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

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.

I’ve been seeing more and more local businesses advertising in their windows lately to “Follow us on Twitter” or “Check us out on Yelp” and every time I do, it makes me smile. It’s hard to be a local business owner. In a large market like Chicago, it takes something really unique to stand out amongst all the other businesses. Whether you have a dog walking business, sports apparel store, or a Mexican restaurant, there’s always somebody else who can undercut your costs, offer a wider variety of products, or just make more noise than you.

But online reviews and social media allow a new kind of intimacy never before had when it comes to local businesses. Yelp, Twitter, Facebook, and even FYIndout are all empowering local business owners and their customers to raise their digital hands and say “This place is the best!” (or worst) It also allows your customer service and staff to shine through, even if customers have never visited your business. Here are a few ideas for using social media for your local business, regardless of whether you are a social media ace or just dipping your toe in the water.

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Recently, I’ve been asked to help out a few friends do some PR on the side. Just some basic stuff, but it amazes me how much PR professionals could benefit from just a little search marketing training. Hence, I’ve put together 5 things every PR professional should know in order to better serve their clients, as well as get them a little more search savvy.

1. Use “quotes” or exact phrasing in your queries
   Now this one is pretty basic and I think most PR professionals already know this one.  If you’re trying to find where your press release was quoted, listed, or mentioned, you need to use quotes around your phrase. So if your press release is “Tommy won the big race at Sunday’s fair”, then you would use that phrase exactly, as I’ve shown here.
2. Use the “link:” syntax in your queries.
   Now most search engines support this syntax, however, I’ve found Yahoo to always have the best results for this. The “link:” syntax tells you what sites are linking to your press release. I think this syntax is actually more important than the one above, as it will show you all sites that are linking to your press release, regardless of whether they quote your press release, reuse part of the content, or just put in a random link. In any case, it shows you which sites have “staying power” and which ones are just fly-by-night press release zombies who simply regurgitate whatever the PR wires give them. You can learn more about the “link:” and see an example here.

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