the fact that these departments speak different languages, and the ensuing head-butting is “all very Mars and Venus” indeed.

According to Steve:
From www.micropersuasion.com:

With CEOs demanding accountability and time spent online climbing, chief marketing officers are on a push to embed technology into every facet of their strategy. But marketers and technologists are not exactly two peas in a pod. They speak different languages. Marketers like GRPs (gross ratings points). Geeks like APIs (application protocol interfaces). Dilbert mercifully pokes at these differences. It’s all very Mars and Venus.

Enter Geek Marketers. These cross-trained specialists are fluent in both worlds and bridge them. They are marketers by trade, yet they also have a hard-core interest in technology and social anthropology. As curious individuals, they are constantly studying how digital advances are changing our culture and media. Armed with these insights, they regularly apply them in a marketing context by working closely with brand teams to codify new best practices.

Geek Marketers create competitive advantage through rapid-fire testing and learning. The people I know in this role are shepherding the development, testing and measurement of all kinds of groundbreaking marketing programs. Their pilots span from the simple, such as building RSS feeds, to the complex, creating multifaceted community programs. Often they are paired with people like me, who are in a similar role on the agency side.

What Kind of Skills or Knowledge Sets do Geek Marketers Possess?

I ruminated on this question, came up with a list, and then posted the question on LinkedIn. I have to bow out to Marshall Clark Director of Search at FirstRanked for coming up with a far better list than mine.

Here’s the list that includes Marshall’s 8 year expertise and my “getting there” experience - it’s by no means cumulative. Feel free to add any additional skills you feel should be included.

Geek Marketer Marketing Skills:

• Search Engine Optimization
• Search Engine Marketing (PPC)
• Viral Marketing
• Social Media Marketing
• Guerilla Marketing
• Internet Strategy & Development
• Interactive Market Research
• Website Analytics
• ROI Tracking & Analysis
• Website Conversion Optimization
• Affiliate Marketing
• Community Development
• Online Reputation Management
• Website Development
• Blogging
• Web 2.0 Syndication
• Podcast/Videocast Production

Geek Marketer Technical Skills:

• HTML
• CSS
• PHP
• JavaScript/AJAX
• MySQL
• Apache Server Administration
• Java Administration

What Do Geek Marketers Read?

Gosh, the list of geek-centric internet marketing blogs out there seems endless, but here are some top picks:

• eWhisper
• Graywolf’s SEO Blog
• Inside Adwords
• John Battelle’s Searchblog
• Mashable
• Matt Cutts Blog
• Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik
• Pronet Advertising
• Read/Write Web
• SEOmoz
• Seth’s Godin’s Blog
• Stuntdbl
• TechCrunch
• Unofficial Google Analytics Blog
• Web Analytics World
• Web Strategy by Jeremiah

Analytics Geek Marketers

Of course we mustn’t forget the analytics geeks, who are a special breed of their own. They are hard-core number-crunchers who use their mathematical expertise to understand consumer behavior, such as Satnam Singh, from the Consumer Insight Group of Avenue A/ Razorfish. Their knowledge of Excel will make you cry.

If you are an analytics geek and data makes you hot, Satnam recommends you check out Avinash Kaushik’s list of Top Ten Web Analytics Blogs.

Technorati Tags: steve rubel, the geek marketer, search engine marketing, sem, search engine optimization, seo, social media marketing, web analytics, marshall clark, satnam singh, lorna li

The social media news release, also known as SMR, is a next-generation news release that integrates traditional and emerging forms of communications. SMRs incorporate social media features such as hyperlinks, social bookmarking, multimedia, comment and trackbacks.

Social media news releases are a powerful way to generate enormous buzz and create engaging dialogue among journalists, bloggers and other readers across the participatory web about your company and products.

Furthermore, SMRs offer all kinds of SEO benefits through viral linking.

This video from webitpr give a fantastic overview of the social media news release.

Technorati Tags: social media news release, social media release, social media press release, smr, smpr, smnr, search engine optimization, seo, social media optimization, social media marketing, lorna li

Last Friday I made TopRank’s BIGLIST of SEO Blogs. Not quite sure how that came about, as I’ve done minimal promotion of my site, but yes, Lee Odden, a recognized expert on search and blog marketing and CEO of TopRank Online Marketing found my blog worthy of mention.

I’ve been reflecting a lot about the somewhat schizophrenic content of my blog, how to make it work, and how to achieve the ever elusive perfection of my web site. While I am passionate about search marketing, Web 2.0, Green activism, environmental sustainability, and indigenous culture - I ask myself how it may be possible to integrate these disparate themes under one roof. And I ask myself, is there a market for this rather specialized perspective?

The majority of social activists I know are lamentably tech-impaired. When will this audience be mature enough to find value in leveraging the power of search engines and social media to promote their causes? How many of them are out there that already do?

I’m pleased to see that Lee Odden thinks my blog is at least worth the mention.

Technorati Tags: TopRank, BIGLIST, Online Marketing Blog, Lee Odden, SEO, search marketing

Photos courtesy of Brent Csutoras

I really believe in the power of intention, synchronicity, and manifestation - the clearer your intention, the more synchronicitous events pop up in your life, and the greater the likelihood you will manifest your desire. A key success factor is going with the flow, and being open to others who may play a factor in the manifestation of your intention, rather than trying to control, own, and micromanage every aspect of it - which is where a lot of people sabotage themselves.

My colleague Jaime Lapena and I were discussing how great it would be to do a search marketing happy hour - network with other search engine marketers, share tips and ideas, have a pint/ cocktail.

Next step - create a network of local Bay Area search marketers, whom we can then invite out for a drink on a regular basis. LinkedIn Groups is still under construction, so I decided to create a Search Marketing LinkedIn Network as a workaround. A group would be better, but heck, we can migrate peeps later.

Then, I’m out covering a Monster Cable event for bub.blicio.us, where I win a killer set of floor speakers in a raffle draw. I meet Daniel Riveong of e-Storm, a San Francisco-based interactive agency with a search marketing division.

Mention the SEM happy hour concept. 3 weeks later, he emails me and says, “Remember how you were talking about starting a search marketing happy hour? Well it ends up that I had to organize one for Todd Malicoat, of Stuntdubl. It’s next week - you’re invited.”

With Brent Csutoras

With Neil Patel

Friday, August 10 at SF’s Gordon Biersch - 20 search engine optimizers at one long dinner table, followed by more drinks at the Cigar Bar. SEOs I got to know include:

• Niel Patel, who started dong SEO at the tender age of 16, and is currently the CTO of Advantage Consulting Services, a social media marketing and search engine optimization agency - though he hasn’t yet graduated from college.
• Todd Malicoat of Stuntdubl, premier SEO consultant and the guru of link strategy.
• Natasha Robinson, That Girl From Marketing, who gave me excellent advice on how to do an SEO site audit.
• Will Radcliffe and Forest Kolb, of BizzFlip, a community where people can freely conduct business, cultivate ideas, and explore the infinite potential of today’s business world.
• Brent Csutoras of Weird Asia News, who occupied the number one spot for the world’s largest orgy (he’s now number 2).
• Daniel Riveong and William Gaulthier of e-Storm.
• David Mihm, small business web site designer and internet marketing consultant.

Saturday, August 18, dinner and drinks at the Liberties, in SF’s Mission district included the same posse and more.

• Roger Monti, aka MartiniBuster, WebmasterWorld moderator and consultant who offers web site review,PPC consultation, link development and web design services.
• Carolyn Shelby, Webmaster, SEO, former co-host of Webmaster Radio’s ‘Rush Hour’, current co-host of SEO 101, and uber-achiever with a schedule much like mine.
• Lawrence Coburn, founder of Rateitall and Sexy Widget.

Caveman and Laura Lippay

Todd Malicoat and Roger Monti

Todd Malicoat is contemplating moving out from upstate NY to the hip, technocentric SF Bay Area, but only if SF Bay Area search marketers can rally for regular SEO happy hours.

Todd Malicoat

I think it ironic that, while I intended to organize search marketing happy hours, I was apprehensive about the time and energy launching a regular event would take, as I’m already maxed out on time and energy. At the end of the day, all I needed to do was kick back and go with the flow.

Expect more search marketing meetups to come.

Technorati Tags: seo meetup, seo, search engine optimization consultants, search marketing, sem, todd malicoat, neil patel, brent csutoras, daniel riveong, william gauthier, david mihm, will radcliffe, forest kolb, natasha robinson, lawrence coburn, carolyn shelby, roger monti, lorna li

Simplified for Small Business, Green Enterprise, and Nonprofits

Google PageRank (PR) is a link analysis algorithm developed by Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin in the late 1990s. Google PageRank contributes to your search engine ranking on Google search engine results pages (SERPs).

Google PageRank is one benchmark for understanding the popularity of your web site based on the number and quality of sites that link to you. A high PR page that links to your web page will confer more PageRank to your page than an inbound link from low PR page.

According to Matt Cutts, Google’s spokesperson on SEO, PageRank values are published approximately once every 3 months. Therefore, Google PR is not an accurate metric for site popularity, as it is a cached value that is usually out of date.

What’s my Google PageRank?

If you want to view your Google PageRank, you can download the Google Toolbar or try the nifty SearchStatus plugin for FireFox.

The Google Toolbar’s PageRank feature displays as a green bar on the bottom right of your browser window. Scroll over and you will see a visited page’s PageRank as a whole number between 0 and 10, with PR 10 web site being the most popular.

If you don’t want to download the Google Toolbar, you can submit your site url to a number of free Google PageRank tools on the Web, such as the Google PageRank Lookup Report which will check the PR of up to 10 web sites.

PageRank Values for Popular Green & Environmental Web Sites

National Geographic - 8
An Inconvenient Truth - 7
The Discovery Channel - 7
The Nature Conservancy - 7
World Wildlife Fund - 7
TreeHugger - 6
Change.org - 5

Top PR sites include:

Google (of course) - 10
Yahoo - 10
Wikipedia - 9
MySpace - 8

How important is Google PageRank?

Don’t obsess over your Google PageRank - it is just one factor in the collective algorithm that Google uses to build SERPs. While having lots of relevant, inbound high PageRank links is a good thing, high PR does not guarantee high placement in SERPs.

Bear in mind that Google calculates your PR based on the page criteria and title tag of the linking page. Google can penalize a site if it detects a large number of irrelevant links. How effective Google is at determining link relevance is a subject of debate among SEOs. However, building relevant links is a good rule of thumb in order to follow if you want to increase your site’s PR.

How do I build PageRank for my site?

Andrew Gerhart’s Understanding and Building Google PageRank gives a detailed overview on how PR works and what to do to improve it. Here’s a summary:

In order to understand how to improve PageRank, you must understand how a site’s linking structure absorbs PageRank from other sites. Suppose you are TreeHugger, with a PR of 6 for your homepage.

This means a number of web sites with PR 5 and above are linking to your homepage. Your second level pages, will then have a PR of 5, and your tertiary pages have a page rank of 3, and so forth.

How Internal Linking Affects PageRank

Your internal linking structure does not have an effect in increasing PR, but sharing PR within the overall site, with decreasing powers as you go deeper into the structure of your web site.
From www.searchengineguide.com:

* Make sure that your primary page(s), the index.htm page, links to your secondary pages or secondary levels.
* Make sure that your secondary pages link to each other
* Link your secondary pages to the third level pages within their sub-directory, sub-domain, or level
* Link the third level pages within each specific sub-directory or sub-domain to each other.
* Link the third level pages back to the secondary page that it was linked from
* Make sure that the there is not heavy linking between third level pages
* Link to pages, regardless of level, that are relevant
* Link to pages, regardless of level, where the text on the page being linked from is keyword specific to the page that you are linking to
* If there are fourth level pages, follow the same linking structure that has been laid out in this checklist
* Only link pages within your site that are relevant to each other
* Use keyword specific link text when linking between pages
* Use standard HREFs in links that are easy for the search engine robots.

How External Linking Affects PageRank

External linking plays the strongest role in determining a site’s PR, but it is the factor over which you have the least control. Understand that link building campaigns can be a slow, tedious process. You can request, beg, and cajole a site owner to link to you, but they may not respond in a timely way, if at all, and will likely request a reciprocal link, which confers less link juice to you than a one-way inbound link would.

It’s not within the scope of this article to discuss link-building strategies, but to understand how external links pass PageRank to your site.

The exact algorithmic calculation that Google employs will likely never be divulged, but simply speaking, Google confers PR to you based on its evaluation of the linking sites PRs and their relevance to your page. Spammy, irrelevant links can negatively impact your PR.

If the sites linking to you all mention “Organic, fair-trade chocolate” and have above 6 PRs, and your page talks about “Organic, fair-trade chocolate”, your PR will likely be close to 6 as well.

Don’t make the mistake of randomly sending all inbound links to your homepage or the top level page of a section - the max PR you will reflect the cumulative PRs of the sites pointing to you, adjusted based on their relevance to your homepage.

Let’s say you have an e-commerce site specializing in fair trade products from around the world. The theme of your homepage is “fair trade products”, but one of your categories is “fair trade crafts”, and your subcategories are “houseware”, “jewelry”, and “stationery”. Identify high PR sites and pages for “fair trade products” and solicit links from them to your homepage. Then do the same for your “houseware” page, and then for each sub-category below that.

Tips on Boosting Google PageRank Through External Linking

* Understand the way PageRank trickles down through a site’s internal linking structure.

* To improve the PR of your site, identify the theme and market segment of each page, find relevant web pages with higher PR and ask the site owners to link to you.

* Work on the external linking for every page from the homepage to sub-pages based on each page’s topic - prioritize top level down.

Where should I seek links from to boost my Google PageRank?

Identify the keywords relevant to each page’s theme, and then Google-search these terms. The sites that show up in the top positions are the sites you want to solicit links from.

Google Directory - Science > Environment > Forests and Rainforests

Another good place to begin is the Google Directory, which lists sites by category in order of PageRank. However, a site’s willingness to link to you is directly proportional to the content of the page. If your content is not that exciting, you will have a harder time getting links.