Archive for category Media
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Posted by James in Internet Marketing, Media, Search Engine Optimisation, Thoughts on June 28, 2011
HOW TO: Unify Your SEO & SEM Strategies
Matt Lawson is the vice president of marketing at Marin Software, the largest paid search management provider.
For years, advertisers have run their search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) programs separately. The SEM team would focus on bidding, campaign analytics and the complex science of managing millions of keyword buys to drive maximum conversion. The SEO team lived in a world of internal and external linking, and optimizing pages to maximize reach and relevance in organic search engine results.
But today, more marketers are realizing SEM and SEO are not separate disciplines. Instead, they are two sides of the same coin — complementary programs that, when managed correctly, can benefit each other to increase conversion rates and share of voice. Insights gained when buying pay per click (PPC) keyword ads can positively impact SEO creative initiatives, while natural search queries and clickpath data can, and should, influence keyword bidding.
But how do you more closely integrate the “bid kids” with the “white hats”? How can SEM and SEO teams work together to improve results on their respective programs, increase return on search marketing investment and drive a lasting lift in conversion across the board?
Here are three practical steps every marketer can take to begin this integration.
1. Identify Overlap
The first step in combining SEO and SEM programs is to identify where the programs overlap, where they don’t and where they should. Paid search advertising programs cannot be successful without top-ranking natural search results and vice versa, so you need to use your search management platform or web analytics tools to identify which keywords are performing well on both sides of the table, and see which ones are “lone wolves” driving only PPC or organic search traffic.
When SEO and SEM teams are operating independently, there are often high-volume keyword terms that drive traffic from only one of the two search channels, either paid search or natural search. When you find these terms, you can better optimize them. For example, if you have a term for which traffic is only driven through paid search clicks, there is opportunity to focus SEO efforts on obtaining organic ranking on these terms. Conversely, if your organization is generating revenue from organic search terms that don’t match any of the keywords in your paid search program, there is probably some incremental revenue you can capture with paid keyword expansion.
It would be impossible to compare organic and paid search coverage on each of the millions of search terms that are driving traffic to your site with even the best analytics tools. As with all analysis on large data sets, it is important to take a management-by-exception approach. Start by identifying the high-volume and top-converting search queries in each channel. Once you have filtered to find the most impactful search queries, the next step is to evaluate how they perform.
2. Measure the Paid Click Percentage
Measuring the click-share of each channel is a better way to find coverage holes and overlap than trying to compare the number of impressions, clicks and conversions that each channel is driving. Depending on the type of tracking system you use, there are a variety of ways to get this metric. To keep it generic: Match raw query search terms across paid and organic results, sum the total clicks, then calculate the paid clicks as a percentage of that total.
This single metric, called “Paid Click Percentage,” makes it easy for advertisers to quickly identify holes in either paid or organic search coverage. For example, you can look at paid click percentages greater than 75% to quickly identify key revenue-driving terms for your paid search program that are receiving fewer clicks from organic search results. Because searchers are more inclined to click on organic results instead of ads, you know that a term with zero organic clicks must not be resulting in first-page organic results.
Sorting these terms by paid search revenue impact will give the organic search team a ranked list of queries (and landing pages) to optimize against, allowing them to more efficiently prioritize SEO projects.
After you address this, you can use the same report to identify keywords that should be added or refined in your paid search campaigns.
3. Refine, Review, Repeat
When paid and organic search channels work together, marketers get maximum revenue from both programs. Identifying holes in paid and organic search campaigns using the method described above should help improve overall performance, but remember: It is not a one-time project.
Websites and advertising programs are continually changing. This analysis should be done on a regular basis. If your organization is large enough to have disparate paid and organic search teams, set up a regular meeting between both teams to ensure your SEM and SEO programs are friends, not distant relations.
Posterousising Your Social Media Updates | Posterous
Posted by James in Hints and Tips, Internet Marketing, Media, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media Marketing on March 4, 2011
I have just read a great post from Jim Lodico on Posterous.
It’s reproduced in full below, together with his contact details. Enjoy!
“In the world of social media, it’s easy to become overwhelmed in a sea of profiles and status updates. With so many services and so little time, wouldn’t it be nice if posting to your social media profiles was as simple as sending an email? With Posterous, it is.
Posterous allows you to post to 20 or so social media platforms via email. Posting to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, even YouTube and Picasa is as simple as sending an email. And we’re not talking simple text-based posts either.
With Posterous, you can create full-screen photo galleries, groups for sharing and collaborating or just simply pass on an article you read on the Internet all by sending an email. Add a smartphone and you’ve got a powerful way to create and share content on the road.
At its core, Posterous is a blogging platform similar to Tumblr. You can get a dedicated URL that provides a hub for your content, customize the look and feel of your Posterous site and add static content such as an “About Me” page. What separates Posterous is its ease of use and ability to distribute to a number of social media channels all at once.
Getting started on Posterous is about as easy as it can get. You don’t even need to open an account. Just send an email to post@posterous.com and you’ve got your first blog post. Posterous recognizes your email address and creates a dedicated blog for all content sent from that email address. The subject line of your email becomes the header or title of the post and the content of the email becomes the actual blog post. Any attached photos are automatically turned into a photo gallery and inserted into your post.
Posterous will send you an email when your blog post goes live (usually within a minute) with a link to view the post. When I sent a test post, it even pulled the name out of my signature (or email, not sure which) and named my newly created blog “Jim’s Posterous.”
posterous email reply
After sending your first blog post, you’ll receive an email from Posterous with links to your new account.
Be careful with email signatures though, as you may not want to post your phone number or other information and they can make a blog post look awkward. Adding “#end” to your email will prevent Posterous from posting anything that follows the “#end” tag.
If you can send an email, you can write a blog. Time spent tinkering and setting up your website is kept to a minimum. To unleash the true power of Posterous, however, you’ll need to open an account. When you visit your first post, you’ll be provided options to register an account.
Autoposting
Autoposting to multiple accounts is where Posterous really starts to shine. Say, for example, that you’re at a conference and want to post an idea to your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts along with a Facebook update and a post on your WordPress blog.
Normally, in order to do that, you’d need to individually open each account and create a post or update for each account. With Posterous, all you need to do is send an email to post@posterous.com. Posterous formats your email and distributes it throughout your social media accounts.
posterous facebook post
Posterous can post directly to any of a number of social media platforms.
But let’s say that you don’t want the post to go out to all of your social media channels. Say you just want to post a photo from your mobile phone to your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Change the email address to read twitter+facebook@posterous.com and Posterous sends the post only to the social media platforms specified.
Posterous can also turn any smartphone into a mobile blogging platform. The iPhone app includes settings for autoposting, adding photos and managing multiple Posterous accounts.
I’m a dedicated WordPress user and have no plans to switch everything over to Posterous. However, there are times when I’m on the road and want to post a quick blog update. In order to do this, I need to boot up the laptop, upload any pictures, find a WiFi connection, then write and publish the post. With Posterous and a smartphone, all I need to do is write the post in an email, attach photos or video and send it off.
Using the autoposting features, Posterous will automatically format and post my email directly to my WordPress blog, send a Tweet and update my Facebook and LinkedIn status. Although it’s possible to post to WordPress via email, I have found it somewhat clunky and it requires HTML coding to get it right.
Podcasting is just as easy. Attach an MP3 file to your email and Posterous generates an RSS feed for your podcast. Listeners can then subscribe to your podcast feed through iTunes or other subscription methods.
Distributing Content
Pushing your blog content throughout your social networks can be a time-consuming task. With the Posterous bookmarklet, it can be done in one step. After writing a post, click on the bookmarklet (which resides in your browser’s toolbar), choose from the selected excerpts or write your own and post it to your Posterous page. From there, autopost will push the content throughout your social media networks.
In order to avoid concerns with duplicate content, be sure to include just an excerpt or original summary. Even better, embed a link back to your post wrapped around the appropriate keyword for a backlink to your site.
Autopost can be your universal bookmarklet for Facebook, Twitter and your other blogs, without ever leaving the page you’re already on.
Although my 80-year-old uncle was on Facebook before me, not everyone is as tech savvy. However, if you can send an email, you can join a Posterous group (see image below) sharing blog posts, photos, video and audio files (see example below). Rich media are embedded directly into the email as opposed to as separate attachments.
Again, starting and managing a group can be done entirely through email. Send an email to newgroup@posterous.com with the group name in the subject line and email addresses of group members as the email content. In a few moments, you’ll receive an email with a link to finish the registration. Give the group a description, set access privileges and your group is up and running.
Because you don’t need a Posterous account to participate, there’s no waiting on fellow members to open an account or learn a new platform. Group members can post or reply to the group entirely through email.
posterous groups
Checking in on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn for messages can quickly become a distracting endeavor. One way to avoid the distractions is to set the social media profiles to notify you via email when you receive a direct message or post to your profile.
Add Posterous and you’ve got the ability to fully manage your social media network via email. Refine it even further by creating an email address just for your social media accounts. Limit yourself to only opening the email a couple of times a day and you’ve suddenly got a handle on all those social media profiles.
posterous autopost
You can email to specific service types on your account. Do you want to update your Twitter, but not your Facebook? You can do that.”
About the Author, Jim Lodico (http://www.jalcommunication.com/)
Jim Lodico is a copywriter and marketing consultant specializing in creating powerful content and teaching businesses how to use blogs. You can follow him on Twitter @jlcommunication.
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