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"Search Engine Journal" - 5 new articles
- Brent Csutoras Joins 10e20 as SVP of Viral Marketing
- Why Becoming an Expert in Your Niche is So Important
- The Search Engine Journal Redesign – the Developer's Story
- Three Best Tips for Local PPC Campaigns
- Access Your Feedburner Stats From Wordpress Dashboard
- More Recent Articles
- Search Search Engine Journal
Brent Csutoras Joins 10e20 as SVP of Viral Marketing
Big news in the social media marketing world today as 10e20, the premier social media agency led by Chris Winfield, has announced that they have added Brent Csutoras, one of the best viral social marketing minds in the business, to their ever growing staff via an acqusition of Brent Csutoras, Inc.
Csutoras will be taking on the role of SVP of Viral Marketing at 10e20, and had this to say
Joining 10e20 was the natural evolution to providing our clients the absolute best chance at success within social media. Separately we have both helped countless companies succeed with social media and now together, I truly feel we can offer even better solutions and programs for our clients.
Brent's experitise in Viral Marketing services will generate more visibility, traffic, links & ultimately revenue through his understanding of the social media ecosystems, ability to create content that is engaging and 'share-worthy' and Csutoras's unique intellectual property that will help client's better understand how their campaigns are performing.
"When it comes to viral marketing there are few people that I respect as much as Brent Csutoras – his understanding of social media networks and what 'works' is unparalleled" said Chris Winfield, President of 10e20, LLC. "Brent has built an amazing team and together they have built some of the most impressive tools that I have ever seen. This acquisition will help each and every one of our clients…. At the end of the day, we just took a really good viral marketing department and made it great."
10e20 has been pretty busy of late, adding new talent to their staff in a rather increasingly rapid and smart pace. Just last week it was announced that Gina Gotthilf had joined the team and in January 10e20 hired Social Media Strategist Stephanie Weingart.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
Brent Csutoras Joins 10e20 as SVP of Viral Marketing
Why Becoming an Expert in Your Niche is So Important
This is a Guest Post by Dee Barizo, a loyal SEJ reader who sent this in and is very relevant to something I preach in terms of influence and linking, becoming an expert in your field. Enjoy.
I think one of the most untapped areas in SEO is developing expertise in your niche. Search specialists know a lot of link building and keyword research but how many of them are experts in the industries where they work?
Search marketers who do not have expert knowledge in their niche are leaving a lot of money and traffic on the table. I made this realization after reading Geoff Colvin's book, Talent is Overrated. He argues that niche expertise is essential to become a top performer and reach your highest potential.
He cites research showing that the best performers have a deep knowledge base to draw from. They are able to leverage it to outdo their peers. For example, the top doctors can interpret an X-ray reading much more accurately than new residents. Using their knowledge and experience, they see the subtle but important cues that the new residents miss. Also, the top pilots are much better at navigating through the chaos of air traffic control than the new pilots.
You can see this phenomenon in SEO. An experienced search marketer can look at keyword logs and stats and quickly see opportunities for traffic growth. On the other hand, a newbie will totally miss them.
Search Marketers and Niche Expertise
All of this emphasis on knowledge and expertise may seem elementary and obvious, but I see many competent search marketers entering niches without much knowledge of those niches. Because of their lack of knowledge, the content they produce is pretty boring and reads just like most of the other commercial content on the web.
Many of them still do well because their SEO skill compensates for their lack of niche expertise. But this strategy is not a good one for the long term.
See right now, you don't really need niche expertise to compete. Most companies are clueless about SEO. You can easily outrank them even though your content is average. However, as more webmasters learn SEO and the search space gets more saturated with new marketers, it will become more difficult to rank. You will need expert knowledge to keep and grow your market share.
Now you might be thinking, as you work in a niche, you will learn more about it. That is true but your competitors are experiencing the same thing. Plus, after you learn the basics of an industry, it's tempting to just rely on that knowledge instead of acquiring more information.
What Geoff Colvin advises is being intentional with the learning process. Niche expertise should not only be a by-product of your work but a major goal.
He writes on page 121 of his book:
Imagine the difference if you made domain knowledge a direct objective rather than a byproduct of work. If you set a goal of becoming an expert on your business, you would immediately start doing all kinds of things you don't do now. You would study the history of the business, identify today's leading experts, read everything you could find, interview people inside your organization and outside it who could provide new perspectives, track key statistics and trends. The exact steps would vary depending on your business, but it's quickly apparent that you could make yourself impressively more knowledgeable about your business than you are today, and probably do so in short order. With time, your knowledge advantage over others would become large.
I think Sugarrae is a great example of search marketer who understands this concept. Here's what she said in an interview last year on SEO Book regarding the telecom industry where she made her mark as a successful affiliate marketer:
I knew crap about telecom when I started – I learned, learned, learned the field.
Also, she gave this advice:
I always say you don't need to love the topic, you need to learn TO love the topic. To make the best site, you have to be willing to either immerse yourself or pay to immerse someone ELSE in a topic.
The Benefits of Niche Expertise
Niche expertise is the gateway to many benefits. I'll highlight a couple of them and how they relate to SEO.
Forecasting
Imagine if you could predict the next major trends in your industry. Wouldn't that be helpful and give you a big competitive advantage?
The top experts have robust mental frameworks that allow them to see the future before it happens.
With expert knowledge, you can create content about the upcoming trends. As you predictions come true, you will attract links and gain authority and trust.
Innovation
Geoff demonstrates that the innovative leaders from many different fields all had vast amounts of knowledge about their respective industries before they came up with their creative breakthroughs. There was always a long preparation period of learning before any major innovation.
Innovation has always been a great way to build links. Whoever comes up with something new that adds value gets rewarded with traffic and citations.
Unique Content
Search marketers have always talked about unique content as a fundamental strategy. If you want to have truly unique content, not just reworded wikipedia style content, you need to go deeper in your niche.
An expert by definition knows many things that the average person doesn't know. Creating content based on your expertise helps you stand out from the crowd and builds your reputation.
Speed
Time is money. With a wealth of knowledge at your disposal, you can create content more efficiently and improve your site faster.
Discernment
Experts can discern quality from mediocrity.
You can leverage this discernment in various ways. For example, you can hire other top performers and avoid mediocre ones. You can point your readers to the best information and warn them of misleading content. When seeking advice from others, you can distinguish good ideas from bad ones.
Action Plan
Once you have a solid grasp of the SEO fundamentals, start developing knowledge about your niche. Read books. Watch videos. Add the top blogs to your RSS reader. Have that same zeal for acquiring knowledge in your niche as you had with learning SEO.
You'll get a much higher ROI if you combine SEO knowledge with niche expertise. SEO prowess + expertise in the niche = an unbeatable combination.
The industry knowledge you learn is an investment that will pay off in the long term. But even in the short term, you will receive benefits like new content ideas.
The process may seem like niche research. But unlike the common advice of doing the research once in the beginning, you will be learning on a regular basis to become an expert. Plus, industries don't stay stagnant. They change with the times. With a regular learning schedule, you will be up to date with the latest changes and new issues that come up.
Over to You
How well do you know your niche?
What methods would you recommend for learning more about a niche?
Dee Barizo is an affiliate marketer and search specialist. His latest project is an online degree site called The Best Degrees. He is developing expertise in the online education industry by browsing forums and blogs, reading books and scholastic journals, watching videos, and connecting with students and college faculty and staff. Also, he plans on taking an online course soon.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
Why Becoming an Expert in Your Niche is So Important
The Search Engine Journal Redesign – the Developer's Story
It was an honor being called upon to do the redesign and development of Search Engine Journal. I have been apart of this network for a short time but I have quickly learned what an amazing community this site has.
Loren Baker approached me about the redesign a few months ago. I was excited to take on the job and I know what a pleasure it is to work with Loren and the rest of the Search &Social crew.
Blog Design 101
As with any site design or redesign I started by sitting down with the client and discussing their needs. The most important thing to grasp in this meeting isn't necessarily a list of items the client wants but rather to get a feel of what they want to accomplish. Take this opportunity to figure out their goals and more importantly how they will measure the success of those goals.
With blogs the goals are usually one of two things, either increase traffic and subscribers or increase ad revenue. Search Engine Journal has a strong following and is definitely an authority in the industry. My design would have far less impact on subscribers and traffic at this point because of SEJ's continued success. My goal at this point was to restructure the site to give the user a better experience while maintaining or increasing ad revenue.
Wire Frames
Especially with blog design I encourage my students and others to start with wire frames. Wire frames do not have to be the traditional hand drawn lines outlining the layout. They can be anything you want them to be. My goal with wire frames is to outline specific site functionality and layout.
At this point it's good to limit your thoughts on design and focus on how the site will function for a user. Making sure specific elements live above the fold, that subscribe buttons are clear and easy to find and that any other functionality the client requests has a home and is easy to use is the goal.
Take a look at these wire frames used for SEJ. As you can see it formulates the basic existing layout you see today. There of course were some minor changes and tweaks as we went along. However the basic layout and functionality was carefully planned and agreed upon through these wire frames.
The Design
Once the client signs off on the wire frames you are now able to get to work on the design. This is the most fun for me. Here you can really turn your thoughts and ideas in to reality. I love playing with fonts and colors to try and find the right fit for everything. To me, it's very gratifying when you send off the design for approval.
Below you can see the different phases and changes that were made to the site. You may notice that the design phase did not have a lot of back and forth. I attribute this to planning and management of expectations. Your first meeting with a client all the way up to the completion of the wire frames you're building a blueprint of what your client will be expecting at the end. These steps will make your work flow smoother and help your client to understand why we do things the way we do.
Design Version 1
Design Version 2
Tips and Tricks For Development
After the design was finished and we were ready to move on to development I did the following to make my life easier and the development process faster.
- With any blog redesign it's good to install the blogging software (wordpress) onto another server and export the data from the original blog to your new install. This gives you free reign to test and play without worrying about hurting the live site.
- About a year ago I started implementing a css framework or reset to help with the coding my css. I've tried out a few but my favorite so far is Yahoo's YUI. The use of a css reset sheet will greatly reduce the complications with cross browser compatibility and help you to remember to write cleaner more efficient code.
- Don't be afraid to share your dev link with the client while you're working. If you have a client who helicopters over the development phase you may get a few emails like asking "why isn't this working" or "you know the logo is supposed to be on the left not the right" but if you can grin and bear it through those you'll find it'll help you in the long run. Your client is going to spend more time on the site (especially during the weeks leading up to its new live date) than you are. They'll find something wrong before it's too late too turn back. Too often we can over look the minor details our clients see as very important and if we wait too long sometimes it's really difficult to go back and undo the mistake.
Fighting the Norm
Take a look at many of the more popular sites out there these days. One thing you'll find in common for most of them is that the site is not wider than about 950px. This is because a vast majority of people are still using the common 1024×768 screen resolution and we all know that horizontal scrolling can sometimes spell disaster.
However there are a great deal of individuals who are using better screen resolutions. In fact as many as 60% are using at least 1200×1024 (2009 numbers) seen here. Am I recommending that you increase your design width to these resolutions? Umm… no, not yet anyway. Two reasons why, 1 you don't want to be putting too much on the screen, it'll over stimulate the user and 2 because we don't want to hide important elements from users that wouldn't otherwise see it.
What I am recommending you do is utilize the space where it makes sense. In the case of SEJ I built the site to fit into a 1024 wide screen resolution but if you are in fact someone with a better screen resolution you will see an extra advertisement on the right. Below you'll see what I mean.
1024 wide
1200 wide
The reason we did this was because it's no loss to the user if they are using 1024×768. They don't miss out on important information and they don't have to scroll for vital elements like subscribing or searching.
I hope you are all enjoying the SEJ redesign. It was a real joy working with Loren, Dave and Jordan and I am truly honored to have created something so many of you use everyday.
Please let me know what you think of the redesign and share your tips and tricks with everyone below.
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
The Search Engine Journal Redesign – the Developer's Story
Three Best Tips for Local PPC Campaigns
Small businesses are the major focus right now for Social Media (think Foursquare) and SEO (Local One Box, FTW). In Paid Search, we tend to ignore the small, more local accounts. I have found that they can be the most fun and easiest to play with and test. This month, we are going over the three best tips for local businesses when running paid search advertising.
1. Sync Up to Your Local Business Account
Seems like a no brainer to some, but for some small business owners, you might not have seen this option yet, or know to ask for it from your agency/account manager.
This option allows an advertiser to list their location just below their paid search ads. This resonates well with local searchers looking specifically for local businesses and service providers.
AdWords: This is a campaign level setting just like geographic targeting, but you can set them by ad. Under "Bidding and Budget" is a section in "Settings" called "Ad extensions." For step by step instructions, visit the source.
AdCenter: Not available yet. Cough
Yahoo: Yes, I am ignoring Yahoo. It's going away and I rather dislike it. #movingon
2. Watch the Short Tail Keywords Closely
If you are bidding on a generic keyword such as "lasik surgery" in a locally targeted campaign, you will be competing against everyone else who has settings to appear in your set area. If you or your client is a local eye surgeon, you will be bidding against the local providers and those competitors nationally targeting keywords. These are national chains, information based sites, and suppliers. This can get costly, not only in Cost per Click, but also in Cost per Conversion.
Keep a close eye on these keywords, and if necessary, move them to a separate campaign so that it can be isolated from other more-targeted, better-performing key words. If needed, restrict it down to phrase and watch it for negative keywords. You might even have to take it down to exact match. If it gets to this, be sure you are focusing your landing page as well.
In the end, don't sacrifice revenue for bad traffic. Make sure the traffic coming in is interested, check bounce rates as well as conversions.
3. Focus on the Location in Ads and Landing Pages
These people are pumped that you are near them, don't mess up by making them enter their zip code to find their closest dealer. Have landing pages that are focused to the geography they come in from.
On top of that, test adding the city, region, or even neighborhood name in the ad. The more people feel like you are a part of their world, the more that trust goes up. This all equals higher conversions!
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
Three Best Tips for Local PPC Campaigns
Access Your Feedburner Stats From Wordpress Dashboard
Most of us track our blog feed numbers as eagerly as daily traffic. Today's short tutorial will show you how to bring Feedburner stats to your Wordpress blog dashboard.
1. Enable "Awareness API"
The first thing to is to enable "Awareness API" fro your Feedburner control panel.
Login to your Feedburner account and navigate:
My Feeds -> (Click your feed name you want to enable the Awareness API for) -> Publicize -> Awareness API -> (Click "Enable):
2. Install the Plugin
Now go to "Feed Stats Wordpress Plugin" page and download and install the plugin.
Go to "Feed Stats" panel under the "Settings" in your Wordpress dashboard and provide the link to your Feedburner RSS link:
You should now be able to see the following stats right from your Wordpress Dashboard:
Total Hits and Subscribers:
Daily Reach:
A Few Important Details:
- The data about your feeds is loaded from FeedBurner only when you open the "Feed Stats" page. This plugin does not continuously poll FeedBurner.
- By default, 10 days of hits, subscribers, and reach stats are shown (you can change that though).
Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.
Access Your Feedburner Stats From Wordpress Dashboard
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jueves, 3 de junio de 2010
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