SEO Archives - Page 3 of 4

August 24, 2009 By splatter Leave a Comment

Video marketing. Not so different than article marketing.

master_masthead

Article marketing involves writing informative articles that engage and inform your target audience, then distributing them out to the world over multiple media outlets including both print and online publishing. Online publishing alone offers a whole slew of article directories. Some of the top article directories are ezinearticles, Buzzle, and The Phantom Writers, but there are literally hundreds more. Getting your articles out to as many media outlets as possible means the chances of your articles being read are more likely and the chances of track backs to your site are also more likely.

So what do you do when you want to distribute a video? Well, there’s YouTube of course. But to get the most bang for your buck, you have lots of other options at your disposal. If you want to enhance Search Engine Optimization for your site or blog, consider more than just Youtube. Below is a list of video to use the next time you want to distribute your next videos online.

1. Blip.tv
In a recent blog post I discuss how blip.tv offers distribution across multiple channels, including TiVo. You’ll find a lot of indie-type entertainment and videos on this site and they like videos that come in a series bundle. So if you have a one-off, this may not be the best route to go.

2. Flikr
Everyone knows Flickr is a great way to share your photos with the people that matter to you. But did you know that you can do the same with videos? For more on Flckr, take the Flickr tour .

3. Hulu

I have posted about Hulu before. Hulu is well-known for professionally filmed content or content that already has a following. However, Hulu also caters to the little guy by offering widgets and player embeds. For more onÂ different Hulu distribution options, click here.

4. Photobucket
Photobucket is similar to Flickr. You can share both videos and photos here. What I like about Photobucket is you can search videos by most popular, newest, most viewed and most commented. The “Most popular right now” functionality keeps me coming back for more.

5. Trueveo
Truveo is one of the largest video search distribution networks, reaching roughly over 40 million unique visitors a month. If your video is already on the Internet, you can submit it via an RSS feed. If your video isn’t already on the Internet, you can upload it via AOL Video. Either way, Trueveo is one monster of a video portal.
6. Viddler
Viddler is both for the novice and for the savvy video marketer. Viddler offers powerful integration if you want to brand your video with your company voice. For example, you can add your logo to their player, change the player’s color to fit your company’s color scheme, and even have the player link back to your website when it’s embedded somewhere else on the web. You can also “time tag” Â Â your videos with comments from other viewers.

7. Yahoo! Video
Y! Video offers both professional entertainment alongside user-created content. The cool thing about this is you get to share the stage with Television shows, movie clips, news segments and more. Pretty cool.

Remember, distribution is key if you plan on implementing a Brandcasting campaign. More than one video outlet is a good idea if you really want to get the word out on your video.

August 12, 2009 By splatter Leave a Comment

Brandcasting. Launch your brand into the blogosphere. (Part 3 of 7).

One of the most effective ways to spread content about your brand on the Internet is to write a blog.Â Blogging can be a great way to distribute information and good content about your industry. Often times a blog is a good way to set a tone for a brand and allows readers to interact with a real human being within the company. Blogging is a good format to write relevant blog entries that are timely and/or time sensitive. You can easily set up a blog for free. Sites like WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, LiveJournal are among the most popular services that can help you get started. There are others to choose from, so do your own research to find one that’s best for you.

Think of your blog like a daily newspaper. Daily newspapers rely on breaking news and rich/relevant content to attract a growing audience. This is the same strategy you should keep in mind when writing a blog. The idea here is to attract readers who want to check in on a daily basis because your blog is relevant to them, their industry or their likes and dislikes. This can be a time consuming, yet rewarding proposition. If you don’t have the time to write daily entries, you may want to hire a writer who is knowledgeable in your field and employ them to write blog entries that are on topic for you. Or, you may want to consider having a stable of writers, much like a newspaper, who can come at a certain subject from various angles. Successful blogs like the Huffington PostÂ employ this kind of strategy and are able to offer rich content by multiple sources and differing points of view.

The next thing you want to keep in mind is that your loyal readers may want to have an interactive experience with your blog. Think of the Op Ed section of a newspaper. Newspapers will often print opinions of readers in order to give them a voice, and also to get feedback from their readership. You can do this by allowing your readers to comment on your blog entries and to post these comments on your blog. Sometimes readers may post irrelevant comments to your blog. In this case you may choose not to publish comments or simply delete them. The beauty of a blog is that you have total control of the content.

Once you have gotten your feet wet, you may want to consider commenting on other blogs that relate to the subject matter on your blog. This may help you build strong relationships with other experts in your field and will also help build a community of bloggers and readers who are passionate about your industry. It’s often a good idea to offer up intelligent comments to other blogs and hope that they reciprocate on your blog. Linking back to other bloggers and having them link back to you can also help your ranking as search engines will deem your content relevant, thus ranking you higher on search lists.

August 11, 2009 By splatter 1 Comment

Brandcasting. Build a strong and SEO-friendly site. (Part 2 of 7)

Having a branded website is the first step for getting online visibility. Think of your website as the foundation of a house or a base camp. Every element of your Brandcasting campaign will link back to your branded website.Â Your website is an extension to your brand, so make sure you build it right the first time.

When building a website, consider having three experts on hand:

1) An SEO expert. While employing an SEO expert can be expensive, it really is the foundation of a good Brandcasting strategy and is worth the cost. But do your homework first. There are some SEO solutions that promise you way more than they can deliver. If you want to know what to avoid when choosing an SEO expert, click here.

2)Â A solid programmer who understands SEO and SEM. I can’t tell you how many times clients come to us with websites with broken links, absent meta tags or are built entirely in flash and are literally un-findable by search engines. Clients then proceed to tell us that they hired a professional designer. Some coders are not aware of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM). If ever there’s a time to hire the experts, now would be it.

3) A knowledgeable designer who builds sites for a living. Make sure you choose a designer who has a working knowledge of what good design means for both a human and a web crawling bot. For example, you may want to make sure your content is text instead of images to get the best optimization for your site. That happens on the design level and a good User Interface (UI) designer will know that. If you want to go it alone on the designing of your site, solutions like Lynda.com offer how-to videos that can be an affordable, albeit a time consuming option. However, I would not suggest taking on programming or SEO work yourself if you have no background or knowledge of either field.

Here are some things to keep in mind when building your main site.

“¢ Make sure your site is well designed, easy to navigate and is structurally sound. This is where a good coder and designer can pay dividends in the future. Keep in mind that it’s not enough to look good to the human eye. Your website must be sexy to a web crawler too. For example, it’s very important to make sure all your links work. If they don’t, web crawlers may stop at a broken link and may never see all the great content you have past that one link. Not sexy. Another thing you may want to consider doing is to have a site map that lays your entire site out in simple HTML code. Sexy, sexy.

“¢ Update content on your website often. The more often you have new content on your site, the more often bots will crawl it thus increasing your website’s visibility and rankings on search engines. If your content is refreshed daily, web crawling bots will visit your site more often. Placing articles or daily blog posts on your site are some of the most common ways to offer up daily content.

“¢ Have a keyword strategy. Having good keywords can make or break an online branding campaign. Having keywords built right into your URL can mean added optimization. For example, if one of your top keywords is “widgets” , it might not be a bad idea to name your site “widgetsforless.com” or some URL with the keyword worked into it. Again, you can see how having a strategy upfront can have implications for the life of your brand in the long run, so it’s always a good idea to get an SEO expert involved from the get-go.

“¢Â Position your brand. Doing a competitive analysis of keywords can help you level the playing field within your industry. Positioning your brand with keywords can mean helping get your site the right kind of traffic. If you are selling widgets, for example, you want to focus keywords around the words that people who are searching to buy widgets are most likely to use. That makes sense, right? A good SEO expert can help you determine what keywords people use when they are looking for your goods and services. Having a list of the right keywords will help you be more findable when searched for. Also, sprinkling your keywords in all forms of content that you release on the Internet will help you rank higher for those keywords and can be a great way to build links back to your main site.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about different forms of content that can help kick-start your Brandcasting campaign.

July 8, 2009 By Brandsplat 1 Comment

Digital or traditional marketing? It’s my strategy in a box.

I just came across an interesting debate between web advertising vs. traditional forms on Search Engine Journal Clients will always want to measure results and pin-point what exactly is driving sales and who exactly is responsible for poor sales. It”™s human nature to dissect and put things in nice, neat little boxes. I mean, look at us: we live in boxes, we drive boxes around and we work in boxes that contain boxes within them that we call cubicles. So it”™s no wonder that we have the urge to put “traditional” advertising in one box and “digital” advertising in another. The problem is that we really don”™t know why traditional forms of advertising (like television commercials and billboards) work, but they do. If they didn”™t work you wouldn”™t see it everywhere you look. The act of putting things in nice neat little boxes extends far beyond analytics in some agencies. For example, if you walk into many of the larger, slower to move agencies you will find the “digitals” separated from the “traditionals” . Some agencies section off cubical space for interactive workers almost like they”™re cattle of a different breed. The opposite is true when you walk into many “digital” shops where they may section off some old-timers that have a background in traditional advertising just in case a client asks for a print ad or billboard. What I don”™t understand is why agencies can”™t make digital part of the everyday repertoire. Why can”™t we all make an effort to understand and utilize mediums like SEO and PPC campaigns just like we need to understand utilize the print, outdoor, radio and Super Bowl commercials. Why can”™t we all just get along?

July 6, 2009 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

Google’s YouTube encourages better video content for news freaks.

monday_7_6

The good old days of feasting your eyes on a kid making a fool of himself dressed as a Jedi are fading fast and Google knows it. Google”™s YouTube recently unleashed Reporters Center , an offering that”™s aimed at both professional journalists and any amateur who wields a digital video camera. There”™s no doubt that slicker content is gaining momentum on the web. As I”™ve mentioned in an earlier post , sites like Hulu are attracting large audiences with videos made by the pros. This play by Google is interesting because it is trying to up the quality by inviting the pros in, while at the same time giving their current base of amateur reporters the skills and techniques that will raise the bar. Matt Cutts who is well known as Google”™s SEO guru has been evangelizing about better content in recent months and it looks like Reporters Center is the type of thing that Cutts has been talking about. It”™s a win-win situation as content will get better and better. But you have to worry if content gets so good that it drowns out videos like the numa numa kid.

June 30, 2009 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

SEO experts take on editorial roles

tues6_30

A recent Businessweek blog posting suggests that “the world is shifting towards editors who can anticipate the preferences of machines-and reverse engineer their algorithms.” In other words, SEO experts are becoming much more important in the editorial process and traditional editors who don’t understand the world of ranking, link building and online marketing will soon find themselves standing in the unemployment line (if they aren’t there already). I agree with this idea to a certain degree. I believe there has to be a balance of algorithmic strategy with a generous mix of engaging content. Finding a hybrid SEO/editorial guru is difficult, if not impossible. Partly, I believe, is because you would have to find someone who can switch from right-brain to left-brain expertise with equal aplomb. The best results, in my opinion, is when you have an SEO expert and a good editor work together to form a strategy and execute content that targets both machines and humans. It’s a balancing act to be sure. But one that can help to build brands online in more efficient and lasting ways.

June 25, 2009 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

The revolution will be televised. And supported by really cool online ads.

thurs_6_25

All the data in the world can’t tell you if an ad campaign is responsible for increased sales. The success or failure of any sales effort involves so many factors. It would be impossible to credit or blame an advertising campaign on the data collected. In the fast-paced world of Internet marketing, it is possible to get far more analytic data than we once had to track the results of any online campaign effort. And clients and agencies alike seem to be relying more and more on the numbers and less and less on whether or not it is a good ad. Just because we have more data doesn’t mean we know any more than we did ten years ago. I once heard a creative director at a very large advertising agency tell a very large client that advertising doesn’t make people go out and buy products. The client was dismayed and asked why he was advertising with the agency then. He replied, “The only thing you can hope for is that someone will like you a little more because you just made them laugh or cry.” That’s it! I tend to agree. Any client who thinks a piece of communication is going to get people to remove their rotund arse from a warm comfortable seat and head over to a store with cash in hand is fooling themselves. So why do we have a confluence of analytic tools and measuring methods that are all tethered to sales results? In a recent Adage article, Hernan Lopez, president of Fox Networks and chief operating officer of Fox International Channels said, “the most important factor behind successful TV campaigns was the quality of the creative” .Â You go Hernan! He goes on to say that “the industry’s obsession with click-through rates, despite evidence of their small correlation with total sales, results in messages that are rarely entertaining or amusing and are overly reliant on verbal hard sell.” Mr. Lopez believes the answer relies on a creative revolution. As a former creative, I couldn’t agree more. But don’t expect me to move my arse any time soon.

Video marketing. Not so different than article marketing.

Follow Us

Brandcasting. Launch your brand into the blogosphere. (Part 3 of 7).

Follow Us

Brandcasting. Build a strong and SEO-friendly site. (Part 2 of 7)

Follow Us

Digital or traditional marketing? It’s my strategy in a box.

Follow Us

Google’s YouTube encourages better video content for news freaks.

Follow Us

SEO experts take on editorial roles

Follow Us

The revolution will be televised. And supported by really cool online ads.

Follow Us