Influencer Marketing Background
Influencer Marketing involves brands focused on engaging key industry leaders to drive brand message and awareness with specific target audiences. While the concept of influencer marketing is not new, the explosive growth of social media has led to a renaissance. Over the past 3 years, searches for “influencer marketing” on Google have increased 1,500 percent. The influencer marketing industry is now estimated to be between $6.5 and $10 billion, with plenty of room for growth.

There are a variety of reasons consumers follow and engage with influencers. First and foremost, consumers like to learn new things in general, but also like to learn more about the influencers themselves. Many consumers like to get inspiration for their own lives and want to stay updated on pop culture as well. From a brand perspective, a major growth driver for influencer marketing is the return-on-investment (ROI) companies are experiencing. According to NeoReach, the average earned media value (AEMV) per $1 spent on influencer marketing in 2018 was $5.20, while branding-focused influencer campaigns averaged an 8x ROI. I’ve seen studies with ROI as high as 10x as well.

Here are a few more compelling statistics for skeptics:
• 87 percent of shoppers are inspired by an influencer to make a purchase
• 80 percent of Instagram users follow a business
• 70 percent of consumers say they trust the opinions of influencers as much or more than their real-world friends, while 78 percent said they trust influencer opinions more than traditional ads, and more than half said they consider the influencers they follow to be an extension of their circle of friends (Sideqik)
• 61 percent of people interact with an influencer daily
• According to Digital Marketing Institute, teenagers trust influencers more than traditional celebrities
• Whalar recently found influencer ads to be 277 percent more “emotionally intense” than TV ads

As a result, brands are responding by making bigger investments in influencer marketing. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, Instascreener and Vamp Brands, 86 percent of marketers plan to invest in influencer marketing in 2019. Thirty nine percent of marketers increased influencer marketing budgets this year, with an average 83 percent year-over-year increase.

Influencer Marketing Challenges
Despite the rapid growth and adoption of influencer marketing by brands big and small, the relatively new channel has no shortage of shortcomings and controversy, ranging from transparency and fraud to declining engagement and measurement challenges. According to a research report by NeoReach, ViralNation and Influencer Marketing Hub, 64 percent of marketers deem influencer fraud as a big concern and only 11 percent of influencers were compliant with CMA and FTC regulatory guidelines.

One of the greatest challenges facing brands investing in influencer marketing is fraud. According to Arkose Labs, 53 percent of social media account logins are fraudulent. In Q23 of 2019, nearly 19 percent of a $314 million Instagram influencer marketing spend reached fake followers. Other common challenges include finding relevant and qualified influencers, managing contracts or campaign deadlines, bandwidth or time restraints and payments. The good news is that tools and platforms are improving rapidly, allowing brands to more easily identify, connect with and manage influencers. The chart from eMarketer below outlines additional challenges associated with fraud, measurement and rising costs.

While the industry (influencers, platforms, brands and regulators) evaluate solutions to these challenges, there is one near-term alternative to paying third party experts to endorse your brand: become an influencer yourself. In my article (How to Become an Industry Influencer) and related interview (5 Things You Should Do To Become a Thought Leader In Your Industry), I outline how you can do just that. In brief, start by educating yourself and others, then build a network and give back to your industry and local community.

Since many brands do not have the interest or ability to create influencers from within, they must look outside their walls. This means marketers must be aware of the challenges facing influencer marketing and address them head-on as they build or refine programs. Brands must ensure they select influencers that align with company values, are transparent with sponsored content, have legitimate (non-bot) followers and are able to set up and track key performance indicators (KPIs) that accurately value the impact of the investment in influencer programs.

KPIs are under scrutiny and Instagram is responding by threatening to remove the number of likes on posts. While many influencers are up-in-arms about the suggested change, sophisticated marketers appreciate the need to evolve to more meaningful metrics. ‘Likes’ are arbitrary and can be easily gamed by influencers. More powerful metrics, some of which can be expensive to measure, include: purchase intent, brand affinity or sentiment. Easier metrics to track include reach (brand awareness) and conversions (to lead or sale), but brands and influencers must agree on how to best track success. For example, a recent study by InfluencerDB indicated the average engagement rate for sponsored influencer posts in Q1 of 2019 fell to 2.4 percent from 4 percent in just three years. With declining engagement on Instagram, the platform, influencers and brands need to get creative with content and measurement.

Influencer Marketing Program Fundamentals
Not everyone can afford to utilize outside help from firms like Anvil to build out and/or manage an influencer marketing program. This article, in conjunction with our extensive insights section is designed for you. Regardless of your budgets or resources, consider the following framework when developing (or approving) an influencer marketing plan.

The first step in creating a successful influencer marketing program is to outline your overall objectives, whether they be brand awareness, brand perception, engagement or conversions. The second step is to map your core audiences against popular social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn). Keep in mind platforms perform differently by gender. Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest are more likely to influence females’ buying decisions, whereas YouTube and Twitter are more likely to influence males’ decisions to make a purchase (The Manifest). Note in the chart below that Instagram is the 800-pound gorilla of the influencer marketing ecosystem.

With objectives, audiences and key platforms identified, you can utilize a host of free and paid tools to evaluate specific influencers on each platform. Beyond conducting topical searches on Google and related hashtag searches on social platforms, consider utilizing these free and low-cost social media and influencer marketing platforms for your research: BuzzStream, BuzzSumo, Discover.ly, FameBit, FollowerWonk, GroupHigh, HypeAuditor, NinjaOutreach, PeopleMap, Pitchbox, Social Crawlytics, Tell and Upfluence.

When evaluating possible influencers, it is important to understand current engagement rates by size and platform, as they do vary. Influencer follower size matters as well. Micro-influencers achieve an average of 7x more engagement than influencers with larger followings (celebrities and macro-influencers). The smaller the following, the more an influencer’s location may come into play. The chart below shows engagement rates by platform and influencer reach:

Interestingly, engagement rates vary by media type, not just platform. For example, Instagram engagement rates are significantly lower for video posts than images, and those rates are a fraction of the video engagement rates on YouTube (the most engaging social media platform of all). On Facebook and Twitter, engagement rates are nearly identical for images and video, which are 2-3 times higher than text. See the chart below for specifics:

Now that you’re armed with engagement rates, you can create leverage with your negotiations, particularly in discussions with influencers who have lower-than-average engagement rates. Cost is also a factor, and it’s important to be informed about current rates for influencers. The chart below shows the average cost-per-post range from $100 to $4,000 depending on follower-count.

Developing an influencer marketing budget is important, and many brands are being more reactive that proactive when it comes to financial planning. I recommend starting small and increasing investment as influencers generate return. Refine your program before you make large investments. For reference, Fashion Nova was the top spender on Instagram in Q2 2019, investing $5.5 million into social media influencers. Ciroc earned second place with $3.4 million in spend followed by Flat Tummy Co with a $2.9 million investment (Instascreener).

Now that you’ve identified target influencers, the real work begins. Start your outreach with well-crafted communications that clearly outline your company values, goals and understanding of the fit between your brand and the influencer. Demonstrate you understand who they are, how you are aligned and the additional value you can provide, in order to maximize leverage when negotiating costs. For example, many influencers appreciate creative freedom and flexibility, while others may appreciate swag or additional exposure and credibility they can gain through your network.

Once you’ve secured your first round of influencers, the next step is providing raw materials (product, images, logistical support or other assets) as well as guidance or training on the products or services they are being asked to promote. It is important to ensure you’ve clearly delineated who creates content and where it gets syndicated. Some brands recruit influencers to create content for their own brand feeds (UGC), while others only want to be featured or mentioned in influencer feeds. If you intend to leverage influencer content in your brand feed, ensure it is properly optimized, sourced and syndicated for maximum reach and engagement.

The last two, but most impactful elements of your influencer marketing program are management and measurement. As outlined earlier, managing influencer assets and relationships can be a challenge for marketers. While platforms continue to improve, building process and maintaining regular contact is essential. We suggest weekly check-in calls and monthly reports as a minimum threshold. To maximize the value and impact of your influencer relationships, remember to create supporting blog posts, share influencer posts with your network (adding comments for context, brand messaging and optimization) and syndicate across your social platforms.

In terms of metrics, the most common influencer marketing analytics include: engagement or clicks (according to 43 percent of marketers), views, reach or impressions (33 percent) and content type or category (24 percent). Additional metrics to consider when evaluating your programs include website traffic, and share-of-voice. At Anvil, we value reach, engagement and conversions most, depending on the client, objective and platform.

B2B Influencer Marketing
Most of the available research and press coverage on the topic of influencer marketing is focused on business-to-consumer brands. Here are a few best practices for business-to-business (B2B) brands looking to leverage influencer marketer to build brand awareness. Around 30 percent of influencer marketing campaigns currently originate from the B2B sector and nearly 65 percent of those programs are campaign-based (vs. ongoing). Look for both numbers to change moving forward, as I’ll touch on shortly.

Unlike consumer influencers, B2B influencers are typically professionals within your industry. That means they may work for a competitor or have other employment restrictions, making a partnership more challenging. There is hope, as the B2B marketplace is diverse and fragmented. To reach your target audience, consider looking outside popular industry thought leaders to niche experts. Also evaluate internal resources including seasoned employees, engaged customers and vendors or strategic partners.

Most B2B brands are looking to grow or maintain thought leadership and leverage expert content and networks. Consider leveraging your own company’s assets when structuring an influencer partnership, including access to data, tools or even other experts in your network your influencers can tap for content. It is also essential to provide your influencers access to shareable content like research reports, eBooks, webinars, white papers and infographics.

Unlike most B2C influencer engagements, B2B influencer marketing programs tend to be longer-term by necessity, due to longer sales cycles. This creates a longer runway and greater potential for return. Speaking of return, common KPIs for B2B influencer programs include growth in subscribers, downloads or demo requests. The key to success with any influencer marketing program, B2B or otherwise, is mapping metrics to your overall objectives and target audience.

Influencer Marketing Trends
When conducting research for this article, I identified a few trends worth sharing as you refine your influencer marketing program. Below are six influencer marketing trends worth considering as you start your planning for 2020:

Alignment and Transparency: Moving forward, look for brands and influencers to create better alignment and transparency. According to research, 84 percent of consumers believe authenticity is important when choosing influencers to follow. Millennials are increasingly skeptical of businesses’ motives and impact on society, according to Deloitte. The writing is on the wall, especially for brands targeting younger consumers. For more insights, check out this article: 3 Trends Driving Gen Z Brand Preference and Purchase Decisions.

Always-on Campaigns: Moving forward, B2B and B2C brands will become more strategic in how they approach relationships with influencers. Long-term thinking will benefit all parties involved, including consumers. With longer-term thinking, look for both more realistic goals and meaningful objectives from brands and greater alignment with influencers.

Getting Small: The latest trend for larger brands is moving from macro to micro-influencers. The next logical evolution for brands, due in-part to rising costs and declining engagement rates of macro-influencers, is to go even smaller to nano and niche-influencers. Essentially, brands will develop a higher volume of relationships with influencers with 250-10,000 followers to maximize engagement and authenticity. The chart below illustrates marketers’ perceived value of nano and niche-influencers.

Raw Realism: One of the most interesting trends I’ve seen recently is the movement by influencers to share more authentic images and videos that are less aspirational and more empathetic to followers. Brands that understand and leverage this trend may see remarkable results, but it will require trust and flexibility between parties.

B2B Growth: Perhaps the least sexy but profoundly important trend is significant growth of influencer marketing programs among B2B brands. Nearly 15 years ago, we helped build and market a blog for a B2B client that was written by an industry thought leader. It was well ahead of its time but demonstrated the power of a transparent partnership that provided real value for all parties involved. Look for more of these strategic partnerships moving forward.

Improved Integration: Since I come from the world of search engine marketing, I would be remiss if I didn’t include what I feel is an important trend for our industry. Influencers by default have high credibility with Google, especially if they maintain a blog or website. Brand mentions with links back to a brand website from an influencer blog post or article can have tremendous search engine optimization (SEO) value. Similarly, social posts with influencer-powered content can generate exponential reach and engagement when boosted in brand social feeds and can even be supported by display ads across the Google network. Improved integration among influencer and search marketing teams is a logical next step and we’ve seen success with Anvil clients on this front recently.

Conclusion
You don’t have to be a fashion brand like Revolve or Dior to see massive returns on your investment in influencer marketing, but you do need to be aware of challenges, build a solid plan and manage your influencers proactively. Above all else, a successful influencer marketing program of the future will be based on transparency and authenticity.

Resources
5 Key Components of a Successful Influencer Marketing Strategy
5 Things You Should Do To Become a Thought Leader In Your Industry
7 Influencer Marketing Tools to Boost Your Campaign
How to Build a B2B Influencer Marketing Strategy for 2020
Influencer Marketing 101
Where Influencer Marketing Goes Wrong (and How to Fix It)

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Designing Connected Content, Mike Atherton, Facebook
Mike reminds us that most consumers are consuming content via social media, vs. through your corporate website. As a marketer, you need to be where your audience is and providing them information in a way that they prefer: format, frequency, design, etc. Oftentimes, the structure of content is an illusion. Mike gives a site architecture as an example, where the structure is somewhat arbitrary, vs. embedded in the content themselves. An example of the new mode of navigation is Google’s sidebar or search results pages, where content is linked based on relevance vs. hierarchy.

The concept of Connected Content is…
• Specifically about the things that matter to an audience
• Structured according to how these things connect in the world
• Stored outside of any interface, ready for use in every interface

One tip Mike outlined, is to Map The World. Determine how content links together as you create it. Embed links to connect content and context. These relationships create value and help paint a clear picture. The technical term is Domain Modeling. Here’s an example:

Once you’ve mapped out your link structure, the next step is to open the windows. Rather than take a traditional UX/UI design approach, Mike recommends separating concerns into three categories: interface, content and domain model. Overall, the session was insightful in rethinking the content and design creation and integration process.

Ignore at Your Peril: 9 Trends That Will Shape Marketing in 2019, Loren McDonald, IBM Watson Marketing
This session covered trends shaping marketing. A few of those trends, as outlined by Loren, include:
1. Integrating Marketing & Customer experiencer: always be thinking about the Customer Journey in everything you do.
2. Eliminate data silos: ensure data is being shared across platforms to inform the customer journey and targeting marketing effectively.
3. Monitor real-time customer struggles: identify and address customer friction points.
4. AI and Machine Learning: it’s the future, but it’s only as good as the data being fed to it
5. Digital marketing agencies transformed into consultancies: Accenture, Deloitte and other big consulting firms have incorporated digital marketing into the service offering, to be competitive, spur growth and enhance relationships with clients. Loren advises going niche or expand on the agency side. Brands, conversely, need to decide who they want to work with… who is going to best meet their needs and help achieve goals.
6. Regulations & GDPR: Loren believes its largely a good thing. While meeting with legal isn’t fun, it’s important, considering 55 percent of consumers prefer not to share personal data. As a result, there are a few key steps to take to be compliant: focus on data hygiene, instilling trust, acquisition quality and rethinking metrics.
7. Agile Marketing: 37 percent of marketers report they’ve adopted some flavor of agile marketing. Agile is a tactical marketing approach that allows teams to divide marketing workflow into smaller chunks and iterate over a shorter period of time.
8. MarTech + AdTech are coming together. 86 percent of digital display ads in the US will be programmatic by 2020. Media buyers are most at risk with the evolution of automated media buying, bidding and measuring. Related tech includes Demand Side Platform (DSP) and Data Management Platform (DMP), which both help brands and marketers understand the impact of advertising throughout the customer journey.
9. Customer Centricity will drive customer innovation. Everything is a subscription these days, from cars and razors to food and clothing. This model provides critical margins for businesses with largely compressed profits. Unfortunately, companies have to restructure to better serve customers… with a customer-centered approach vs. discipline silos.
10. Bonus: In the emotion economy, purpose creates loyalty. Loren uses Kaepernick and Nike as an example. Good idea, since I’ve shared my thoughts on the Nike Just Do It campaign when it launched last year. Brands are selecting their customers based on purpose, which implies fans are more engaged and others are fired. I agree this is a powerful trend, as does the Anvil team.

Build a Loyal Base of Listeners: B2B Podcasting, Sean Campbell, Cascade Insights
Of course I felt obligated to attend this session on podcasting, as that was my topic as a Digital Summit presenter and I’ve written about developing a podcasting strategy. According to Sean, he believes too many marketers or brands are just shouting and need to stop. Cascade built a podcast a few years ago (now at 200 episodes) and Sean shared his experiences and lessons with the audience.

His overall philosophy is that consumers want content to be “narrow” so the goal is to deliver, while appealing to the broadest audience. Sean reminded the audience that audio quality is the “location, location, location” of podcasting. Don’t cut corners on your audio quality. Also, don’t cut corners without editing, which is essential to streamline the flow and make it more engaging. Sean recommends against self-hosting podcasts; use Libsyn or other podcasting host platforms. He also recommends finding a niche (topic/theme) and sticking to it. Your podcast shouldn’t be for everyone, it should be for those that matter to you – your target audience.

Don’t forget to talk up your podcast with your customers/clients and other important constituents, especially considering they are the primary or secondary target audience. As a result, it’s okay to engage the sales team and incorporate sales messaging. In fact, Sean recommends crowdsourcing questions from your customers and prospects to help formulate the content, guests and format. Pro tip: pre-record questions from your audience and air during the show when high-profile guests are only available outside of your planned recording sessions.

Advertising isn’t a bad thing, especially when integrated properly. Overcast and Podcast Republic are effective ad platforms that generate new listeners/subscribers for very little ($400 or so per campaign, based on demand). Most ads run for 30 days, which is good for reach and recall. Sean also recommend a mid-roll ad (15 seconds) to promote your business in the middle of your podcast. Use Voices.com for quality voice talent for ads.

In terms of guests, shoot for the moon with thought-leaders, influencers and otherwise engaging guests (funny, informative or unique). Don’t get trapped in thinking a job title or level of experience makes a great interview. Vet and prep your guests in advance. Think quality over quantity, not just in terms of guests or content but podcast frequency. Most guests tend to create evergreen content, which is inherent to the interview format. While attribution can be challenging due to limited metrics, it can be powerful. For example, the podcast we helped produce and market, Craving the Future, generated a global hotel consulting client for our customer.

Conversational Strategies to Reach Today’s Consumer, Grad Conn, Sprinklr
In this session, Grad outlines the concept of B2B social account-based marketing. Specifically, the concept is prospecting targeted (named) accounts in social via a programmatic approach. Grad outlines the concept of CXC, where mentions are distributed through the company via the Sprinklr application. If you don’t understand what a CXC is, worry not, as it’s Sprinklr-specific jargon as far as I can tell. To help illustrate the concept, he used Burger King as an example.

Grad goes on to outline the process for ABM:
1. Identify account based on success levels of traditional outreach methods, revenue or employee size targets, brands are engaged in social (specific to Sprinklr)
2. CXC team is activated and begins ABM research process (to learn more about the brand and key contact
3. CXC team develops a research brief to provide context for engagements
4. Set up listening to asset with research and develop key insights (using Sprinklr platform)
5. Look for opportunities to create and share custom content that engages the prospect

One example used was the CMO of Sonos, and how they targeted her after she moved to Lyft. They developed custom “congrats” creative and shared it directly with her via social (from Sprinklr profile). A second example was the CMO of Mastercard, who received custom creative, resulting in sharing and a thank you.

The conference will continue this afternoon, but I won’t be able to provide recaps. I recommend attending a future Digital Summit in your city or better yet, in Portland!

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Rand Fiskin, SEOmoz

Justin Briggs, Big Fish Games

Summary:

Rand and Justin faced off for this presentation.  The challenge?  Which marketing pro could show off the best tools to address today’s challenges and opportunities.

What a wonderful job Rand and Justin did summarizing internet marketer’s biggest challenges and providing tools to solve them.  In the end, the presentation attendees decided Rand was the winner.  I’m not going to away all the tools they discussed but rather highlight some of my favorite new ones I discovered today.

Rand Fishkin

Problem: Keeping your twitter account organized – to get more followers you have to follow more users, but how do you weed through all the junk on you twitter dashboard?

Solution: ManageFlitter – a powerful tool to clean up your twitter account

Problem: Choosing when to post to twitter- we all know the standard best practices, but what will actually be the most effect time to post when your followers are engaged?

Solution: Tweriod – Tweriod gives you the best times to tweet by analyzing both your tweets and your followers’ tweets.  So you can start tweeting when it makes most sense to reach others.

Problem: Finding a good and available domain name

Solution: LeanDomainSearch – Find available domain names by keyword

Justing Briggs

Problem: Finding link sources – Justin admitted he misses Yahoo! Site Explorer for this purpose

Solution: YoLink – searches content behind links.  You can also use Google Alerts for link building and tie it in with YoLink

Problem: Visualizing data for marketing insights

Solution: Gephi – open source network graph visualization.  A really cool tool you MUST check this out!

Problem: Finding data for link bait.

Solution: Zanran – a data and statistic search engine.  Good to use for infographic data.  It’s still in beta and free so use it before they start charging for it.

Any new tools you have found that you would like to share?

The post SearchFest 2012: Marketing Challenges and the Tools to Solve Them appeared first on SEMpdx.

I think you should use our free keyword tool for the same reason I’d suggest using any other keyword tools as an idea generator. The main differentiator between Google’s external tool and our free keyword tool is that ours is a Long Tail Keyword tool – we offer a deeper list of suggestions (up to 10,000 depending on the query you start with). We also tap a variety of different data sets (ISPs, toolbars, and search engines) so there’s a bit more query diversity than what Google has.

Really any keyword tool, even Google’s, is only going to be directionally useful. Google gives me questionable estimates of everything that happens with a given keyword on Google.com. That doesn’t offer a very actionable picture of:

• What type of traffic I can reasonably expect
• How difficult it will be to generate that traffic
• Or what that traffic will do once it reaches my site (which is really the most important piece of the puzzle, ultimately)

So I’d say use a lot of different keyword idea generators: free keyword tools, surveys, your clients if you’re a consultant; really whatever you can get your hands on. I’m a big believer in generating a huge list of possible keyword targets. I’m also a big believer in the idea keyword tools are only the beginning. In order to truly measure ROI from keyword research you must continuously expand, refine , and then monitor performance to see how your customers respond.

Please talk about your two new free tools and how they will benefit search marketers.

I’m really excited about these: I think The Free Keyword Niche Finder is actually a lot more interesting than The Free Keyword Tool we launched in September, honestly. Basically it adds a layer of functionality. Where The Free Keyword Tool (like most keyword tools) just outputs a big list of results, The Free Keyword Niche Finder generates the same list, but then tries to makes sense of those results by performing some advanced  keyword analysis. Let’s compare the results of the same query on a couple of tools.

Here is the list of results for a search on “camera bag” from our Free Keyword Tool:

Now let’s look at the results for the same “camera bag” topic using The Free Keyword Niche Finder:

The interesting thing here is the difference in the way that the two tools function. The Free Keyword Tool looks at the Relative Volume of results across a variety of sources (ISPs, search engines, and toolbars). The Free Keyword Niche Finder, meanwhile, takes the same data that The Free Keyword Tool is using (our own database) and then analyzes and clusters that information semantically – essentially classifying keywords according to intent.

If we dig in deeper, we see that the aggregated keyword niches are more centered around brands. Take for example the “camera bags – lowepro” cluster, which shows how model names and numbers account for the tail for brands being longer:

So while “camera bag” is a more popular single query than “lowepro camera bag”, the sum of the camera bag keyword niche is actually greater, and it contains more specific, buy-focused terms of greater intent. Looking at the data side-by-side, it definitely appears that “lowepro camera bag” is a more profitable keyword niche to attack.

 Please talk about your subscription based service and how it enhances information presented in website analytics.

Web Analytics software delivers valuable insight for keyword research, but there are at least 2 major shortcomings, at least as far as keyword research is concerned:

• Keyword Data from Web analytics data isn’t immediately actionable — The hard part comes in making your Keyword Report information actionable. To act on keyword referral data, it needs to be analyzed, organized, etc.
• Web analytics is backwards-looking – It reveals to you how people have found your site in the past, and the outcomes associated with historical sessions, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you what pockets of opportunities might be important for you in the future, or what you might be missing out on right now.

WordStream is unique in that it addresses both of these limitations.

• It combines both Keyword Suggestion tools with Analytics data; thus, the past is known through analytics integration, and the future is guestimated with various keyword tools, competitive intelligence, and a fresh stream of keywords generated from your own Web site analytics data.
• It’s a Keyword Research workbench – We provide powerful integrated tools to help you research and make sense of your keywords– you can analyze, edit, delete, filter, organize and seamlessly act on the data (for example, you can turn keywords into ad groups!).

Please talk about how WordStream gathers its data.

WordStream continuously updates a huge keyword database representing over a trillion search queries using keyword search data through industry partnerships with:

• ISPs
• Browser Toolbars
• Search Engines

Then we apply sophisticated statistical models to aggregate the different keyword data sets, applying different weightings so the keyword suggestions aren’t overly biased toward one particular source, and apply powerful semantic and mapping algorithms to compute related terms and keyword niches.

 I’ve dealt with search marketing clients who have told me that previous search marketing vendors have exported long lists of keywords into a spreadsheet for them and call that “keyword research”.  Please describe why “keyword research” is a much more refined and detailed process than what I just described.

Dumping a keyword list into Microsoft Excel and calling that keyword research isn’t a great strategy because it fails on so many fronts. Effective keyword research for paid and organic research must be:

• Dynamic – If people are actually finding and converting using certain keywords on your Web site, you better add them to your keyword research! Do this every day.
• Easy to Maintain & Update – Microsoft Excel is like concrete. Say you’ve organized your keyword list in different worksheets or columns in Excel. Now say you have discovered 1000 new keyword opportunities – How do you update your research?
• Comprehensive – You need to pull in keyword data from as many different sources as possible – keyword suggestion tools, competitive tools, your own Web analytics, etc.
• Structured – It’s critical that you break-up and organize your keyword research into categories and sub-categories. A little organization will help you better understand your keyword research and will improve your results, too.
• Scalable & collaborative – We have customers effectively managing millions of keywords in a collaborative way using WordStream. Trying to do this in Excel is a path to madness.
• Actionable – The point of doing keyword research is to do something with it, like build or optimize your PPC and SEO campaigns.

The WordStream keyword management solutions were built with these precise goals in mind. Hence the tool offers a dynamic, actionable keyword database with “out-of-the-box” features that enable ongoing keyword discovery, organization, maintenance and collaboration. We have a lot of free keyword tools, and you can also sign up for a free trial of our non-free, premium keyword management offerings.

About Larry

Larry is the Founder and VP of Products for WordStream. You can contact him through twitter or on the WordStream Internet Marketing Blog. Larry lives in Cambridge, MA.

The post Not Just Another Tool: My Interview With WordStream’s Larry Kim appeared first on SEMpdx.

I went a bit long here. at about 10 minutes, but it might be worth watching if you want to be more efficient.

The post Social Media Tracking & Tools appeared first on SEMpdx.

Utah SEO – Jordan Kasteler

Use a robots.txt file to ensure that your site is crawled and the pages that you don’t want crawled wont be crawled.
Evaluate your template for usability and clean the code up. Rename images, rename the directories and file names if needed. Also delete any extra code that doesn’t do what you’re looking for.

Code Optimization – Rearrange the Title of your blog post structure and ad in H1 tags if they currently don’t exist.

Duplicate Content – Use the new canonical URL tag for your blog posts.

Permalinks – Change your permalinks for each blog post, a good structure is to use your title as the URL or use a category.

Pagination – Moving from one page to another, there are some plugins that you can use to establish a clean pagination structure.

Cleaning up your categories – it’s easy to add descriptions within a category, by adding some PHP code.

No-Following blog posts – Using the “more” feature (use the “Add link attribute” plugin) you can ensure that you have a good anchor text structure.

Custom 404 pages – creating custom 404 pages can mean that you will capture “dead” traffic.

User Generated Content – very important for your blog. Enticing comments by using a “DoFollow” link is good, but you may be spammed.

Internal Linking – very important! Add internal links for blog posts that have received many external links. The “Most
Popular” blog post plug is a great way to build internal linking.

Security – Use your HTACCESS file to add more security.

David Wallace – Co-Founder at SearchRank – WordPress Plugins

Title Tags & META Tags – Allin One SEO Pack: automatically creates META description tags. Creates meta tags from the excerpts section. This plugin will solve the duplicate content issues.

Social Bookmarking – ShareThis: Great tool for social bookmarking and allowing people to email your content. This is highly customizable and you can choose which networks to include.

Twitter – Twitter Tools: automatically broadcasts content to your Twitter account. Easily sharable content on different Twitter accounts.

Mobile – WordPress Mobile Edition: really clean content rewriter for mobile phones.

Comments – By default WP adds a No-Follow, but it makes sense to add a “Do Follow” plugin because it creates a community. The plugin SubscribeToComments is a great tool to entice people to come back to your website. Comment Spam Protection plugins are excellent in cutting down blog spam – the “Math Sum” plugins work well!

Sitemaps – Sitemap Generator Plugin for WordPress: Categoy page excluding and multiple page level functionality, comment counts, and permalinks tools. Google XML Sitemap Generator for WordPress: Great plugin to ping google with new pages, and calculates priority, then pings the different search engines.

Slugs – SEO Slugs: Removes “stop words” such as “a” or “the” – this plugin gives you a great keyword rich URL.

Additional Plugins – Avatars, Category Order, Meta Robots.

Rick Turoczy – Silicon Florist – Barebones SEO for WordPress

Get involved with a “Word Camp” in your local area to learn about some of the new WordPress tools and offerings. Dont just think about WordPress as a blogging platform, start to think about it as a Content Management System (CMS) – your site can have the benefit for the WordPress optimization.

Q& A –

Why should I block my Archive Categories?

David: If your category pages show pages in entirety, then you would need to block category pages. If you use Excepts as blog posts on the category pages, then you have nothing to worry about.

Tactics that bring more spam to your website – what about Akismet?

David: I don’t use Akismet because it doesn’t catch most of the spam. Adding the Math Captcha will take care of the problem.

Changing your “Submit” to javascript will defeat most comment spam bots.

How can you use all of the plugins without slowing down your blog?

David: Using plugins that are essential to your blog will keep things cleaned up, don’t over do it.

Rick: From a client perspective, reduce “plugin bloat” by keeping administrative rights to yourself so that plugins don’t overtake your blog.

For the SEO Pluin – how do you choose keywords?

David: Adding excerpts will do fine and accomplish what you’re looking to do.

For the ShareThis Plugin – is that more effective than targeting specific sites?

Josh – It depends on your content, if digg is your community, then a digg button should be placed.

Using WordPress as a CMS – when should you move into a real CMS?

Rick – if you begin to string several solutions together – move to something like Drupal or Expression Engine.
Scott Fish is the Director of SEO at EngineWorks, located in Portland, Oregon.

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Inside Google Webmaster tools there was apparently a recent addition back in February but I just noticed, and it’s really pretty slick.

I saw a new menu item called gadgets at the bottom left. It took a total of maybe 90 seconds to get my entire Google Webmaster tools account to be its own tab in my Igoogle page.

First I clicked on the menu item at the bottom left called Gadgets, and that quickly moved on to the next screen, where I was shown a choice of gadgets to add.

For the purposes of this demonstration I just selected all of them. As soon as I added to my homepage, I had a new tab and I can instantly change domains for any one in my account.

No more need to log in to Google Webmaster tools to see quick information.

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