YouTube for marketing: how do you make it work?

31 Saturday May 2014

1. InVideo ads are transparent overlay ads that appear on the lower portion of your video. Allowing InVideo advertising means that YouTube may occasionally run transparent overlay ads on the lower portion of your video. These ads typically appear at the 15 second mark, they can be closed by the viewer if desired, and they will minimize automatically if the viewer does nothing.

InVideo ads generate significantly more revenue for partners. Though you can disable this option, we suggest that you enable them where possible.

2. TrueView ads are a family of formats that give viewers choice and control over which advertisers’ messages they want to see and when.

TrueView InStream ads run only on partner watch pages and play as a pre- or mid-roll video against short or long form content. After 5 seconds of ad viewing, the viewer will have the option to skip or watch the rest of the ad. An advertiser is only charged when the viewer has watched 30 seconds of the ad or to its completion, whichever is shorter. There is no maximum length for TrueView InStream ads.

3. If your a business you could place your own advertisements on your videos.
Video viewing is up and continues to increase as people subscribe to YouTube channels and discover engaging content they enjoy. According to YouTube, over six billion hours of video are watched each month on the video search engine (up 50 percent over last year), and 100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

This presents enormous opportunity for brands to promote their goods and services to a worldwide audience through video advertising on the world’s second largest search engine.

YouTube has a wide variety of advertising opportunities, and to my surprise, most brands are not fully aware of the different programs available. In this column we’ll take a general look at the video search engine’s TrueView platform, which offers a great deal of flexibility for advertisers and viewers.

Note: There are other advertising opportunities on YouTube that are not part of TrueView; for this column we are only looking at the TrueView program which, in my opinion, provides a superior experience for brands and viewers for different reasons.

Advertising via TrueView Offers Greater Flexibility and Reach

At its core TrueView is a pay-per-view model; advertisers pay for their video ad only when a viewer chooses to watch it.

Rather than pay for impressions, which are difficult to quantify (did they really see it?), advertisers pay for actual views, which also provides a wealth of YouTube analytics data to inform advertising strategy and ad placement.

TrueView ads offer tons of brand visibility because they are viewable not only on YouTube.com but also on YouTube’s mobile, connected TV, and game console properties, the Google Video network, and embedded YouTube players.

Brands can use TrueView in three different ways, depending on budget and search marketing goals: in-stream, in-search, and in-display. It’s possible to use them separately but combining them together creates a much larger, more powerful online video presence and stronger advertising effort.

Ad Unit	Where does the user interact with the brand?	Where does the brand ad run?
TrueView In-Stream	Pre-roll on partner’s YouTube videos	Before, during, or after partner’s YouTube videos
TrueView In-Search	On the brand’s watch/channel page	YouTube search results page
TrueView In-Display	On the brand’s watch/channel page	Next to partner YouTube videos

TrueView In-Stream

TrueView in-stream ads are similar to television commercials. As the name infers, in-stream ads are part of the video stream, before (pre-roll), during (mid-roll), or after (post-roll) the ad partner’s video. However, unlike a television commercial, YouTube’s in-stream advertising is a video search marketing tool that reaches a brand’s target audience with greater precision due to the use of select keywords, interest targeting, and video optimization. This is a tremendous asset to advertisers.

Viewers may watch the entire ad, part of it, or skip it after at least five seconds of play. The advertiser pays only when at least 30 seconds or the entire ad is viewed (whichever is shorter). TrueView in-stream ads may be any length, which offer advertisers greater leeway in terms of creative format for their message (tutorial/how-to, infomercial, entertainment, interactive, etc.).

how-to-shave-your-face

Why use TrueView in-stream ads?

Viewers have the option of watching or skipping the ad – this helps retain viewership of the selected video and reduces fall-off.
Advertisers can maximize their ad budgets by delivering the right message to the right audience.
No maximum ad length restrictions. Longer ads allow greater flexibility in terms of ad message format and message delivery.

In-stream for mobile. Mobile viewing makes up more than 25 percent of YouTube’s global watch time, with more than one billion views a day. Therefore, advertisers cannot afford to omit mobile-specific ad campaigns in their YouTube media mix. In addition to the TrueView in-stream ads described above (pay-per-view), mobile advertisers may also choose two other in-stream options (which are also available for desktop):

gq-youtube

Standard in-stream. These ads are not skippable and are limited in maximum length (up to 15 seconds or up to 30 seconds). They run pre-, mid-, or post-roll. Advertisers are charged when the video loads.
Select in-stream. These ads play before the partner video. They can be up to 30 seconds long and viewers have the option to skip after five seconds. However, advertisers are charged no matter how long the viewing time.

TrueView In-Search

These online ads are where organic search, YouTube analytics, and video advertising converge. Brands can target their video ads as a search result by choosing search terms that appear in YouTube. Similar to a Google AdWords campaign, in-search ads appear in a special promoted section of the search results pages on YouTube and Google, above or to the right of regular results. Advertisers pay per actual view (charged only when the viewer chooses to watch the video), not per impression.

A call-to-action overlay is available to direct viewers to the brand’s website, splash page, or other digital marketing asset.

how-to-whiten-teeth

When viewers click on your ad, it takes them to your YouTube channel, where they can subscribe and watch your other videos at no charge to you, the advertiser. You are paying for that initial view and if you provide viewers with relevant, engaging video content on your brand’s channel, you will greatly enhance the value of that original cost-per-view. Therefore, high-quality, relevant video ads will give advertisers a strong ROI.

TrueView In-Display

These are videos that show up on search pages alongside other YouTube videos or on the Google Display Network that match your target audience. A click-through on the video ad directs viewers to your YouTube channel. As with in-search, you pay only when a viewer chooses to watch your video. Make sure your video ads are well-optimized to boost their in-display results.

cleaning-surfaces

The TrueView formats allow advertisers to target their messages by search terms and interest; drive more traffic to their brands’ YouTube channels or their websites; enhance their online visibility, view counts, and signal greater brand relevance to Google and YouTube; help boost search results; and make this earned media search engine into a powerful place to put advertising dollars.

Why Do People Say “Yes?”

28 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Marketing, Social Listening

≈ Leave a comment

Why do people say ‘yes’? How can we get them to comply with our requests? I asked my Fripp Associate David Palmer, PhD, MBA, CPA, an expert on negotiations and marketing. David Palmer has read more business books and managements books than any other person I have ever met; without hesitation he always refers to the best book to help anyone in their career is Robert Cialdini’s Influence: Science and Practice. Enjoy my interview. You next logic step is to buy Dr. Cialdini’s book.

“Fortunately, people often say ‘yes’ or agree with requests out of mindless compliance,” David told me. “They are frequently willing to say ‘yes’ automatically without thinking first. It makes their lives simpler and smoother. But what most of us are trying to overcome is the opposite phenomenon, when they’ve programmed themselves to say ‘no’ without thinking about it.

“Here’s where the emotional triggers come in. Researcher Robert Cialdini at Arizona State University describes the ‘Six Weapons of Influence,’ as he calls them, in his book, Influence, Science and Practice (Allyn & Cacon, 2000).”

1. RECIPROCATION – “The Old Give and Take–and Take”

All of us are taught we should find some way to repay others for what they do for us. Most people will make an effort to avoid being considered a moocher, ingrate, or person who does not pay their debts.

This is an extremely powerful tactic and can even spur unequal exchanges.
In one experiment, for example, half the people attending an art appreciation session were offered a soft drink. Afterwards, all were asked if they would buy 25-cent raffle tickets. Guess what? The people who had been offered the soft drinks purchased twice as many raffle tickets, whether or not they had accepted the drinks!

You probably already use this principle, but it is much stronger than you suspect. You can build a sense of indebtedness in someone by delivering a number of uninvited “first favors” over time. They don’t have to be tangible gifts. In today’s world, useful information is one of the most valuable favors you can deliver.

2. COMMITMENT AND CONSISTENCY – “Hobgoblins of the Mind”

Once people have made a choice or taken a stand, they are under both internal and external pressure to behave consistently with that commitment. This desire for consistency offers us all a shortcut to action as we recall a previous decision we have already made.

When you can get someone to commit verbally to an action, the chances go up sharply that they’ll actually do it. For example, before starting your next meeting, ask each person to commit to following the posted agenda. Then, if anyone goes off on a tangent, just ask them to explain how it fits the agenda. If they can’t, they’ll quickly fall back in line.

3. SOCIAL PROOF – “Truths Are Us”

We decide what is correct by noticing what other people think is correct. This principle applies especially to the way we determine what constitutes correct behavior. If everyone else is behaving a certain way, most assume that is the right thing to do. For example, one of the important, and largely unconscious, ways we decide what is acceptable behavior on our current job is by watching the people around us, especially the higher-ups or old timers.

This principle of influence kicks in even more strongly when the situation is uncertain or people aren’t sure what to do. When you can show them what others like them believe or are doing, people are more likely to take the same action. (The mass suicides among the Heavens Gate followers in Southern California and the people in Jonestown are horrible examples of the negative power of this principle.)

On the positive side, product endorsements are the most obvious application of the Social Proof. If you want someone to do something for you, be sure to let them see that many other people are already doing it or are willing to do it. Show them that others like them (and the more like them the better) believe in your product or are using it.

4. LIKING: “The Friendly Thief”

People love to say ‘yes’ to requests from people they know and like. And people tend to like others who appear to have similar opinions, personality traits, background, or lifestyle. More people will say ‘yes’ to you if they like you, and the more similar to them you appear to be, the more likely they are to like you.

Most people are also phenomenal suckers for flattery, even when they know it isn’t true. When we have a good opinion of ourselves, we can accept praise and like those who provide it. (Those with low self-esteem reject even well-earned praise and distrust the source.) All salespeople worth their salt have mastered the flattery tactic. They know it works, but they may not know why.

People also tend to like and trust anything familiar. The best way to build this familiarity is to have frequent, pleasant contacts. For example, if you spend three hours straight with someone you’ve never met before, you would get a sense of who they are. But if you divided the same time into 30-minute segments of pleasant interaction over six consecutive weeks, you would each have a much stronger and positive knowledge about the other. You have established a comfort level, familiarity, and a history with them. Their repeated pleasant contacts with your organization’s services or products helps builds familiarity and liking.

5. AUTHORITY: “Directed Deference”

Most of us are raised with a respect for authority, both real and implied. Sometimes, people confuse the symbols of authority (titles, appearance, possessions) with the true substance.

Some people are more strongly influenced by authority than others, and compliance can vary according to the situation . For example, it’s 11:00 PM, and the doorbell rings. Two men in police uniforms want to come in and ask you some questions. Most people respect such authority enough that they would comply, even though the Constitution says they don’t have to. But if it was 3:00 AM and the men were in street clothes, claiming to be detectives, most of us would hesitate. The men would have to overcome our resistance with more proofs of their authority like badges or a search warrant.

You can put this general principle to use by citing authoritative sources to support your ideas. Look and act like an authority yourself. Be sure others know that your education and experience supports your ideas. Dress like the people who are already in the positions of authority that you seek.

6. SCARCITY: “The Rule of the Few”

Nearly everyone is vulnerable to some form of the principle of scarcity. Opportunities seem more valuable when they are less available. Hard-to-get things are perceived as better than easy-to-get things.

For example, the object you’ve almost decided to buy is out of stock. The salesperson offers to check their other stores. And guess what? A store across town has one left! Do you buy it? Of course!

Whenever appropriate, you can use the Scarcity Principle. Refer to limited resources and time limits to increase the perceived value of the benefits of helping or working with you. The possibility of losing something is a more powerful motivator than of gaining something. Let others (a customer, your boss, a lover) know what they will be losing if they don’t say ‘yes’ to your offer.

Raising Awareness with Instagram

27 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Best Practices, Community Management, Engagement, Facebook, Instagram

Instagram is ideal for building awareness but not merely brand awareness. People and organizations are using the network to increase awareness about social causes and issues.

Gan Chin Lin uses Instagram as a way to recover from and cope with an eating disorder. Lin’s work of cooking, baking and taking photos has turned into a passion; she calls herself an “advocate for a healthy, nourished lifestyle.”

Brand tip: don’t be afraid to address social issues. Think about the issues that matter to you and your audience. How can you use visual media to address those concerns and provide hope?

Maz McWilliams uses Instagram to document creative images of melons to increase awareness about Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). People started asking him about the project, resulting in a collaborative movement.

Brand tip: empower your community. Ask them to participate in your cause by providing basic guidelines and a hashtag.

Jamie Oliver also focuses on food, but his goal is to promote both an event and a cause. His Food Revolution Day seeks to excite kids about healthy food, teach them how to cook and raise awareness about the need for better food education.

Brand tip: use Instagram to generate excitement and momentum for a short-term event while promoting long-term interest and support for the cause to which it ties.

Want to know more about cause marketing? Get your free “Boost Your Bottom Line With Social Good” guide now!

Jill Abramson the former executive editor of The New York Times has found Instagram useful on both a PR and a social issue level even if she isn’t directly responsible. When she was forced out of the Times, her daughter took to Instagram to show off her mother’s new hobby.

Brand tip: harness the narrative through visual media. Be careful; Macklemore’s public apology after his Grammy’s win was so flagrantly self-interested that he has received even more public ill will.

The Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) uses Instagram to raise awareness about AIDS and to build excitement and support for its fundraisers and auctions.

Brand tip: give your audience a sneak peek into upcoming events with behind-the-scenes footage.

What is a winning blogging strategy

27 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Bloging, Content Marketing, Google+, Marketing, Online Marketing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Best Practices, Blog, Blogging, Google Analytics, MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING, Online Marketing, SEM, Social Media, social media tools

t’s pretty much common knowledge that these days, any business, particularly an online business, should have a blog. But how? And why? What is this platform going to do for your brand? Are you selling products? Are you building a community? Is it about building awareness? And most importantly, who’s it for?

These are all questions you should be asking yourself before you put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboards. Now let’s get onto the how… Check out our first five easy steps to a winning blogging strategy below:

Brainstorm

Whether you’re starting from scratch or you’ve already got something up and running, stop and get your team together! A brainstorm between your writers, marketing gurus and whoever else might be involved is a must for any successful blogging strategy. This brainstorm should be happening about once a month. If you’ve been blogging previously, get your analytics up in front of everyone – what posts have been successful? Which have been the most shared on social media? Take these factors into account when you’re coming up with topics for the next month.

If you haven’t started with content yet – no problem! This next tip’s for everyone: Have a close look at your competitor’s posts. Jot down any articles that have high share-rates. You should take inspiration from these, and write a related post.

Another one for the newbies: if you haven’t already decided on how many posts per week you’d like to publish, now’s the time to do it. Keep in mind you’re going to want to stay consistent, posting the same amount each week and on the same days too. Knowing these details will help you come up with a content calendar.

Schedule

Once you’ve decided on the number of posts you’ll be publishing per week, and per month, you’ll be able to create a rough plan for a content calendar. Do some research! Look into when your target audience is online the most. This is when you should be posting and promoting.

Clients

We know that we’ve talked about knowing your audience and clients before, so we’ll keep it brief. If you know your clients, you’ll know what they’re after in a blog. Whether it’s craft DIY tips, quirky ‘behind-the-scenes’ footage or informative marketing advice, you’ll know it and you’ll be able to provide it. Knowing your audience is also knowing the purpose of your blog, which is something that should be decided straight away in order to get your strategy underway. Check out these 5 Critical Tips for Identifying Your Target Audience from Technori.

Writers

If you’re just starting out, or your business is relatively small, you may have already decided that you’ll be writing the blog yourself. That’s completely understandable! Just be aware that there are a few things you should get your head around when it comes to creating great content. Firstly, you should make sure that you’re an avid reader of other blogs. This is great in terms of keeping an eye on the competition, but also knowing what’s out there in general, and knowing what’s possible within a blog platform. Reading will provide you with inspiration in terms of both structure and subject matter. Make sure you’ve got a list of go-to blog examples to devour.

The above still applies to writers that you’ve hired, but hiring the right writer is also crucial. Obviously, the right person depends on the purpose of your blog. For example, if your aim is to sell a complicated product, you’ll need a writer who is also an expert in what you’re selling. This writer will need to provide a lot of insight, and so it may be appropriate that in this instance, your product manager take on the blog themselves, or at least train the person you’ve brought on board.

Make sure your writers are great at creating catchy headlines. Obviously, these are the first things your audience are going to see – you want your headlines to inspire enthusiasm and interest, as well as be optimized for SEO (but we’ll get to that).

It’s one thing for you to know your audience, but make sure your writers know it too. Make communication with your writers a big priority – they should know not only your audience, but the goals of the business itself, what’s it all about? Check out these guidelines for creating great content.

Style Guides & Editors

The importance of the language you use on your online platforms should never be underestimated, but in this case – this isn’t all an editor and a style guide are for. Of course you don’t want spelling and grammatical errors throughout your content, but there’s something as equally important: consistent style and tone. It doesn’t matter if you have one writer or twenty – you want all your written content to be of a similar nature, it needs to represent your brand after all.

Early on in the content creating process, put together a style guide for your writers. This can list everything from preferred spellings and topics to cover to how to format headings. If your writers follow this carefully, you will be rewarded with consistency throughout your whole blog, no matter how many writers you have.

Analytics

Installing analytics is a must for every website owner. These are brilliant tools that allow you to track and measure your success, enabling you to identify successful posts, and use this information to create similar posts. The most commonly used tool is Google Analytics, which offers an extensive breakdown of your site, traffic and audience. Some of our favourite features?

Audience. This lets you view your demographic, their interests and behavior.
Acquisition. See where your traffic is coming from – is it direct or from an organic search? Is it from social media or an email marketing campaign?
‘Real Time’. See how many people are on your site at this exact moment; what they’re looking at and where they are in the world.

It’s amazing what you can learn about your audience and your own content by reviewing your analytics on a regular basis. Did we mention it’s free?

Keyword Research

If you know your audience you’ll have a rough idea of what they’re searching for when they hop onto the world wide web. Once you’ve got this in mind, you can play ball seriously. There are a number of keyword planning tools available for you to choose from. There’s Google Adwords Keyword Planner which can tell you how often a term is searched for each month, as well as suggest similar terms to use. This is one of the few free tools available, some of the paid services include Market Samurai and Raven, which also offer SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Packages.

Another tool we’ve just discovered is ReSearch.ly. This service filters conversations from 1000 days of social data so you have insight into your target audience’s “influence, sentiments, demographics and psychographics”, allowing you to “get inside your reader’s head”. ReSearch.ly offers newbies 10 free searches before they have to subscribe, so have a play around, and see if it’s something that could work for you.

Once you’ve done your keyword research, you can get your writers on board and discuss how to integrate these terms into your written and visual content. Think outside the box here, use your keywords in your image captions and alt tags, if possible have a category title using a keyword… Be sensible though, you still want your content to be super easy to read and share-friendly.

If all of this is new to you and you’re a little confused – no problem! Check out Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO & Keyword Research here.

Link

There’s one more thing to consider before you put your blog post out into the world: Links. Your post should be an authority on whatever subject you’ve chosen, but there will always be offshoot subjects you haven’t covered, or have covered in the past… Never miss an opportunity to provide your readers with more information, whether it’s from your own site or a fellow blogger’s. Creating internal links (these connect from one of your posts to another post on your site) are great because they keep your visitor on your site, exposing them to more of your content. This also means that you and your site keep more of the ‘link juice’ (yes, that’s a real thing). Alternatively, by linking to an external source, not only are you showing your readers that you’re a good sport, but you’re also starting a relationship with like-minded bloggers and paying it forward. This encourages others in your industry to interact with you and your brand, which ultimately brings more traffic your way.

Publish

That’s right, we’re finally here. You’ve done all the grunt work; the brainstorming, the researching, the writers’ training, the style sheet and you’ve trawled through your analytics… Now’s the moment you’ve been waiting for. Hit ‘Publish’ and give yourself a pat on the back, a cheeky afternoon beverage or a nap (or maybe all three). You deserve it.

Promote

Unfortunately, the work doesn’t end there. Now you’ve got to give your latest post the best shot of reaching the most people on the web. Firstly, be sure to include sharing options at the bottom (and top) of your posts. You want people to share your content quickly and easily, which means making sure there are as few steps for them as possible. Next, promote your new post across all your social media platforms – use call to actions to grab attention and prompt interest. Another detail to remember – get your writers on board with social media sharing as well. It’s equally beneficial to them, as it gets their name and work out there for readers, but creates brand awareness for you as well.

2014 new Rules for Content Marketing

23 Friday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Content Marketing, Online Marketing, WordPress

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Best Practices, Blogging, Engagement, Social Media

Before you start thinking about marketing your idea or brand, a good thing to do is plan your brand awareness marketing campaign. Without a specific plan, there is little you can expect to achieve in this harsh social media climate where everyone is trying to be seen. There are an unlimited number of things you could do to get attention, but when it comes to getting the word out, these 21 new content marketing rules are something you should have a look at.

We have visited the topic of content marketing many times before, but it seems there are plenty of things left to talk about in order for all of us to reach the people that we really want to reach. I was thinking the other day about how we here at Bit Rebels could reach further into the airwaves of the Internet and reach people who have yet to discover the compact news flow that we have to offer. I had a short discussion with my partner, and we agreed that we would look into several other approaches. But that’s just it, there are so many approaches that you could sometimes get lost in the noise of it all.

When I think about content marketing, I always end up at the same place, which is original and engaging content that people want to send to their friends and loved ones because they either find it interesting, funny or even shocking. Unfortunately, any blog or online newspaper runs the risk of becoming a gossip or a surprise generator website in the bad sense of the words. Is this good or bad?

21-Content-Marketing-Rules-Infographic (1)

As you can see, the questions are many and they will most likely never end. That, on the other hand, is a good thing because that means that there is always room for improvement and refinement. When it comes to the content marketing rules we can consult a fresh infographic presented by Kayak Online Marketing called 21 New Rules Of Content Marketing.

It should be said that even though many people would like there to be sure ways to succeed with brand awareness marketing, it’s the content marketing rules that determine the outcome of your social media marketing campaign. When you know how to update, interact and engage on social media, half the battle is already won. There are plenty of examples of this where ordinary people have become social media icons in the eyes of the ordinary users.

With these new content marketing rules, you definitely have a better chance of slipping through the social media noise and actually ending up on someone’s top list. It won’t be easy to adapt all of these, but the more you can incorporate into your campaign the better. As always, when I write articles concerning this topic, I say that it’s through engagement, transparency and presence that you will reach ordinary users who are the true engine behind social media.

What exactly does the “perfect Tweet” look like?

21 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Twitter

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Tweets

Tweets including photos have up to 35 per cent more retweets, according to new research by Twitter into effective tweets across verified accounts.

However, this is in stark contrast to what B2B brands are actually sharing. B2B Marketing’s recently published Social Media Benchmarking Report revealed 79 per cent of brands share written copy over social, despite only 34 per cent believing it to be ‘very effective’.

Meanwhile, video was listed as the ‘best type of content’ to share on social media, despite only 63 per cent actually sharing video clips.

So, how do you create the perfect ‘retweetable’ tweet? Basically you can’t. It’s not an exact science, it’s all down to experimentation. For example, after I followed all of Twitter’s rules to creating a retweetable tweet, my update (although mustering half dozen favourites) received less than half the retweets than its basic text-only counterpart.

In order for brands to succeed on social media, marketers need to take on board this information, keep track of their social activity, draw up reports and then tailor updates to what best suits their audience. Because, after all, every audience is different.

SEO: New Rules For 2014

21 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Google SEO, Google+, Online Marketing, Web Site Design

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Best Practices, Blogging, Community Management, Google SEM, Google SEO

SEO rules change and if you don’t keep up with these changes you risk losing your hard earned page rank in search results. Changes made to search engines algorithms in 2013 have had a profound effect on SEO rules in 2014. These effects will extend into the foreseeable future. If you have a business or entertainment website you need to be aware of the new SEO rules and how they will affect you.

In simple terms basic, on site SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a relatively easy thing to do. The search engines have a “template” if you will of what an ideal web page/site should have and how it should be put together. The closer you come to matching this ideal the higher you should rank in search results for terms that are related to your site.

In practice though SEO rules are not intuitive enough so that following them will “just happen” if you design a visually appealing website. Many web designers only do a visually appealing and functional site, they do not incorporate SEO rules into their design. If you have an existing website you should have an SEO analysis done on it.

SEO rules require you to pay attention to every little detail when you produce content. We useWordPress as a platform on which to design websites because it is versatile enough to be easily edited to make sure it matches the ideal search engine template. In addition we endorse the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress as an invaluable editing assistant when creating new content such as blog posts.

The search engines themselves have evolved over time and continue to do so. Each of them has their own mathematical algorithm. These algorithms are not all identical. Google handles 80% of search queries on the web though and consequently it is Google that establishes the SEO rules that everyone follows as “best practices”.

We created the pie charts above to illustrate the changes in SEO rules that have occurred over the last year or so and have really permanently altered the ball game in SEO. In the past it was fairly easy for Black Hat SEO companies to push undeserving sites to the first page of Google search results. They did this by creating thousands of backlinks to a site. The backlinks could be on any site, even just on pages they created themselves or on “backlink farms” that thrived on doing nothing more than hosting pages full of links to the websites of paying customers.

Another way they used to game the SEO rules was by loading a page full of otherwise irrelevant content with every keyword they could think of that was related to a search for a particular product or service. Or they might take a single blog post, load it with keywords and then “spin” the article by randomly changing every third or fourth word in it (other than the keywords) and post 50 or 100 spun copies of the same blog post. The more times it was spun the less sense anyone could make out of what it was supposed to say.

None of these techniques work anymore. Websites that used them are finding their search engine position dropping like a stone (some of them have come to us for help). A new era has come to the way search engines function, one that is intended to deliver the best, most relevant content to each query from a user.

SEO Rules For 2014

The new SEO rules are designed to focus on content. Good quality content that gives the best possible answers to people’s questions. I know that seems simple enough but computers cant make intuitive judgement choices…yet. Until they can they have to use things that they can measure, data, to make that determination.

So SEO has become much more than just having a website that conforms to SEO rules and a bunch of backlinks. It has expanded to include input from social media networks and to making judgements on the quality of your site and your content by the quality of the sites that link back to you. “You are known by the company you keep” is as good a way to say it as any.

You see, Google decided that the best place to look for reliable data on the value of a website, blog post or video is the audience. The theory is that, the more people who like and share something the more value that it must have to them. Likewise with backlinks. The more links that point to your site from other high quality sites which deal with the same topic the more value your content must have.

This is the birth of Social SEO and Contextual Search. Google has created a fun little animated illustration of how search works at this link. As a business owner or content creator it is good to check out that illustration. Once you realize how much goes into every search that happens on the web you cannot help but realize a; how much competition there really is for the top spots in search results and b; the necessity of making your site and your content as good as possible both from the perspective of viewers and the behind the scenes requirements of the SEO rules.

In the illustration above (on this page) you see how many obvious factors there are in Social SEO that can affect the search engines perception of the quality of your site and your content. You may have great content and perfect on site SEO but any number of other sites may have content of equal quality and also have perfect on site SEO. That is the easiest scenario from which to start when understanding the value of Social Networks of various types to your page rank. It is also the perfect segue into the next part of what makes up following SEO rulestoday.

If the competitors in the above scenario all have content of equal quality and perfect on site SEO how does the search engine decide on page rank? The page with the most links on other quality sites, social network likes and shares and traffic will have the number one spot in many cases. That is why it is as important or more important than ever to have a robust social networking presence in place.

We talk to a lot of business owners and even people who handle digital marketing for mid size to large businesses and it is surprising how many of them never took the time to learn enough about SEO rules to realize that the websites they are responsible for are sorely lacking in that area. We hear things like “oh there was a module that came with our website that does SEO”, or “we’re covered for SEO” when we have already looked at their site and seen that they are not.

The same thing goes for Social Networking and the creation of content. Social Networking is now a crucial part of SEO but too many people who manage social networks don’t see it that way so they miss opportunities. The same goes for content creation. Most people who upload videos to YouTube expect the quality of the video to get them views. But search engines don’t watch videos they depend on the content on your channel page and individual video pages to determine what your video is about and who to show it to in search results or as a suggested video. Once again SEO rules need to be followed when creating a channel page and every time you upload a video.

Some other factors that can come to bear on page rank in the above example are things like proximity (how close are you to the person doing the search). Here is where having an SEO optimized local directory listing is crucial as a component in page rank and your overall digital marketing plan. Why SEO optimized? Because if your competitors have a better local listing then theirs will appear higher than yours in that set of results and may push you off of page one.

Let’s refer back to the Google depiction of the search process that I linked to above. It is important to think about the different parts of the search process and which ones can be influenced by what you do on your site(s). Our intent is to show that relatively simple SEO ruleshave expanded to include pretty much everything you do on the web and how to show how important it is to realize that.

SEO Rules And The Search Process

Crawling: This is the initial phase of the search process. The Google Web Spider goes out into the 60 trillion (and growing daily) pages on the web and tries to index them. This is the first place where on site SEO is important. By following the SEO rules for best practices on site you show the spider that your site is of good quality and allow it to easily determine what each page is about. This is also where many people think SEO stops. This is far from being the case. Both Google and Bing have Webmaster Tools to assist in managing your site and they too can be employed at this stage.

Programs And Formulas: This is the second stage of search and the one where the search algorithms you hear so much about come into play. The tools that Google uses as examples for this stage of search are; spelling, autocomplete, synonyms, Google Instant, query understanding and search methods.

You have control over some of these factors as well. You can make sure the content on your page is correct grammatically and everyone has a spell checker so there is no real excuse for bad spelling. You can establish a unique keyword or keyword phrase for each page to be built around. This does not mean meta keywords. We don’t use meta keywords at all anymore with the exception of on YouTube. It means you know what keyword or phrase best expresses what the page is about and then you put that keyword (ideally) in the page URL, the title, the meta title, the meta description and in the body of the page. You use it at a rate of around 2% of the total words on the page and include some synonyms as well.

If you look at this page you will see that we have followed all of the above SEO rules when writing this story. In addition, you have to be sure that your site is readily accessible on multiple platforms (PC, Mobile, Tablet). The more ephemeral aspect at this stage is query understanding. The search engines are trying to understand the context of the query in better ways and you have to keep in mind how a person would ask questions related to your content and design it to answer the question the way it would be asked most often.

Ranking The Results: Google says that they consider over two hundred factors when deciding how each page given in answer to a query ranks in search results. Two hundred factors. That is quite a daunting number when you are trying to create content that will rank highly isn’t it? But it validates our earlier statement that everything you do matters when it comes to followingSEO rules.

The ranking factors that Google lists are; page and site quality, safe search, freshness, user context, translation and universal search. Obviously you have control over whether or not your site is family safe (or not). Page site and quality are influenced by following on site SEO rulesand here is also where back links and social likes and shares come into play as well as the traffic to your site. Freshness is important because it illustrates the importance of creating content on an ongoing basis. User context adds in factors like the physical location of the person making the query in relation to your location if relevant. This is where Local Directory Listings come into play, especially for local businesses and can definitely have a big influence on your ranking in search results for local users and why they are so important.

Universal Search means that the most relevant results to a query from multiple sources are displayed on the search results page. Some of these sources include; images, website, social networks, local directory listings and video. If you have material relevant to the query available in all of these sources then you could conceivably dominate the entire first page of google results for that query.

The image at the left shows the results of the simple query: “Katy Perry”. As you can see Universal Search has considered material from various sources and is displaying the most relevant results from each on the page. The result is that the performer Katy Perry dominates the entire first page of google results from the web, images, video, social networks and even news. The advantage of this is obvious if you have competitors.

How does this work for a business. The most frequent queries will probably not contain your business name but rather the name of the product or service that you offer. If you utilize all available types of media and some 3rd party services like local directories there is a chanceyou can achieve at least several first page placements on page one of Google and perhaps even dominate the entire page. But you have to follow SEO rules throughout to maximize the potential of this happening.

The image to the right is the result of searching the term “Camp Hill PA, order pizza”. That is a pretty general search about a product in a specific location. One of the businesses that we have done some SEO work for, Nikoli’s Pizza comes up as the first Google Product listing at the top of the page (with image) and the first result on page one of this search.

There are a lot of pizza places in the Camp Hill/Mechanicsburg/Harrisburg Pa area. Big chains like Dominos, Papa John’s, Pizza Hut and Little Ceasers are all over the market area as are a host of other independent pizza places and Italian restaurants. In spite of this a small, family run operation like Nikoli’s comes up as number one (and in three different listing types) in their area on a Google search done by someone who wants to order pizza! I think that is awesome.

Google Specific: In the last year Google has done a lot of things to integrate many of their products with each other. To do this they used Google+ as the glue that holds it all together. Now, local business listings in Google Places are by default done as Google+ business pages. You can also get a vanity URL for your Google+ business page (Example: plus.google.com/+streetpunkproductions). This helps with your efforts to bring your social network pages into line with SEO rules.

Another exciting feature is Google Authorship which is also tied to the content author’s Google+ profile. In addition, the comments on YouTube are also now powered by Google+. The advantages are that, as long as you have a Google+ profile, your content will be more likely to appear on the first page of Google results to those people in your Google+ circles. The incentive to have your customers/fans as part of your Google+ circles is obvious.

Everything discussed above is part of the new SEO rules for 2014 and beyond. To truly optimize the potential of your web assets you have to be aware of all of it every time you create a blog post or upload a video. You have to think about the URL, title, description and text content of the post. In addition you have to consider adding images and making sure to alt tag the images with your focus keyword or keyword phrase for the page. You should also research the topic on your page and try to incorporate the most popular keywords that are related to the topic. You can also add a video to the post and create a video for the purpose. Then optimize the video’s page on YouTube in the same way as you do the blog post itself.

Once you create your content according to SEO rules and publish the video and the post (with Google+ and Authorship enabled) it is time to further promote it via your SEO rules optimized social networks. The next step is to go to the webmasters tools sites and have Google and Bing spider your site and add your new page to their index. This can really speed up the process of being available to search engines.You would post links to Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest etc. to reach your established fans/clients. Then also post to some news distribution services like Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon. This will create backlinks as well as putting your content in front of people who can further your SEO efforts by liking, sharing and linking to your content.

This article is shared courtesy of Street punk productions Posted on January 16, 2014 by Michael Johnston

The Most User Requested Apps Have Arrived on Hootsuite!!

21 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Bloging, Content Marketing, Pinterest

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Apps, Hootsuite

The HootSuite App Directory announces the addition of four new apps designed to help streamline communications and increase productivity.

Users have asked and we’ve delivered; the new Gmail and ViralTag for Pinterest apps represent our dedication to create a platform that caters to user needs. With over 13,000 votes submitted to the HootSuite Feedback Forums, these highly requested apps have arrived in the HootSuite App Directory.

Along with these much anticipated apps, we also introduce two new marketing apps, Vidcaster and Shopseen, that will help enhance your social marketing.

Introducing Gmail

For some people, getting updated could mean switching between Twitter, Facebook, and other tabs just to see their latest feeds. With the HootSuite dashboard, we put all your social networks into one view and now, emails as well!

Gmail---screen-1-updated — Read, write and respond to emails from your gmail accounts directly in the dashboard. Click to enlarge.

The Gmail app for HootSuite allows you to monitor all of your points of communication within one central dashboard. Never again will you have to take your eyes off another video on your Facebook feed for an urgent email. Simply tilt your vision a little to the side and you can multitask with optimal efficiency. You have the ability to read, reply, and delete emails from the dashboard. So if you’ve been too busy tweeting up a storm on Twitter, you can now give your overloaded inbox some much needed attention alongside your social media. Try the new Gmail app now and you’ll achieve inbox zero in no time.

Introducing ViralTag for Pinterest

The ViralTag for Pinterest app allows you to schedule new pins right from the HootSuite dashboard.

Have you ever wondered how some users on Pinterest gained their large fanbase? The key is to actively engage followers with new content. Now you can do that without manually pinning a new photo every hour. The new ViralTag for Pinterest app in HootSuite will allow users to easily schedule, share and analyze their pins on the dashboard.

When a clothing brand wants to introduce a new season of garments, this could mean several photos to share with their followers. To keep the momentum, users can choose to schedule photos periodically so that viewers aren’t visually overwhelmed by a single blast of updates. So how can you further promote your content? Brands and companies can now share their pins across all the social networks in HootSuite to push promotions for greater reach. Try the new ViralTag for Pinterest app.

Vidcaster

In an interactive age, photos are not enough to tell a story. The use of video has become more prevalent in social media engagement. You can now easily distribute your Vidcaster videos across all your social networks in the HootSuite dashboard.

With the Vidcaster App, a social media manager can not only view and share videos, but access analytics to track engagement and viewership. Vidcaster provides you with the data to create videos that appeal most to your audience. Discover when your viewers drop off your videos and which videos are gaining the most attention. Improve the content you share with your followers. Install the Vidcaster App now.

Shopseen

The more people that see an item for sale, the more likely and quickly that item will be sold. Whether you run an online store or just want to get rid of some old clothes, it’s no surprise you’ve posted your items on multiple sites like eBay, Shopify and Etsy. But how do you keep track of all your listings?

You have the ability to share your listings with all your social networks in HootSuite

The new Shopseen app lets you monitor all your listings in one stream in the HootSuite dashboard. You can keep track of inventory and orders, so you know when your hot items are running low. While often the issue for store owners is the lack of traffic to their listings. Using the Shopseen app, you can increase visibility by promoting your listings across all the social networks in HootSuite with one post. Generate more revenue and expand your reach, try out the new Shopseen app.

Did you know that our App Directory has 65 apps that help enhance your brand presence and enrich your social experience? Check them out today.

SEO-Friendly Blog Posts

20 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by leonidesignoryblog in Best Practices, Bloging, Google SEO, WordPress

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Blog, Blogging, SEO Blog Posts

Search engine optimization is so important for marketers, but it can be a pretty tricky tactic to master with Google’s copious algorithm updates. What matters, and what doesn’t? What’s best practice, and what’s old-school? How can I remember it all, anyway?

We understand this is a common issue facing inbound marketers — and we want to help.

Today, HubSpot has launched an SEO Panel that will help take you through how to optimize your blog posts as you’re writing them. The SEO Panel lets you know in real-time what you need to do to optimize your posts for the keywords you care about, and what you’ve already succeeded in doing for your in-post SEO.

Below, we’ll cover some of the suggestions from the SEO Panel, along with a few other optimization tactics you should keep in mind. Note that this list does not cover every single SEO tactic. Rather, these tips are meant to get you started with improving SEO for your blog.

If you’re a HubSpot customer, you’ll receive these reminders right in your post dashboard — just select the SEO View.

seo_panel

If you’re not a customer, you can use this checklist as a reminder as you blog.

1) Focus on 1-2 long-tail keywords.

When writing for your blog, it’s important not to stuff a ton of your keywords into a single post. Instead, focus on 1-2 keywords for each post. It’s best to limit keywords to this total because 1) search engines will actually penalize your post if it looks like you’re using keywords too many times, and 2) it helps keep you focused on a goal for your post. Yes, more than one keyword may appear in a post; but the goal of the post should be narrow enough to allow you to spend time optimizing for just one or two keywords.

Long-tail keywords may be more efficient to use since website visitors searching long-tail terms will often be more qualified. In other words, you’ll bring in the right type of traffic — visitors who convert — by using long-tail keywords.

Where are the best parts of your posts to include these terms so you rank high in search? Well, there are four essential places where you should try to include your keywords:

a) Title

The title of your blog post should include your keyword, but just be sure to keep your long-tail keyword under 70 characters. The title of your post will be a search engine and reader’s first step in determining the relevancy of your content, so including a keyword here is vital.

b) Body

You should mention your keyword at a normal pace throughout your post — that means you should include your keywords, but only in a natural, reader-friendly way. Search engines penalize any post they believe is using keyword mentions as a way to rank for a particular keyword, so this requires close attention in the writing process.

c) URL

Search engines also look to your URL to figure out what your post is about. Your URL should reflect your title, so ensure the keyword you use is relevant to the article. If you have to trim your blog post URL down, make sure you keep the keyword in it. We’ll elaborate on the importance of URL structures in more detail below.

d) Meta Description

Later in this post, we’ll also dive into explaining meta descriptions. Your meta description is meant to give search engines and your readers information about your blog post’s content. So be certain to use your long-tail term clearly here so Google and your audience are well aware of the post’s content, but also keep in mind that how engaging the copy is matters a great deal for conversion rates.

2) Use responsive design.

Blogs that are responsive will conform to the screen of any device. That means whether you’re reading a blog on a desktop, smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device, the site format and layout will be the same, making for a unified user experience. Responsive design is becoming more and more important for more than just UX, though. It’s also important for SEO.

A recent Google study revealed 61% of mobile visitors will return to Google to find a site that is more easily readable if they can’t find information on mobile sites right away. This makes having a uniform, responsive site imperative.

Another reason it’s important to have responsive design set up is that it creates one URL. This helps your SEO because any inbound links that come back to your site won’t be scattered across different domains. Any SEO power you gain from these links will be centralized, helping Google as well as your SEO ranking.

All content created on HubSpot’s platform is automatically responsive, so HubSpot customers can breathe easy.

3) Include meta optimizations.

Meta optimization is actually not limited to meta descriptions. To review, your meta description is the additional text that appears on your search results that lets you know what the link is about.

The meta description is also important because it give readers information they need to decide whether or not your content is what they’re looking for.

Your meta description should include the long-tail keyword you are trying to rank for, because if we’re doing blogging right, it’s representative of the contents of your post. In the example above, I searched for “writing a blog post.” The words “write” and “blog post” are both bolded because they were the search terms I was hoping to find. Thus, including keywords here can go a long way in helping your audience identify you as a good option in search.

HubSpot customers: In the SEO Panel, you’ll notice SEO Impact is measured for different elements of meta optimization (and all of the items, actually). Optimizing your metadata only takes a moment, so ideally, you’ll hit all the elements of great meta optimization.

4) Use canonical tags.

You may have heard SEO experts say that you should never have duplicate content on your website. However, you sometimes need to display information in multiple ways to help your website visitors navigate your website. Whenever you have duplicate content on your website but need to keep both pages live, you should use canonical tags.

Canonical tags speak to search engines and tell them which page to index. Giving them this information ensures that your content is not punished for appearing somewhere else on your website. It also allows search engines to link to the appropriate or dominant resource.

To put in canonical tags:

Pick the page that you want to be indexed, and write down that URL.
Go to the duplicate pages that should not be indexed, and insert this code in the <head> section: <link rel=”canonical” href=”INSERT INDEXED PAGE URL”/>
If you have any questions, follow these instructions from Google.

5) Optimize your images.

Blog posts shouldn’t only contain text for SEO purposes — you should also have images that help explain your content. But search engines don’t just look for images. Rather, they look for images with alt text.

You can figure out an image’s alt text by placing your cursor over an image. A small box will pop up that describes your image and, therefore, helps search engines interpret the meaning of the image. As you can see below, the alt text is “related-search.” Think of alt text as an interpreter for search engines. Search engines cannot interpret what an image means without the text to explain it.

In HubSpot’s COS, the SEO Panel will recognize whether or not you have optimized your images. Though these elements are not as important as some other optimizations, they’re still necessary (and easy to add in).

6) Don’t use too many topic tags.

Topic tags can help organize your blog content, but if you overuse them, they can actually be harmful. If you have too many similar tags, you may actually get dinged by search engines for having duplicate content.

Think of it this way: When you create a topic tag, you also create a new page where the content from those topic tags will appear. If you use too many similar tags for the same content, it then appears to search engines as if you’re showing the content multiple times throughout your website. For example, topic tags like “blogging,” “blog,” and “blog posts” are too similar to each other to be used on the same post.

If you’re worried that your current blog posts have too many similar tags, take this opportunity to clean them up. Choose about 15-25 topic tags that you think are important to your company and that aren’t similar to each other. Then, only tag your posts with those keywords — that way, you won’t have to worry about duplicate content.

7) Use URL structures that help your visitors.

The URL structure of your webpages should make it easy for your visitors to understand the structure of your website and what content they’re about to see. Search engines favor URLs that make it easier for them and website visitors to understand the content on the page.

For instance, let’s take a look at Inbound Hub. There are a handful of blog sections and a lot of different posts in each one. But, the URL structure makes it easy for our readers to navigate what section and content they read. Let’s take a closer look at how to properly structure your URLs by using our blog as an example:

We’ll start off by coming to the HubSpot blog by typing in this URL: http://blog.hubspot.com/.
Now, let’s say we want to head to the Marketing section. The URL would change slightly to: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing. If we want to read the Sales section, all we have to do is change where it says “marketing” in the URL to “sales”: http://blog.hubspot.com/sales.
What if there’s a specific article we want to read — perhaps “How to Do Keyword Research: A Beginner’s Guide”? Well, its URL will show it’s an article from the Marketing section: http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-do-keyword-research-ht. The URL simply adds on an abridged version of title to the end of the post. If we wanted to look at a different blog post, the only part of the URL that would change would be after “marketing/.”

The structure of the URL acts as a navigation for us, letting us know where we are on the website and how to access new site pages. Search engines appreciate this, as it makes it easier for them to look at the URL and identify exactly what information searchers will access.

To find more best practices for URL structure, you can read more about it from Moz.

8) Link internally when possible.

Inbound links to your content help show search engines the validity or relevancy of your content. The same goes for linking internally to other pages on your website. For instance, if you’ve written about a topic that’s mentioned in your blog post on another blog post, ebook, or webpage, you should link to that page. That will not only help retain visitors on your website, but also demonstrate the other relevant and authoritative pages to search engines.

If you’re a HubSpot customer, the SEO Panel suggests linking to other internal resources on your website. As you can see below, the Panel states that your overall SEO will be improved by doing this. Think of it as solving for your SEO while also helping your visitors get more information from your content.

9) Use the Google Webmaster tools section.

A great resource for finding out more about SEO is Google’s SEO section in Webmaster Tools. This page can likely provide you with answers to a number of additional questions you may have about the best ways to optimize your website, so we recommend bookmarking it.

leonidesignoryblog

~ socially savvy design

Monthly Archives: May 2014

YouTube for marketing: how do you make it work?

Raising Awareness with Instagram

What exactly does the “perfect Tweet” look like?

SEO: New Rules For 2014

SEO Rules For 2014

SEO Rules And The Search Process

The Most User Requested Apps Have Arrived on Hootsuite!!

Introducing Gmail

Introducing ViralTag for Pinterest

Vidcaster

Shopseen

SEO-Friendly Blog Posts