Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Social Media Consultant

In case you’ve been living under a rock during 2009,  it was the year of Twitter. Twitter and “tweets” were all over the place. Many marketers were just trying to get their feet wet, while others jumped in wholeheartedly and even created national campaigns around it. At least until the next hot thing, it appears that Twitter is it for now. For many B2C, as well as B2B, marketers it was easy to setup a Twitter account and post a few things here and there, but after a few weeks or months they began to wonder:

• Am I reaching the right audience?
• How do I extend my audience?
• What are some quick ways, aside from giving away “the farm”, to grow my audience?

This post is specifically around those questions. Here are three quick ideas you can use to grow your Twitter following quickly and relevantly.

Media Publications
The first place to look is to existing trade publications who have migrated to Twitter. Over the last several years, traditional and offline media has really been taking it on the chin due to the rise of online. As a result, many of them have taken to social media and online venues as a way to stoke the fires of their online publications. Whether you are looking to reach teens and tweens (i.e. TigerBeat), yacht enthusiasts (i.e. Sailing Magazine) or professional contractors (i.e. Contractor Magazine), there are offline or newly created online publications on Twitter. All you have to do is click on their “Followers” link and presto, you have a captive audience for your products or services. If they are interested in what these publications have to say, they are probably also interested in what your company has to say. So what publications are important to your industry? Even if they don’t have a Twitter account setup, you might find people who are regularly readers, just talking about it too. See for yourself.

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As you may already know from my previous post, SES Chicago is rapidly approaching and the agenda has several very interesting sessions lined up. One of the sessions I’m particularly interested in is “Selling Search to the C-Suite”, which has been an issue in previous years. I think search has approached a point now though where it should seem obvious that companies should have some presence in search. However, even today, we still have clients we need to convince that search is the right venue for them. I had the chance to interview Russ Mann, Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, of Covario, who is part of the panel on Day 3 on the trials, tribulations, and some tips on how to sell search more effectively to those higher up the marketing food chain.

Perhaps as a result of the recession, online has taken off even faster than many expected, due to its lower costs and higher measurability. Do you feel like selling search to the C-suite is any easier now that online and specifically search is so much more widely used and accepted?

Selling search to the C-suite as a concept is most definitely easier.  We heard CEOs of Fortune 500 clients refer to needing “a Google strategy.”  No one debates the importance or the ROI of search.  The challenge now is to make search more strategic.  For many CEOs, CFOs and CMOs, if they have one “in-house search person” or if they believe “their agency is doing it,” then they are satisfied that they have checked the box.  The C-suite now needs to understand that search represents the purest voice of the customer in aggregate, and represents not just attitudinal behavior (what they say they’ll do)- it’s behavioral data (what they’ll actually do).  The problem is that too many search marketers are overly eager to expound on the fascinating details of SEM and SEO, while the C-level exec’s eyes glaze over.  C-level execs care about big picture, direction, business impact and “moving the needle.”  That’s the next wave of enterprise class search marketing.

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What makes a website inherently “findable” these days? Is it information architecture, web design principles, an understanding of search engines, usable interfaces, or a combination of all of these?

It’s a combination. Findability requires a holistic perspective that balances engineering, marketing, and design. I often invite web managers to ask the following three questions. Can people find your site? Can people find their way around your site? And, can people find your content and services despite your site? Success in all three areas is important and can’t be achieved without paying attention to the ways that code, content and structure work together to influence usability and findability.

Either using the items listed above, or adding your own, what is the most important aspect to think of when designing a website to ensure it is easy to use and understand?

Empathy for the user is the key to good design. Only by understanding user behavior and psychology within a particular context of use can we create products, services, and experiences that help users achieve goals, complete tasks, and find what they need. That’s why user research methods such as design ethnography and usability testing are so important. Of course, we must also know enough about the technology to see what’s possible. Often, it’s not enough to optimize for ease and efficiency. We must also strive for desirability and aim for innovation.

Do you feel like Flash, AJAX, and other highly visual, but non-text based interfaces, are making the web more or less usable or findable?

It depends. Great teams employ visual interfaces and rich interaction to create engaging user experiences without sacrificing usability and findability. Unfortunately, most teams aren’t great and quickly get in over their heads.

Are there any companies who you think really exemplify “findability” in the way they create online or offline experiences?

Other than Google, which is too obvious to mention, there’s no single company that comes to mind. What’s exciting right now is the proliferation of ideas and inventions across platforms and media. On the iPhone, for instance, there are some great niche applications like SitOrSquat (for finding public toilets when you’ve gotta go) and Nearest Tube (for finding the London Underground when you’re aboveground). Location-based services and augmented reality are particularly intriguing at the moment.

Where do you see search engines and other meta data engines in the next five years?

A key point we make in our new book, Search Patterns (available from O’Reilly Media in January 2010), is the need to think outside the box. We must continue to make incremental improvements (e.g., better interfaces and algorithms) while simultaneously pursuing radical innovation. This requires thinking more expansively about goals and strategy. Twitter and the Wikipedia were not conceived as search solutions, but as knowledge management innovations they have both transformed the search landscape. Often, the biggest changes emerge not from the center but from outside the category entirely. We all need to work on our peripheral vision.

If there’s one thing you hope people walk away with after listening to your keynote address at SES Chicago, what do you hope it will be?

I hope folks leave with a sense of urgency and enthusiasm. My goal is to inspire people to make search better.

Disclosure: I have not been financially compensated for this post, although I have received a free press pass to cover SES Chicago.

I’ve often used this blog as a knowledge repository for myself, as well as many of my colleagues. Providing lists of great sites, or tools I think are useful as a search or digital marketer. Below I’ve compiled 60 links which I think are relevant and useful to search marketers at any stage in their career – whether their just starting out or they’ve been doing this for years. I tried to make it a mix of both SEO and SEM/PPC sites, tools and analysts, but I think in the end it may have swayed more to the SEO side. Mostly as I think SEM is one of those things that people have all their own tools to do the analysis. I’d love to make this a working list, so please feel free to add additional tools, links, blogs, analysts or useful sites you think others may or may not know about. This is by no means all the sites out there, but I think it’s pretty representative.

Development / Browser Tools:
These are several of the tools I’ve used over the years to make sure my site is valid and indexable, as well as measuring optimization over time.

• HTML Validator
• CSS Validator
• Link Checker
• Robots.txt Generator
• SEOBook Firefox SEO Plug-in
• SEOBook Rank Checker
• SEOQuake
• MozRank Checker
• Header Checker
• Site Link Checker
• SEO Tools
• Dave Naylor’s Search Tools
• Yahoo Link Checker

Keyword Research Tools:
Below is a list of keyword research tools I have used in the past or have heard anecdotally from others that these are viable tools. In the end, it the tools you have the most confidence in that will give you the best results.
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So the other day, I was having a meeting with a client and there happened to be another agency in the room. We began talking about paid search strategies in terms of whether to start with broad match keywords or exact match or a mix of the two. I can come up with reasoning for both, but it just depends on the situation.

When is it best to start with broad match?
I would equate broad match as the sledgehammer of keyword matching tools. It’ll definitely get the job done, but you might also bring in lots of impressions which aren’t necessarily applicable. Now, if you are new to paid search or just starting off a paid search campaign, this is a good place to start. If you have the budget flexibility, it might be good to just let a broad match campaign run for a short time frame, depending on volume, and then review the campaign analytics to see which words to  add to your negative keyword list. So let’s say you have a campaign running for a local car wash, you might advertise against:

• car wash
• car washes
• car washing

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A few days ago, I received my invitation to Google Voice.  As is my standard operating procedure with new technology like this, I signed up first and figured out a business application after a few days. Well, I’ve had some time to think about this and I’ve compiled 5 ways of how you can use Google Voice for your own business.

Setup an “office” in another city
So when I moved to Chicago, I didn’t change my cell phone number, as most people already knew what it was and I didn’t want to go through the hassle of updating it and possibly losing people in the process. As a result, I still have a (586) Detroit area code for my cell phone number. With the advent of Google voice, now all of a sudden, I have a local number to give people, without having to change over my cell phone. If I wanted to, I could use this for marketing purposes and “setup shop” in cities where I don’t necessarily have a business office yet. If you are a small business, or a larger business trying to setup shop in a new market and want local credibility – why not check out Google Voice? It allows you to get a local number, but still maintain your homebase of operations.

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Over the last few years, I’ve written extensively on how you should optimize your website. Changing page titles, alternate keyword research methodologies, redirecting domains, and eliminating duplicate content are just a few. But what happens when you get  a little out of control and start over optimizing your site.  How do you know when you’re doing too much SEO? Below I’ve included 5 tips to help you know when to say when.

Everyone should see the same content
One of the popular techniques that used to be used to trick search engines into giving undo ranking is called Content Cloaking. Content cloaking allows for you to detect the user agent arriving at the site (browser, search engine spider, etc.) and display one version of content for one user and a different version for another user. For example, I may present a page laden with keywords to the search engine, and a page with a few images to the user, thereby “tricking” the search engine into thinking I have much more content than I actually do. Of course, this is an ill-advised tactic and Google (and others) specifically outline that this is not allowed. Frankly, it seems like more work than it’s actually worth.

Now, you can present the content differently, based on user agent, but it still has to be nearly the same content. An example of this could be a visually intensive website that when a user visits via the browser they are presented with all the bells and whistles, but when they arrive via mobile phone, you can strip out excess images, flash elements, etc. thus tailoring the experience to the platform, but not for undo search ranking.

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Microsoft and Yahoo have both been doing their darnedest lately to try and take back some of the market share that Google has earned for itself these days. Although marketers are not always the ultimate decision makers when it comes to which platform to advertise against, it all goes into a decision funnel that influences clients and eventually search engine users. Let me expound.

So I have a client who is looking to start a search campaign. They are looking for a recommendation on which engine(s) to use, but don’t really have a preference. Being media agnostic, I’ll recommend the best engines for their campaign objectives. However, I won’t necessarily like it if the mix contains Yahoo or Microsoft (Bing). To me, those are added overhead, added frustration, and added management time I don’t need. If the client gives me a window of opportunity, I’m going to take the path of least resistance and here’s where Yahoo and Bing are missing out on a lot of ad dollars. In a nutshell, here are 5 reasons why marketers avoid Yahoo and Bing and flock to Google when they have the opportunity.

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[Note: You'll get a lot more out of this article if you already have experience with Radian6. If not, you'll still probably get some insights.]

If you’re a search marketer, you might be getting bored these days. It seems like it’s all social media this and Twitter that. What happened to search marketing? When did we get all dusty? We’re like the old popular kid, when a new popular kid comes to town. Well fear no more, now you too can jump into the social media maelstrom. Have you thought about using social media to do your keyword research? Here me out for a second.

In the past, many search marketers have relied on Google’s Keyword suggestion tool, Keyword Discovery, Keyword Spy, Google Trends and Suggest, Omniture, and other keyword suggestion tools to come up with their search term lists. So those tools are pretty well tested and I have a feeling that many search agencies are starting to get a little bored. Well, what if we took the power of social media and constantly updating conversations and applied that to our search keywords. Here are some ideas:

Media Placement Keyword Terms
So for instance, you use a tool such as Google Blog Search, BlogCatalog, or Radian6 to monitor keywords such as “ice cream parlor” or “strawberry ice cream” and you find out that many of the conversations happening online are at sites like “Joe’s Ice Cream Blog”. Well, you can figure out how people are reaching that site using Compete.com data or just guessing (”joe’s ice cream blog”, “joe’s ice cream”,  “joe’s blog about ice cream”, etc.) and target keywords related to that, essentially snatching up users before they even reach Joe’s Ice Cream Blog.

Conversation Clouds and Related Terms
One of the cool features of Radian6 is that they provide a conversation or tag cloud associated with the keyword terms you are researching.Try putting in non-branded keywords and see how people are talking about those topics online. For example, we’ll use “strawberry ice cream” again. If people are talking about chocolate ice cream or Edy’s everytime “strawberry ice cream” is mentioned, maybe you should consider going after those terms as well. The conversation cloud will also clue you into frequency of those terms as well based on the size and color.

Influencer Link Building
Any good search program has some sort of link optimization or link building component to it and unless you have proprietary tools in house, identifying the right places to obtain links from can be difficult. Why not use Radian6’s influencer widget to determine who is the most influential in these spaces? By using traffic levels and “on topic posts” you can determine how relevant their site and content is, at least for the last 30 days. And as we’ve seen, Google loves blogs these days.

So do you use Radian6 at your agency currently? Do you also have a search marketing department? Maybe you should have a little pow wow and see if you can use social media as part of your search marketing mix.