For me,  Search Engine Result Pages and Search Engine Site Position Reports are dead. I could really care less that non branded term keywords you think are important come up position one for you. And for those companies that espouse the virtues of their wonderful SEO working their magical powers to gain position one, bite me.

Traffic, stone cold traffic. Show me you increased traffic to my site for the keywords that make me money and then we can have a real conversation. Big misses that I see all the time are not just traffic from head terms but all the increase in concatenation from the head terms that are also driving traffic and conversions.

Show me that concatenated search terms increased, show me that the great content I have produced increased not just search traffic but referral traffic [organic link acquisition indicators] and then we can talk about you getting paid as an SEO “hexpert”.

So what is this thing I am calling a SMERP? My new acronym refers to Search Media Engine Realtime Page. I am so over text as the primary indicator. Lets get results reports infused with Images, Video, Audio and  Locations as part of the conversation.

Websites and citizen journalists are not indexed on text alone anymore and a results page is now inclusive of everything under the sun including realtime social context.

Search results: now to muck it all up is the personalization aspect of any search. Am I logged into a social site that morphs my results based on my friends and the social graph? If I am basing my SEO on traffic and not position then the conversation is now a moot point.

All together now, the keyword position is no longer the success metric. Traffic from keywords, content  and thematically relevant mixed media/channel relations are.

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1. 
   Photo by pfalaUnderstand the relationship between components of an SEM campaign
2. Consider the context of contextual campaigns
3. Analyze your funnel metrics
4. Use ad copy to be effective, not just ‘different to be different’
5. Use ‘match types’ to refine campaigns
6. Fence out the wrong keywords
7. Become the Searcher
8. Make SEO and Paid Search Work Together
9. Tag Keywords with Classifications
10. Use the Right Attribution Method for Analysis
11. As Goals Become Clear, Automate Management Actions

If you’ve got an experienced social media team, a solid budget and an appetite for innovation, you can create an original online presence that engages your customers or supporters in an entirely new kind of online experience.

No ROI for Social Media? Some examples for you. Now, they re-iterate with this compelling clip with several Social Media ROI examples along with other effective Social Media Strategies. Catchy music is by Bob Sinclair.

Photo by ccgdSocial media optimization (SMO) is an important ingredient within your SEO and SEM campaigns. In the past, social networking sites were not much more than an oddity. Today, many have received enormous ranking authority from top search engines. If you are not leveraging these sites to improve your exposure and communicate with your niche consumer, your search engine positions are vulnerable to your competitors.

The Influence Of Social Media Optimization On Search Marketing

Search marketing has always relied upon exposure in the search engines to drive targeted traffíc. For years, gaining that exposure was based solely upon the development of your site and generating links pointing to your site. Both are still important today. However, social media optimization has shifted the landscape of search marketing.

Google once maintained several disparate search platforms for blogs, videos, news, and similar types of “social” content. Each functioned as a separate search engine with its own set of organic listings.

A few years ago, Google blended the listings from each platform into a system called Universal Search. Bing and Yahoo have since incorporated similar systems. Universal Search is now used as the primary index. That means blogs, videos, and news have been incorporated into the natural listings, pushing many sites off the first page. This is one of the reasons social media optimization has become a critical piece of search.

Another factor that has influenced search marketing is the increased ranking authority given to Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and similar sites. These too, have quickly gained control of a significant amount of search territory.

Social media optimization preserves your current natural listings while helping you to gain even more search exposure. By using blogs, videos, and social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, you can capture a greater number of organic positions.

Your Social Media Optimization Campaign: Rules of Engagement

There are several rules of engagement for launching and executing a social media optimisation campaign. If you ignore them, your SMO efforts will be far less effective than otherwise.
Top Positions in the Web’s Largest Article Directory

First, you should do everything possible to encourage your audience to link to your site. Integrating a blog is valuable because your content can be updated over time, attracting loyal readers. Encourage readers to bookmark, tag and “Tweet” your blog posts by installing a button plug-in.

Second, link liberally as a resource for your visitors. Social media optimization is dependent on assisting others achieve what they’re trying to do. Once you engage your audience, help them find the resources they need by linking to them. Eventually, your site will become regarded as a resource hub, which will help you attract inbound links. That’s a vital component of SEO.

Third, you must be able to identify your market. Social media optimization relies upon the connections you establish with niche communities. You need to properly target them in order to engage them and generate content. This is true whether you’re engaging them through YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, or your blog.

Fourth, integrate tracking tools to measure and monitor the success of your social media optimization campaign. Track mentions of your site and company. Watch your site’s progress in the natural listings for your main keywords. Generate linking reports showing inbound links pointing to your domain and specific pages. Tracking your metrics is crucial in order to determine whether your SMO campaign is effective.

SEO Social Media Optimization Explained

Each of the elements of a social media optimization campaign that we have described thus far dovetail seamlessly with SEO. The ongoing content creation, tagging and bookmarking, attracting inbound links by being a resource for your audience – these are essential for pushing your website higher in the search engines’ listings. SEO social media optimization leverages a new set of tools to accomplish the same goal as SEO: more exposure for your site on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The challenge is knowing how to use those tools effectively.

The days of launching a basic SEO campaign within a competitive space and watching your site rise in the search engines’ results are long gone. SEO has become far more complex than it was a few short years ago. This is why many companies have made the decision to hire an SEO consultant. Social media optimization has transformed SEO from a relatively straightforward strategy into a complicated science. Having an experienced hand at the wheel helps to navigate the uncertain terrain.

If you want to boost your exposure in the search engines’ listings, consider social media optimization a priority.

Cross-Domain Tracking

A default setup of Google Analytics is designed to track content and visitor data for a single domain, such as dogs.example.com or www.example.com.

However, suppose you want to use Analytics for more complex situations, such as tracking

• all visitors to both dogs.example.com and www.example.com, with data for both showing in the same report profile
• only visitors to the www.example.com/dogs subdirectory in a separate report as if it were a single site
• all visitors to two domains that you own, such as www.example.com and www.example2.com, with data for both showing in the same report profile
• visitor and pageview data for content in an iFrame of another domain.

In any of these cases, you’ll need to do some customization to the tracking code in order to correctly track visitors. Before doing this, it’s a good idea to read about Domains and Directories as they are defined in a default Analytics installation.

Use the following table to view sections in the rest of this document, and as a reference for the tracking code modifications suggest for each method. Once you have decided on a tracking method, be sure to also read the Site Linking Considerations at the end of this document.

_setCookiePath("/myStore/");

_setCookiePath("/first/Path/");
_cookiePathCopy("/new/Path/");

_setDomainName("none");
_setAllowLinker(enable);
_setAllowHash(false);
_link();
_linkByPost();

_setDomainName(".example-petstore.com");
_setAllowHash(false);

_setDomainName("none");
_setAllowLinker(enable);
_setAllowHash("false");
_link();
_linkByPost();

iframe.src = pageTracker._getLinkerUrl("http://www.my-example-content.com");

Restricting Tracking to a Single Subdirectory

There are two common cases for restricting Analytics tracking to a single sub-directory of a larger domain:

• You have access only to a sub-directory of a larger website, such as when you use an ecommerce hosting service
• You want to limit tracking to a sub-directory of a larger website, such as when you launch a project on your company’s website, which also uses Analytics tracking

Suppose you have a profile in your Analytics account where you track visitor data to your online store. The store itself is hosted on www.example.com/myStore/. You only want to record visitor and campaign data for the /myStore subdirectory, and not for any other page on the example.com domain. In this case, you also only have access to those web pages included in that sub-directory.

In order to set up tracking for your store, you will need to use the _setCookiePath() function in your tracking code, like this:

var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-12345-1");
pageTracker._setCookiePath("/myStore/");
pageTracker._trackPageview();  

Once this is set up, your reports will correctly display visitor and campaign data only for your sub-directory. This is because the cookie path is set to your sub-directory rather than to the root directory of www.example.com and your profile will read and write to a unique set of cookies for your store only.

It is considered a best practice to use the _setCookiePath() function in this scenario. If you do not, there are two possible impacts to your reports:

• Other Analytics account cookies set on www.example.com can be shared by your account.This means that visitor statistics like new vs returning, time on site, and number of visits might be incorrect, since your visitors’ session cookies might also reflect activity on other parts of www.example.com.
• Your reports might reflect campaign details from another store.For example, suppose a visitor clicks on an email campaign that goes to another store on the same domain: www.example.com/shoeStore. In this case, the referral information in the visitor’s cookie is set to the campaign named Fall Shoe Sale. Later, that same visitor searches on Google for pet supplies and clicks on a search result to your store and purchases a dog collar. Since ad and email campaign referrals persist over search results, you will see the campaign Fall Shoe Sale generating sales for dog collars. This is because the _utmz cookie for your online store was not set uniquely for your path.

If you restrict visitor cookies to only your path, campaign and session data for another part of www.example.com will not be included in your reports, since the cookie path is restricted. (Read about Cookies for more background info on how cookies are read by web browsers.)

If you are tracking visitor and referral traffic for a sub-directory, you might also want to set up an Include filter to the sub-directory to ensure that only content for that sub-directory shows up in your report. See the pre-defined filter article in the Help Center for more information.

Tracking Across Two Sub-directories on the Same Domain

You might want to track multiple subdirectories on a domain where you do not have access to the pages for the larger domain. For example, suppose you have both an online store and a shopping cart on a service provider’s site:

• www.example-commerce-host.com/myStore/
• www.example-commerce-host.com/myCart/

If you want to track user sessions and campaign data from your store to the shopping cart, you can use the _cookieCopyPath() method to copy the cookie information to another directory on the same domain. In this case, the key parts of the tracking code snippet for all pages would look like:

var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-12345-1");
pageTracker._setCookiePath("/myStore/");
pageTracker._cookiePathCopy("/myCart/");
pageTracker._trackPageview();  

In this case, a unique cookie is set for the domain, limited to the first directory provided, and the same cookie data is also copied over to the second directory provided.

Tracking Across a Domain and a Sub-directory of Another Domain

Another common tracking scenario is to track visitor and traffic data between a single domain and a sub-directory of a different domain. This typically occurs when you have your online store on one domain, but you use a 3rd-party website for your shopping cart, where you are limited to a sub-directory of that site. The follow example URLs each contain recommended customizations for the tracking code on their pages.

• Primary: www.example-petstore.com

  var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-12345-1");
  pageTracker._setAllowLinker(true);
  pageTracker._setAllowHash(false);

• Secondary: www.example-commerce-host.com/petStoreCart

  var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-12345-1");
  pageTracker._setDomainName("none");
  pageTracker._setAllowLinker(true);
  pageTracker._setAllowHash(false);

For any form submission from www.example-petstore.com to the shopping cart website, you would use the _linkByPost() method to copy traffic and visitor cookie data via HTTP POST to the shopping cart site. The _setAllowLinker() method directs the target site to read cookie data from the POST data rather than from the regular user session information. In this way, you can pass cookie data set on one domain to another and thereby retain the visitor session from your online store to your shopping cart.

onSubmit="pageTracker._linkByPost('www.example-commerce-host.com/petStoreCart/begin.php');"

Similarly, use the _link() function to transfer visitor data on any links going from the online store to the shopping cart.

<a href="pageTracker._linkByPost('www.example-commerce-host.com/petStoreCart/legalTerms.php');"

Tracking Across a Domain and Its Sub-domains

As mentioned above, a default installation of the tracking code automatically tracks visitor data to a specific domain or sub-domain. This means that even if you manage both a domain and a sub-domain, you must make modifications to the tracking code in order to share visitor data across both of them.

Suppose you have the following URLs that you want to track as a single entity:

• www.example-petstore.com
• dogs.example-petstore.com
• cats.example-petstore.com

For this setup, you would use the following key customizations for the tracking code on all pages.

  var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-12345-1");
  pageTracker._setDomainName(".example-petstore.com");
  pageTracker._trackPageview(); 

In this example, notice the use of the leading “.” in the declaration of the domain. Since the Analytics tracking code creates a hash value from the string that you provide in the _setDomainName() method, it’s recommended that you follow standard conventions and use the leading “.” when setting your domain name in this way. See the documentation on _setDomainName() for more details.

Tracking Across Multiple Domains and Sub-domains

In this scenario, you might want to enable tracking across a given domain and its sub-domains, and include a separate domain in the mix. For example, suppose you have an online store and you also want to track visitor and campaign data to your blog. The following shows key tracking code customizations for three example URLs.

• Primary: www.example-petstore.com

  var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-12345-1");
  pageTracker._setDomainName(".example-petstore.com");
  pageTracker._setAllowLinker(true);
  pageTracker._setAllowHash(false);

  In addition, you would use the _link() and _linkByPost() for any form or links to www.my-example-blogsite.com. This is not required for links to the sub-domain of this site, since the _setDomainName() function defined .example-petstore.com as the domain to enable cookie access for any other subdomains.

• Secondary: dogs.example-petstore.com

  var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-12345-1");
  pageTracker._setDomainName(".example-petstore.com");
  pageTracker._setAllowLinker(true);
  pageTracker._setAllowHash(false);

  In addition, you would use the _link() and _linkByPost() for any form or links to www.my-example-blogsite.com. as well as to the primary domain.

• Terciary: www.my-example-blogsite.com

  var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-12345-1");
  pageTracker._setDomainName("none");
  pageTracker._setAllowLinker(true);
  pageTracker._setAllowHash(false);

Tracking Across iFrames

In a site where the transfer between domains is done by opening a new window or by including content in an iFrame, you will need to to use the _getLinkerUrl() method to transfer visitor and campaign cookies from one domain to another. For example, suppose you a form in an iFrame hosted on www.my-example-iframecontent.com and you want to transfer visitor information from the parent page that hosts the iFrame on www.example-parent.com.

You would use JavaScript to load the iFrame and pass in the cookie information using the _getLinkerURL() method.

var iframe = document.getElementById("myIFrame");
iframe.src = pageTracker._getLinkerUrl("http://www.my-example-iframecontent.com/");

Site Linking Considerations

When setting up tracking in the various scenarios described above, keep in mind the following:

• A session from one domain can only be transferred to another domain via a click, a form submission, or via _getLinkerURL.The passing of the cookie data via these three methods links two page views under a single session. If a user independently visits two sites that are tracking in the same profile, such as through a bookmark, these visits will still be counted under separate sessions. In this scenario, the linking methods are not invoked, and thus there is no way to determine the initiating session for a given user.
• Choose a primary profile for multi-domain tracking.Enable multi-domain tracking by first establishing a profile for your primary domain. After you have set up a profile and retrieved the tracking code for your primary domain, use the same tracking code for all other installations and configure the necessary linking functions. In this way, your configuration will be set up correctly before data is recorded, and you will have all data historically located in one profile.

  If you have already established separate profiles for each website installation, you can still enable linking of the separate web properties, but you will need to choose one existing profile to act as the primary one for aggregating the data from both sites. The data collected in each profile prior to linking cannot be merged into a primary profile, so the historical data for the secondary profile will remain separate.

• Content reports always show the request URIFinally, once you have domain linking established, you will see only the request URI in the content reports, and not the top-level or sub-domain for a given page. So for example, if you have a page on http://www.example.com/index.php and another page on http://www.example2.com/index.php, you will see listings in the reports for two distinct index.php pages, and will not be able to distinguish which page is from which domain. You can include the referring domain in the page reports by setting a filter that will include all components of the page URL in the content reports, as follows:
  1. In the Profile Settings page, click the Add Filter link.
  2. Choose Add New Filter and provide the filter a name.
  3. Choose Custom Filter and select Advanced on the Filter type settings.
  4. Under Advanced settings, choose Hostname for FieldA and Request URI for FieldB.
  5. Set the values for each of these fields to (.*), which is an expression that captures all characters.
  6. Set the Output To –> Constructor option to Request URI and provide $A1$B1 as the value for that choice.

  This will capture the www.example.com portion of your URL and include that at the beginning of your page URL in the content reports section.

Google URL Shortener at goo.gl is a service that takes long URLs and squeezes them into fewer characters to make a link that is easier to share, tweet, or email to friends. The core goals of this service are:

• Stability – ensuring that the service has very good uptime
• Security – protecting users from malware and phishing pages
• Speed – fast resolution of short URLs

Google URL Shortener is currently available for Google products and not for broader consumer use.

The Google privacy policy applies to the Google URL Shortener. Please note that Google may choose to publicly display aggregate and non-personally identifiable statistics about particular shortened links, such as the number of end user clicks.

With all but just a few exceptions  I find “social media gurus” to be nothing more than “social media blowhards” If you doubt it read this weeks Business Week article on Social Media Snake Oil Salesmen

Photo by Pipe What is “social media”? The phrase, which appears in Wikipedia is the umbrella term that defines activities integrating technology, social interaction and the construction of words,  images and other rich media.

Although I believe this definition is somewhat fair, “Social Media” uses consensus swarming to generate content and link information in a collaborative manner as collective intelligence.

What we understand as Social Media, we are shown in different ways as Forums, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, Online Communities, Social Networks, Photos, Videos, etc..

The point is, that the rise of the term emerges from naturally derived concepts such as Social Media Optimization (SMO) which is the process of optimizing individuals or companies to distribute content quickly and successfully through the sites for social participation. The acceptance or otherwise of such content, with the content generated by users themselves form Online Reputation.

The other concept is derived from Social Media Marketing (SMM) that must be understood as a form of marketing that seeks its objectives through participation in social participation sites through unique content, attractive and useful, but not necessarily shocking. Such content items may be from a blog, even a simple video on youtube. We must not confuse it with viral marketing campaigns, but both come very close and look at very similar goals.

The issue is that the term Social Media, we use every day and is now in full effect as we see in the chart Google Trends does not yet have a definitive translation into ROI until recently.

There are lots of proposals for Social Media Campaigns, Media Collaborative Marketing, Online Media and Social Participation, but little is heard which clearly defines what the customer wants to see for return on investment and can be measured until now.

Overdrive Interactive has created a social media dashboard, tracking SEO, PPC and Social Media using a proprietary process clearly defining actions and reactions down to the lead level. On the dashboard clients are able to learn what programs and initiatives work and costs per customer acquisition associated with those processes. Download the social media map.

Lead development and online lead generation are no longer a guessing game, fraught with false promises and expectations. Using Overdrive Interactive’s tools and services customers both B2C and B2B are now able to track online marketing programs ROI successfully.

2009 Best Use of Social Media
Project: Harley-Davidson 2010 Motorcycles Mosaic
Agency/Creator: Overdrive Interactive for Harley-Davidson

Photo by Mr_SteinIn HTML, elements are bits of markup that tell a web browser to display or format parts of web pages. The structure of HTML is based on logic, order, and syntax and is, therefore, relatively simple to use. You should basically think of your HTML elements as the organizational and visual formatting of your HTML document. The difference between your site and other sites of equal page rank and similar material will be how well you utilize HTML elements to exemplify your work. You can very easily modify your web site so that things stick out where they should.

Search engine spiders read the source (HTML) code of your pages and decide how relevant it is to each of the keywords and key phrases they find there. A web page is made up of many components, such as head, body, title, tables, etc. Most of these components have their special meaning to the search engines.

Wolfram Alpha has a neat feature visually showing your HTML site structure.

Basic HTML Elements Mapped

• A – Anchor

• FORM – Interactive form

• IMG – Inline image

• INPUT – Form input

• P – Paragraph

• TABLE – Table

• TD – Table data cell

• TR – Table row

Can the argument be made that sites with better site structure rank better?

Google Caffeine is what Google’s “Next Generation” search engine is being called. According to all indications, this is not just another one of Google’s infamous updates, but a major “Overhaul” of its index and algorithm – the complex formula and calculations Google uses to rank all web pages.

If that doesn’t sound broad enough, according to Matt Cutts one database is already showing Google Caffeine, and the full blown version will be released after the holidays. The reasoning behind this – Google doesn’t want to upset webmasters and site owners during the lucrative holiday buying season. In the past, other major Google Updates have come around this time of the year, most notably the “Florida Update” which severely affected many web sites and webmasters.

Recently, Google has been more aware and much more generous to webmasters by being more open and forthcoming in regards to how it indexes its pages. This time, webmasters were given access to a beta version of Caffeine which Google released last summer (’09) where webmasters could check to see how well their keywords and site would fare in this new search index. The beta site www2.sandbox.google.com is now down.

Like any professional search engine marketer who works online, I was constantly checking my sites and keywords in Google’s new search engine. I have drawn some conclusions from what I have seen, but please be aware it is often very silly to draw conclusions and make predictions from a small sampling of results. Google is probably still making adjustments and refinements on Caffeine as it analyzes the results.

There are certain ranking factors that even Google is telling us about,  “Site Speed” or how fast your site loads will play a part in how its ranked. We have also heard a lot about “Broken Links” and if your page or site has them, then it will probably be ranked lower. Of course, linking out to “Bad Neighborhoods” will probably still not be a good practice, if you want higher rankings within Google.

It should not come as a shock or a surprise, that “Over-All Page Quality” will play a bigger role in how well your page ranks in the SERP’s. Bear  in mind, Google is like any other company putting out a product, if that product doesn’t have a high standard of quality, it reflects badly back on everybody concerned. Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) are the key to all their online revenue, they must do everything in their power to keep that product fast, relevant, current and above all high quality.

Expect “OnPage Factors” to play a  greater role in the Google Caffeine update. Quality unique content, page design, good navigation, title, meta tags, description, keyword density, alt tags, page views, bounce rate, traffic numbers, time spent on page, and the number of social bookmarks may play an increased role in achieving high rankings. A perfectly optimized keyworded page, with the keyword in the title, description, meta tags, alt tags, on the page will probably get you ranked higher in Caffeine, as well as most search engines on the web.