SMX Advanced | Social Marketing | SEO | MySpace | LinkedIn

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SMX Advanced Seattle, Washington, June 4, 2007

SEO, Meet SMM

SEO has a lot to gain from SMM, social media marketing. Getting your content into the major social media sites does more than provide an initial traffic jump. It can generate links or provide rankings you might not be able to tap into with your own site. In this session, SMM essentials that SEOs need to know.

Moderator:
Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz
Cindy Krum, Senior SEO Analyst, Blue Moon Works Inc.
Todd Malicoat, Internet Marketing Consultant, Stuntdubl
Neil Patel, Author, Pronet Advertising

Rand Fishkin - Social Media Marketing vs. Viral Marketing

Web 2.0 sites and approach these sites in the desire to be part of the community. We make the Yahoo, MSN, and Ask communities work for us. This now extends to social media to leverage them for success.

• Rule the search results
• Link love.
• Traffic
• Influence the traditional media

Places you can use the above list:

1. YouTube
2. Wikipedia
3. Yahoo! answers
4. Yelp
5. LinkedIn
6. Flickr
7. Craigslist
8. Facebook
9. Amazon - blogs, lists
10. MySpace
11. Technorati
12. Judy’s Book
13. Newsvine
14. CitySearch

How well does this work?
SEOMoz has 724,200 links and a PR of 7 since launched in October 2004.

Neil Patel

Unwritten rules:

• don’t do self promotion
• add biased information
• ask friends for vote

Users will accuse you of spamming your link on all the front page stories and call you out on it.

Neil’s golden rules:

• Add tons of friends. If you submit a piece of a content and plenty of people vote on it, that means they’re interested in the stuff you’re submitting, so become their friends.
• Participate in the community. Get involved with the people who leave their AIM screenname or email in their profile
• Become a top user. You can submit stuff and get away with it. People will vote on your stuff and you’ll succeed
• Use their features against them. If they give you tools to become friends, become friends with them.
• Create a social brand. Don’t use the name like "neilpatel" all over. People might recognize you

The StumbleUpon tool and the ability to send a link to your friends that forces them to visit your page.

If you want to succeed, do what’s ethical. Develop your brand don’t jeopardize it. Think long term. Social Media isn’t a quick fix, it’s a long term strategy.

Todd Malicoat

The benefits to strategic linking with social media:

• control over
  • anchor text
  • body copy
  • theme
• opportunity for links from trusted sources
• Rankings
• traffic
• sales go up
• Squidoo

Invisible nofollows
With Digg, sometimes the links won’t follow at all.

Spam is determined by intent and extent - Size matters

• link buying vs. strategic placement
• doorway pages vs. landing pages
• social media spamming vs. social media optimization

Strategies: build reputation neighborhood which is good for reputation management, build hubs (e.g. Squidoo) with social media links, maximize the use of anchor text, and looking for social media sites.

Reputation neighborhoods sign up to everything you can find, test them and see which rank, if they are good, link to them. Build a neighborhood of sites and interlink them.

Build a hub - you can use MySpace…

Test social media sites for link value find out if the site is indexed.

1. Is the site indexed?
2. Is the page indexed?
3. Do these pages rank?
4. How many links?
5. Does the page pass on link juice?

Testing methodology:

• run a site:command on similar pages on the site
• build on the social media site filled with nonsense
• link to another nonsense page

Conclusions - Benefits: know how to use the tools.

• size matters
• intent and extent also matters
• use strategies
• experiment

Cindy Krum

Social Media for Brand Awareness

Why is social media important to your brand?
Ubiquitous adoption of web technology means your customers will demand a higher level of interaction with your brand.
Social networks have an undeniable power.
Radical transparency is the new public relations nirvana.
Social network advertising is expected to triple by 2011.

Secure your social presence:

• Research relevant social networks
• Create your own social sites
• Look for niche/vertical sites
• Blogs and forums.

Wiki sites.

• Identify existing networks for your brand and industry
• Have a strategy
• Who gets social profiles?
• Brand - products - company icons

Use social profile portals to your brand. You want people to be part of your community and to come back. Keep the information fresh and current.

Manage multiple social profiles in centralized locations. Use remote photo hosting instead of hosting on multiple sites. Leverage email functionality, blogs, and billboards.

SEO your profiles:

• use traditional SEO best practices
• focus on brand keywords
• interlink profiles to your brand sites
• initiate friending campaigns
• drive traffic to the profile/s

Empower brand evangelists - give them great stuff:

• widgets
• profile layouts
• graphics
• desktops/wallpaper
• videos
• podcasts
• special deals

Starbucks gives out a widget. You can add MySpace profiles and you can invite people to drink coffee with you. LOST also - staying on top of the buzz about the show.

• Embrace convergence
• leverage existing marketing efforts
• send TV/radio/print traffic to profile pages
• link to commercials on your profile pages
• link to information/press about the campaign from the profile

Social Network offline traffic:

• host meetups offline
• offer in-store only coupons
• use social profiles to integrate on and offline brand interaction

Social Network online traffic:

• create a social media section on your site
• link it from your homepage
• encourage visitors to add you as a friend
• promote all the cool stuff you’re giving away on your profile

Maybe I’ll see you at SMX Advanced in Seattle today!

late,
gary

This is a post from Gary Pool’s Search Engine Optimizician&trade blog.

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