In a recent post on the Google Webmasters Blog Susan Moskwa, reminds us that PageRank is not a relevant performance indicator, and hasn’t been so for some time. Ms. Moskwa goes on to state that though Google has made this point clear on multiple occasions, webmasters and SEO “experts” continue to use PageRank as a means to judge the success of their site.

Back in the pre-millennium days of search, the PageRank algorithm set Google apart from the rest of the pack by introducing the idea of “popularity” into search results. Borrowing from the theory of citations in the world of academia, Page and Bren saw inbound links as being indicative of a site’s importance and authority on a particular topic.  In essence each link to a page counted as a vote of confidence on that pages authority and relevance for a particular keyword.

When looking to understand SEO it is important to keep in mind that sites are judged by search engines based on two overarching criteria: Is the site relevant to the search term & is the site popularly cites (linked to). Ms. Moskwa states that too often webmasters and peddlers of search, get locked into focusing on PageRank as “it’s easy to graph your PageRank over time…not so with relevance.” Often we as online marketers can get distracted tracking one metric which can lead to missing out on what is SEO is really about: Appearing in front of searchers at the moment they are looking to engage with your offering.

Its important to remember that there is no one metric that is going to tell you how your website is performing. Ms. Moskwa suggests using Clickthrough Rate, Bounce Rate or Conversion Rate to help determine the health of your website. Remeber every website is different, and each one will have various metrics, segments, and goals data that act as key performance indicators. Work with the your analyst, webmaster, consultant and the various stakeholders in your company to come up  with a some benchmarks to help measure the success of your SEO, Conversion and various online endeavors. Remember you can’t improve what you fail to measure, so take some time and find what the keys to your online success are.

Recently SearchEngine Land came up with an awesome illustration for the factors that go into obtaining a competitive search ranking in the form of a periodic table.

The table is broken into four main components:

1. On The Page Ranking Factors: That which we can control: Content, HTML,  & Architecture
2. Off The Page Ranking Factors: Links, Social, Trust, Personalization
3. Violations: Tactics that will get you on Google’s bad side
4. Blocking: Having searchers block your site from their search results.

For a full look at the table and all of the wonderful insights it provides head on over to Search Engine Land to check out the full article: The Periodic Table Of SEO Ranking Factors

When doing a SEO Audit one of the first things I check is whether or not a canonical redirect is in place. What this means is I look to see if the website I’m examining has been configured to display as a “www” or “non-www” web address, with the other one redirecting traffic to the chosen destination. The major search engines are usually able to tell that these different addresses are supposed to the same site but this insight isn’t always guaranteed.

If the search engines fail to recognize the sites as being one in the same, you could be looking at some major consequences. For instance the search engines could penalize you for duplicate content (see Google’s Panda) which could result in your site dropping in the search results, or possibly dropping out of the search rankings all together.

Another issue that affects your site, from an SEO perspective, is diffusion of link equity. In many cases people linking to your site will arbitrarily choose the address they link to, which results in both the “www” and the “non-www” addresses attracting inbound links.  The result is both addresses end up competing against each other for position in the search results. By using the canonical redirect the combined benefit of all the inbound links being directed at one address, will result in the single site obtaining a more competitive ranking.

In the world of SEO there are a number of factors that are within our scope of influence and even more that fall out of our control  (see the “Game Theory” known as Off-Site SEO), so it is imperative that we take advantage of the things we can control, ie On-Site optimization, and use them to our advantage.

If you feel that your site is in need of a SEO tune up, contact us and we will start you off with our free “15Min SEO Audit”

Lately I’ve been doing a number of consultations for the wondrous Online Marketing medium of Search Engine Optimization. Part of these consultations involve educating prospective clients of the importance of properly building link equity. One problem, no one outside of a the Cult o’ SEO knows what the heck “link equity” is. Sooo here’s a lil’ blog post should come in handy.

Link equity is the value a particular link from a page (from an external website) provides your site or the value that is transferred through said link. In other words, link equity is the value inbound links provide from a particular URL or are passed through a link. Not all links are created equal.

100 links from irrelevant and less than stellar websites may not provide as much SEO oomph as 10 links from targeted, authoritative and supper-duper-awesome websites. For any online marketer time is the most valuable of commodities so spend your time building high quality links that will pass the most link equity.

Building a stable of quality links requires significant investment and as with any investment, building link equity will require an strong initial investment (time, financial, etc). That being said; as with any smartly executed investment, properly developed links will provide you with some brilliant long term dividends and a rise in your link portfolio’s equity.

How to Build Equity:

• Concentrate on building high quality links (Links from Targeted and Authoritative Websites)
• Spend your resources wisely, building valuable links requires a real investment (Shaking hands and kissing babies – black hatters will need deep pockets)

Results

• Competitive SERP Rankings
• Increase in Qualified Traffic

Today, businesses don’t build websites because their marketing maven said so, or because the Johnny-Competition has one. No in the competitive environment of the 21st Century, small businesses and multi-nationals alike, leverage their online properties to achieve both direct and indirect business objectives. But the unfortunate truth is too few of  these companies are able to assess whether or not their web sites are truly performing against these objectives.

That’s where Web Analytics comes in play. Now, the word ‘analytics’ conjure up visions of data-monkeys measuring, collecting and spew forth incomprehensible reports, but the truth be told the role of Web Analytics, or  “Web Analytics 2.0″, is to understand and optimize web usage, to help your business realize those all important objectives: Increase Revenue. Reduce Costs. Improve Customer Satisfaction.

This ain’t your Grandpa’s Media Measurement…
When we compare our historical ability to measure the success of traditional media marketing’s various forms versus the web it’s like comparing the telegraph to the mobile phone. No more Nielsen Families , Reader Service Cards and ABC Reports, internet marketing. and the use of web analytics, offers us endless opportunities to gain insight into how our  maketing effects our targeted audience…web analytics is so powerful it can even measure the impact of offline events or campaign can be measured, using the proper tools and strategies.

So you may thinking, “Great web analytics can reveal the inner secrets of our customers deepest desires, but how exactly can we use it to grow our business?” Well, lets take a gander at a few of the ways we go about turning data into insight:

• Listen: As those that read my post on Social Media Marketing know, your customers are talking and through the use of tools like Hubspot and Lithium you get to listen in on what people say and think about your brand and products.
• VOC:   Can’t figure out why no one is buying your fantabulous widget…why not ask them.  Online surveys, like iPerceptions 4Q, and other Voice Of Consumer (VOC) tools allow you to go beyond your quantitative measuring your customers actions and begin to understand their intentions. As you begin to look behind the curtain and understand your customers motivations the actionable insights you gain will blow you mind…
• Actionable Insight: Now to get a bit nerdy with it: Combing your qualitative and quantitative measurements,  you to begin understand who your customers are, what they want and how they want to interact with your company. Using this information you can formulate one heck of a killer strategy.
• Take Aim:   Through the insights you’ve obtained, you are now able to offer your customers what they want when they want it, how they want it.– no more guessing.
• Competitive Advantage:   In an era where the competition is just a click away – analytics tools like Compete, and SEOMoz, make it possible to keep tabs on the competition and measure your performance against the rest of your industry. You can’t be doin 60 on the autobahn and expect to come out ahead.

Aviansh Kaushik reminds us, that in the end web analytics is another tool in the online marketers utility belt, and as with all business tools it must contribute to at least one of the  3 main goals of any business:

• Increase revenues: By improving your visitors online experience and properly targeting your customers wants and needs, you should see an increase leads generated, products sold, subscriptions purchased, and conversions made, which should hopefully lead an increase revenues.
• Reduce costs: Actionable insights give you the power to prioritize your investments, stop  financial hemorrhaging and keep your company from allocating valuable resources and dollars into to areas with a low to negative ROI. For example: you can reduce your ad costs by  diagnosing an underperforming Australian print campaign and divert the funds to higher performing PPC campaign.
• Improve customer satisfaction: All of us hope that any interaction with our brand creates the warm fuzzies for our customers. In the online world we can use analytics to identify what works and what doesn’t cause our clients to celebrate our awesomeness, and than use that insight to streamline the buying experience, improve the customer experience, etc, etc, etc.

The true purpose of web analytics isn’t the collection of data, it’s about understanding and insight. Web analytics provides the opportunity to improve your whole business.  For a free consultation on how analytics can improve your business give us a shout.

Because all of us were wasting precious seconds of our life typing out words and phrases in the the Google machine, the Wizards of Mountain View decided to introduce us to search-before-you-type. That is, Google reads your mind and Google Instant seeks out the most likely search results, given what you have already typed.

For many sectors of the SEO world you could hear the Chicken Little refrain being screamed out, “Our Ranking are falling! Our Rankings are falling!” To all of my colleagues changing their shorts it’s important to remember the SEO has always been more about the “O” than the “SE.” For the past 6 years of my SEO career there has been one constant, you can’t control the search engines. So baring that in mind here are the ways I see Google Instant impacting the realm of SEO:

• There is a greater need for dedicated competitive analysis…
• The importance on staying above the fold has increased exponentially, as searchers are more likely to never navigate beyond the first page of the SERP.
• Keyword level targeting is going to be even more important
• Creating organic search projections is gonna be wicked difficult
• There is a greater need for engaging meta descriptions…gotta get the searchers attention.
• Rankings are going to fluctuate a whole hell of a lot more,  due to improved geo-targeting and personalization.
• Paid search impressions are gonna go way up and Adwords tools data is gonna be far less reliable

Of course we are only 9 days into the Instant search era, and as things continue to evolve us SEO types will gain a better understanding  of how to Optimize for instant search and in the end those able to adapt will not survive but thrive.

If your business has an online marketing strategy, the chances are you have been batting around the idea of incorporating social media to help engage your audience. In the era of Social Business participation has got to be a priority for modern businesses looking to completely leverage their online properties.

The ’social media’ term is thrown about quite a bit but where should a motivated, business minded maven start? Below is a list, in no particular order, of the top 10 social networks for business…

1. Twitter: Twitter is a free social messaging utility for staying connected in real-time.
2. Facebook: Facebook is the social utility that connects people with friends and others in its 500 Million plus membership
3. Yammer: Twitter for business, allowing you to create a micro-blogging community just for you and your co-workers
4. Linkedin: LinkedIn allows you to discover industry connections and functions as a networking tool with your existing peers and colleagues.
5. Xing: Business networking for professionals.
6. Foursquare: Foursquare on your phone gives you and your friends new ways of exploring your city.
7. Google Profiles: Control how you appear in Google by creating a personal profile.
8. BizSugar: bizSugar is a small business community and social media site where small businesses, entrepreneurs and startups can discover, share and vote for business tips and news on the web.
9. Biznik: The local, independent business networking community where collaboration beats competition.

For the past few weeks I have been working with my favorite client to help him grow his Accounting practice and kick off and kick off a brand spanking new series of Quickbooks Consulting videos. I’ve created various SEO strategies to get the word out to the masses. I’ve tested several open source CMSs to give his new e-commerce site the flexibility to add and update videos on a whim. I’ve even provided tutorials on filming and editing his Quickbook videos in Camtasia. Turns out all I had to do to get Kenneth J. Haldeman, CPA to the top of the Accounting charts was shoot an ipad with a shotgun

Boom + ipad = marketing gold. I’m way to cerebral.

What is Social Media Marketing? In its driest and least nuanced form, Social Media Marketing is; The use of online platforms where people connect, to communicate & collaborate in order to promote a product or service in order to increase revenues, decrease costs, or improve customer satisfaction. Now if we’re to break down what Social Media is, we could use the 7 categories Jim Sterne uses in his awesome book “Social Media Metrics

How to Measure and Optimize Your Marketing Investment” :

1. Forums and Message Boards – Think of those old threaded discussions. Ask a question, get an answer. A lot of the IT world still uses this tool for customer service and tech problem solving: Mac Forums
2. Review and Opinion Sites – All those stars, comments, thumbs up and down we see all around the web were customers voice their opinion. Amazon uses this feature to help sell products, Yelp uses it to create a site that scares the crap out os SMBs.
3. Social Networks – Facebook the 500 Million member poster child springs to mind once the words Social and Network are uttered. Simple enough social networks are online platforms that allow people to collaborate, communicate, and virtually congregate online.
4. Blogging – if your reading this your engaged in blogging. Essentially a blog is a website designed to allow its owner to easily publish their opinion, prose, photos etc to the web. My favorite blogging platforms are WordPress, Blogger, and the offerings of SixApart.
5. Microblogging – The media and celebrity darling Twitter falls into this category, as does Yammer the Tweeter for the biz world. In 140 words or less we get to communicate inspiring quotes, informative anecdotes and keep all our followers up to date on our lunch choices.
6. Social Bookmarking – Most people that surf the web are familiar with bookmarking their favorite sites for easier access (hit Ctl + D if you haven’t already). Social Bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, and Delicious allow users to share what they think is hip, rad and worth “favoriting” with the world at large. So go ahead share Bd1i with all you friends.
7. Media Sharing - Sites like YouTube and Flickr are the Pièce de résistance of this category. Friends, family and strangers sharing vacation photos, cute feline videos and crazy cool ninja tricks.

So now that we’ve defined what social media is, how does one go about using it to get their online marketing groove on? For many,  the words marketing and advertising are often thought of as being one in the same. When I first got into the game people would always me ask if I made those “Slap the Belly” ads for MySpace….I wish! While I never got in on the Sumo slapping, I explained how companies use online platforms like Facebook and Twitter to engage their existing consumer-base  and potential consumers in an insightful dialogue, giving them opportunity to get a better idea of who they are and what they have to offer. Hopefully the conversations will allow for the creation of a trusting and transparent relationship that will result in customer retention, increase increase in sales and cleared understanding of the consumers’ needs.

When setting up a client with a Social Media Plan, we put their current efforts through a combine if sorts, going over their various profiles, seeing how high their content jumps, and getting their integrations “40 time”. We than come up with a strategy to properly facilitate their Profile &  Conversation Management; Blog Creation & Strategy; Content Development; and Cross Campaign Management, to help them consistently deliver their marketing message and reach their overarching marketing goals.

Ultimately social media marketing, as with all marketing, is about promoting a product or service to increase your companies revenues. Where social media differs from more traditional marketing is its use of online platforms like Facebook & Twitter, to connect with your customers and nurture those relationships. In the end we have to acknowledge that conversations taking place in the social-mediasphere is not something we can control or direct. In the end we are participants in a realm that belongs to the consumer. It’s like Pooh said; “Lots of people talk to animals, Not that many listen though. That’s the problem.” Social Media is about listening to your consumer,  participating in the conversation and finding actionable insights based on those conversations.

I’ve been exchanging emails with my Uncle Chuck this afternoon and somewhere in between philosophical and political diatribes, each of taking turns on the pulpit, the question came out as to what exactly I do. My answer to Chuck’s query, “I develop online marketing strategies that makes use of website builds, social media strategies,  web analytics and search engine optimization, ie whatever needs to be done to help my client reach their marketing goals.” They key to that sentence is the “whatever needs to be done” Since 2003 I’ve dabbled in virtually every aspect of the online marketing, from Dev & Design to BA and SEO, so that one day I could be the maestro conducting a virtual symphony of online awesomeness. Basically I wanted to be the Timothy Hutton character in the thrilling TNT drama, Leverage.

Now to a man like my uncle who is incredibly intelligent, an amazing artist and architect, and about as online savy as some one of his generation need be, my list of abilities must seem about as intelligble as the sanskrit tattooed across my arm. So to help educate my family, friends and the similarly uninitiated here is a quick list of what I do on a daily basis:

• Social Media
• Search Engine Optimization
• Web Analytics
• Reputation Management 
• Conversion Optimization

For those interested to learn how we weave all of these wonderful components into a holistic strategy that makes each item on your marketing wish list jump off the page and do a lil’ jig, drop me a line and I’d be happy to tell you all about it.

Sophisticated Bedouin

Back in 2006 I remember talking to a client about the trials and tribulations of blogging for business. As with most executives his most precious commodity and greatest blogging concern was time. Did his busy schedule and multitude of responsibilities preclude him from dedicating the time necessary to deliver a first rate blog? Truthfully he just couldn’t find the time to post more than once a month, so to make sure we got the most out the company’s blogging strategy, we developed a multi-user blogging system to disperse the “blogging-burden”.

Sabbatical Bedouin

Fast forward to 2010 and I found myself in a simliar conversation, but this time centered around Social Media. With the introduction of  Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, etc my new client began to see large chunks of her day being gobbled up by the multi-headed beast known as Social Media Marketing. So on top of her already daunting daily duties as the Marketing Director she began spending many a  morning updating the company’s various social media properties.

Out of her frustration this young woman reached out to Bedouin with one simple question,  ”How do we engage all of our Social Media Properties with out having to spend hours engaging each one, individually?”

Being a bit of a social media early-adopter nerd, I found myself sympathizing with my client’s position. Not to long ago I would often spend hours be-bopping around my various account; tweeting on Twitter, crawling my Facebook feed, connecting with LinkedIn contacts, etc, etc, etc. I knew there had to be a easier way so I set about finding an application that would allow me to: update my status boxes across the board  while taking in all the info my networks had to offer in one place. What I ended up with was a mashup of  Ping.fm & HootSuite.

Ping.fm is a simple and useful service that enables you to manage your status updates across 50+ social networks at once. As you become a citizen of more and more social media sites, updating all of them can be incredible time drain. Using ping.fm you are able to post one single update, on there platform, and the update is automatically sent to all of the social media sites you earmarked during the Ping.fm set up process.

The draw back to using a service like Ping.fm is you run the risk missing out on the emerging conversation that happens outside of the service. This is where the fantastic service HootSuite comes in. HootSuite, a social media dashboard, allows users to manage their Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Foursquare and Ping.fm accounts through a singular interface. The company bills itself as “The Professional Twitter Client” and from my mountain top view, I have to say it’s not only the best “Twitter Client” around but the best “Social Media Client”.

Multiple Network Views

Hootsuite allows you manage multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts, and with its integration of the Ping.fm API it allows you to stay on top of virtually every social media site you’d care to join. What’s even sweeter is you have the ability to grant access to multiple editors, to any of your existing accounts. This comes in handy when you have a corporate Twitter or Facebook Page account and would like to grant you members of marketing team posting privileges.Additionally HootSuite provides tracking information on your tweets, and multi-stream viewing of all your various networks.

Combing HootSuite and Ping.fm displaces a lot of the temporal concerns with Social Media Marketing and allows for consistent messaging across all of your social media networks. So take the sting out of keeping your network up to date and get signed up for Ping.fm and Hootsuite today. Of course once you get setup should you need any help with that ornery Social Media Marketing gives a shout, the Bedouin is back from sabbatical.

It was a balmy summer afternoon in Southwestern Colorado and I was having issues with my MacBook Pro. Evidently the original MacBook Pro’s battery has a tendency to swell up and literally split apart at the seams, which apple claims to be normal wear ‘n’ tear. Being that I live in Telluride, CO and the closest Mac Store was 6.5 hours & 364 miles away I decided to head down to a third party reseller in Durango, Connecting Point.

Seeing how’d it been almost a decade since I’d driven these mountain roads, I had forgotten that the 60 miles equals 60 minutes I’d gotten used to in the Midwest didn’t apply here in the Southwest and your destination usually wasn’t a straight shot down a lovely four lane highway. So like Sandberg and Parnell I hit up Google Maps, Double True!, and Google Maps gave me my first lesson in mountain driving…never trust Google Maps.

Going over the directions on my phone things seemed simple enough; CO-145 to County Road D65 to CO 8 to the Million Dollar Highway. No problem, right? No, problems a plenty. Turns out County Road D65 is also known as Forrest Service Rd 630, or more commonly referred to as Ophir Pass. Ophir Pass has the reputation as being one of the “easiest” passes in the San Jaun but for a boy coming from the planes of Iowa I failed to see anything easy about it. Coming out of the town of Ophir thing start out at a rather gradual grad, winding through the forrest on a wide dirt road. At this point in the game I didn’t really think all that much about it, but as soon as I broke through the woods my nice wide dirt road turned to a frickin’ goat path.

Now I’m not an overly macho dude, I’m willing to back down from a road barely wide enough for my Nissan Murano, but there in lay the problem, the dang road wasn’t wide enough for me to turn around. So I continued to ascend the trail to it’s 11,789 foot summit. Crawling along on a trail made of talus, barely wide enough to keep me going and rocky bouldery in parts, I continued along cursing Larry and Sergei’s Map Quest knock off. What was supposed to be a simple trip to Durango, a mere 70 miles away, turned into three hours of white knuckled driving and more curse words uttered than a Bedouin should ever utter.

When it was all said and done I ascended the mountain, drove through a pass with snow drifts twice the size of my car, and crept down an unstable switch back, only to arrive in Durango 45 minutes after the computer store had closed.

On the way home I decided to take the easier route home, the Million Dollar Highway, where I olny had to deal with a series of steep grades and hairpin turns.

Here’s a great video of the Ophir Pass on YouTube:

Over the years I have had the opportunity to work with some amazing realtors, Ryan O’Leary and Theresa Gorraiz being my favorites, and I’ve always been amazed at their dedication to helping each buyer and seller meet what can often times be some rather lofty real estate goals. The key to their success is they never try to convince people that they have what theywant, instead they talk to their clients about theirneeds & help them fulfill those need

Another real estate agent that is killing it is Canuck, Ian Watt. Driving around the streets of Vancouver, Mr Watt dispenses nuggets of wisdom on the market, doles out advice to prospective buyers & sellers, and delivers his take on the real-estate business.

Leveraging the power of social media Mr. Watt is building a powerful personal brand and helping create a great template for the evolution of real-estate marketing

Ian Watt – Realtor of Luxury Vancouver Condos
http://bit.ly/drz7oU