Improving websites has always been an internet marketing essential and since the arrival of Kiril at Attacat, it’s something we have been focusing on even more. His passion and expertise in what we describe as “conversion rate optimisation” (aka “website thinknig”) has really got my grey matter stirring and changed the way I think about improving websites quite dramatically.

photo credit: j-william

A Common Website Tale

For many years we have been producing detailed reports on clients’ websites. These reports highlight numerous ways of improving the usability and the general ability for the website to persuade visitors to become paying customers.

These reports have always been greeted with huge enthusiasm by the clients. Typically they get circulated to everyone with an interest in the website including all senior management and it wouldn’t be uncommon for the CEO to pick up the phone to tell us what an eye opener it has been.

However in so many cases, 12 months + on, the same unchanged website still exists. The problem lies in the fact that the reports highlight so many issues (sometimes hundreds).

Even though the reports included a short list of the most critical changes our clients would conclude that there was nothing for it but to go away and do a complete redesign of the site from the ground up (“what’s the point of making the critical changes now if we are rebuilding anyway”).

Total redesigns need to be avoided wherever possible.

The Website Mountain

Complete rebuilds feel like mountains to be climbed. Complete rebuilds get put on the “next budget year” list. Things on next budget year lists often get superseded by “higher priorities”.

Where the redesign does progress, there is a perceived need for the new website to be so perfect that the development proceeds at a snail’s pace. In the worst cases, redesigns get bogged down in extreme “scope creep” (that horrible process of every stakeholder saying “oh could you just change that”).

While all this is going on, site visitors continue to bounce off your website. The return on investment on all the work that has gone into identifying and solving issues remains at a big fat zero.

When the new site finally does launch, so much time has elapsed that it’s not uncommon for the key issues to have been forgotten and superseded by “important” requests from “important” people. The end result being that the new website ends up being little better than the old one.

Bite-sized Chunks

There is a better way. A much better way. The philosophy is similar to that espoused by “Lean Start-up” protagonists – disciplined focus on the easiest solutions to the biggest problems faced by customers, all the time with fast iterations. So rather than a major change occasionally (i.e. complete rebuilds) you should focus in on making small (but significant) changes frequently.

It’s not about identifying issues. It’s about identifying your BIGGEST issues. The ones that are having the most impact on reducing your site’s financial performance. The process of identifying the issues (which includes effective use of web analytics, low cost user testing and surveys) is scientific, yet surprisingly low cost.

It’s also not about perfect solutions. Instead the focus is on coming up with the cheapest to implement change we can make to improve this big problem. The argument being that even a small improvement on a big problem will lead to a significant overall improvement.

It does involves testing and measuring of changes. Through this approach you ensure that you quickly find out if you are going down a blind alley and can switch focus back on to the main routes. You also find out what really makes a difference so you can make more informed opinion about future changes than you would be able to do in a complete rebuild situation.

It’s also a continuous process, not a start, stop one. Once changes are made, the cycle begins again immediately to identify the next biggest problems and set of easy to implement solutions. So rather than a new website every three years, you have one that evolves continually. Can you remember the last time Amazon did a major redesign? No? That’s because (give or take!) they haven’t, they have continuously evolved instead.

Such an approach brings rapid return on investment and will inevitably take you much further forward than the “total rebuild” and it will do it for less cost and less time.

In today’s world there are so many free and low cost tools available that such a continuous evolution is a state of mind that even the small business can afford. Sure an SME probably can’t afford to be running several tests a day as Amazon probably does, but certainly there is no reason why a monthly, or worst case, quarterly cycle shouldn’t be affordable to any company that sees their website as a serious sales channel.

In the relatively short time we have adopted these practices with our clients, the returns have been impressive. One small change for example being worth £1 million a year yet identified and changed for less than £2500. Looking back it was obvious, but without the disciplined process, the obvious would likely have been missed for several years to come.

Google rolled out Instant and it was the talk of the town.

Yet last week Google made one of the most significant changes it has ever made and it has hardly created a ripple beyond the search engine optimisation community. It’s very big news for anybody wanting to rank for local search phrases (e.g. “Water Coolers Edinburgh” rather than “Water Coolers”)

The early reports put me into a flat spin until past experience told me that it rarely pays to react too quickly to a Google change. This is especially true when the reported changes simply don’t feel right from a user’s persepctive. Since then it has become clear that initial reports over-exaggerated the impact of the change but this is still an important move by Google and unlike many changes to Google, does actually require some changes to the way SEO is approached. Indeed we’ve got a new local algorithm to think about which I discuss below.

The Layout Change

For a good while Google’s map listings have been appearing in the main search engine result pages (SERPs). Before the change you would get a map in the main lisitng with a number of mini-listings for each of the places Google thought relevant. Now the map has moved and the mini listings have become even more prominent than the usual main listings.

The new layout is shown below, highlights include:

• The top 3 results continue to be sponsored listings (Google AdWords pay-per-click)
• The main results at the top of the page are now a hybrid mixture of ‘traditional’ organic results & map listings. We are seeing lot’s of variations in layout, some dominated by places listings, others much less so.
• The new map listings should experience better click rates due to the visual “pull” of the image and marker that is now included
• Reviews are much more prominent, so this is something we all need to put greater emphasis on
• The Google map is now shown on the top right hand side of the screen (this is likely to mean a reduction in the number of clicks on sponsored listings that normally occupied this space). Furthermore, the map actually scrolls with the screen, covering the PPC ads as it scrolls and making them unclickable.
• Further organic listings are shown below (and sometimes throughout) the map listings
• All further sponsored listings are shown below the map on the right hand side (we are already seeing increased competition for top 3 spots following this change)

A New Algorithm

All the place listings and the normal listings are now intermingled. This could have been achieved largely as a layout change but…

The order the places listings appear in the main results is different to the order you see if you do a search on Google Maps (which is still using the old rather flawed maps/places algorithm). This tells me that Google has added some additional means for deciding how to order map results.

One approach could have been to simply use the usual organic algorithm (i.e. simply continue to rank as before) and then simply change the organic listing to a places one if appropriate. They haven’t done this however as you can find many places results that weren’t in the main listings before. Further this approach would not have allowed Google to include companies who have no website but do have a places listing.

They must therefore have created a hybrid algorithm of sorts in addition to the “blend” type algorithm. They’ve come up with a way to compare apples and pears.

Pears (the “normal” listings) were ranked based on website content, links and other signals whilst the apples (place listings) were ranked on aspects such as reviews, citations and the quality of the content on the Google Places page. It seems that local queries are now being ranked based on a combination of these elements.

The question I continue to muse over is why display the places listings in “packs” (as noted by Andrew Shotland) – surely it would make sense to view each entity you want to list seperately. I can only assume that this is part of the solution to being able to rank entities with no websites? Packs also worry me for another reason. I suspect it may lead to sudden movement in ranks for companies as Google simply calculate that a query deserves a different “pack” arrangement.

A Quality Improvement… But Who’s in Trouble?

In most aspects, these changes are good news for the user. For companies looking to get traffic from these phrases, the news is mixed.

For a couple of years it has been relatively easy to achieve good rankings in the map listings. This has been a god-send for sites that are unfit for purpose. That party may not yet be over but it is certainly starting to thin out. Now that you need to consider traditional organic factors as well, your website and online marketing become important. That means your SEO consultant has no choice to be all over your site as well as your reviews etc.

Other losers will be those who don’t have a local presence but are looking to target local searches. If you are an agency or directory type, you do need to re-think things; there’s writing on the wall, though it isn’t immediate death as some have claimed.

If you’ve been focusing on more rounded SEO (good design, content code & online marketing) and you are a local, then chances are your quids in.

Last month, as featured here on the Brain, Attacat Joel took part in the first New Media Breakfast in Renfrewshire.  Here’s an interview with Renfrewshire’s Chamber of Commerce Chief, put together as ever by the fatBuzz team.

Facebook in Renfrewshire Chamber of Commerce with fatBuzz from fatBuzz on Vimeo.

Despite the Pope’s best effort, this mornings’ New Media Breakfast was very well attended. A good 60+ risked the traffic disruption. Below are my notes taken at the event, published a couple of hours later than intended due to lack of connectivity.

This morning’s breakfast was led by Gordon White from fatBuzz.  I did a quick slot on the relationship between SEO & Blogs.

Gordon kicked off with a video (below) of Seth Godin and Tom Peters.

Tom Peters:

No single thing in the last 15 years has been more important to my professional life. Blogging is the best marketing tool bar none

Why Blog?

• Single most important word: Trust – Generates brand trust, personal trust
• Humanises the organisation. Example given of Kenneth Martin at Blog Architects who has been blogging about donating his kidney to his Dad. A clever mix of personal and corporate to bring personality to the organisation. It has raised the profile of his architecture practice, striking a balance between industry commentary and personal life. Kenneth feels that the blog is the most powerful part of his social media strategy.
• Promote yourself as an industry expert – e.g. impact of legisalation, industry trends, comment on articles in traditional trade press etc. You could even interview competitors – shock horror?!
• Use as a syndication platform – You can use your blog as the hub of your social media presence that you can then use to seed your Twitter, Facebook page, LinkedIn etc.  This saves time and keeps control of the content.  Imagine if you’d decided to put all your content only onto Bebo a few years ago. Those doing the same now on Facebook will likely live to regret that. By having the content on your own blog, you continue to control all your content. When the next Facebook arrives, you can then simply start sending your content there rather than trying to start again from scratch.
• Adds an interactive element to your website – illustrated with a great case study: the Attacat Brain! (not at my request honestly!)
• Telling stories – blogs are great for making things interesting. The example given was the McKay whisky barrel flooring post.
• Engaging in conversation
• SEO – I did a quick cameo appearance to discuss Blogs and SEO.  You can read full notes on that here.

Which Platform?

Many of the leading blogs use different platforms e.g. Huffington Post – Movable Type, Masahble – WordPress, Google Blog – Blogger. However the advice is to use a mainstream one.

The 5 most used (at least easy to identify) blog platforms:

• Blogger
• WordPress (self hosted .org and hosted at .com)
• Typepad
• Tumblr
• Posterous

Things to consider when choosing a platform:

• Customisation – note Blogger is more customisable than many believe (but not necessarily as customisable as others)
• Plugins – Plugins can add significant functionality to your site e.g. polls, sharing widgets, great SEO tools etc etc. WordPress is the clear leader on this front. Be be careful about plugins that are not supported if they are business critical (In most cases though, when one doesn’t work, someone else will write one that does, so don’t worry too much)
• Advertising – do you want to make money from advertising. Gordon recommends Google’s Blogger for this.
• Can you export your content to different platforms?
• Whether or not you can have it as part of your website or not?
• Can you have your own domain name?

Recommendation: Use backupify to back up your blog. It will back up all sorts of other things too including Google Docs and social media sites.

Some functionaility to consider adding to your blog:

• Get your own domain name
• Add sharing buttons.
• Link to your other web presences (can’t do that word)
• Twitter feeds (can get from Twitter)
• JustGiving widget if you are doing any fund raising
• Your own company widgets – e.g. if you are a property company, add your property search to the side of the blog

What Content?

Gordon gave many examples, many of which I missed – sorry.

• Nest: Just showed their new business cards – a seemingly dull topic but because the design is so good and the passion comes through, it gets the message over that they care about their brand
• It doesn’t always have to be text based. The Satorialist is a blog of great pictures of New Yorkers.  Gordon mentioned a Glasgow equivalent called Les Garcons de Glasgow
• STA Travel – Gave round the world tickets to two students a year on the understanding that they blog about where they are.
• (There have been many other content ideas that have been shared at the New Media Breakfasts such as the ones on Podcasting and Facebook that can be also be applied effectively to blogging.

Some good habits:

• Be linky!
• Use Tags
• Encourage sharing
• Syndicating Content – Delvr.it is one way of syndicating content out to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others. Makes it easy and instanteous.

Promoting Posts and Encouraging Engagement

When the event was run in Glasgow, a short but very interesting talk was given by Gordon Macintyre Kemp on how he promoted his post “42.5 Tips on How to Tweet for Business” on the Drum Blog

So how did he do it.  He started by writing it well!

He then promoted it by Tweeting. He then went to a competitor site, and followed 500 of thier followers. The first tweet they would’ve seen was Gordon’s blog post. They then retweet.

He then sent another tweet out saying that 70 others have retweeted it and 2000 had read it. That generated even more retweets.

Gordon likes the Topsy button because it showed who the most influential retweeters were. You can then start to build relationships with them. He’s saved them to a list on Twitter and he now RTs their posts and starts messaging them. Has another list of VEP (Very engaged people) who RT almost everything Gordon says.

The end result: Leads from 5 major brands and 5 Scottish SMEs

(Side note – Gordon’s website, like the Attacat site is entirely built on wordpress and tweaked to look like a site)

Encouraging Comments, Engement & Conversation

“First Question Syndrome – blog comments are a bit like the “Any questions?” moment at an event – for some reason nobody want to be first”

• Invite people to comment
• Reciprocate comments – comment on friend’s blogs, so they’ll do the same to you.  Create a syndicate of half a dozen or so people who all comment on each others posts
• Answer comments! Make sure if people engage with you, you engage back
• Add comment to other blogs and refer to yours (but don’t over do it!)
• Link to it from Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In etc
• Mention it in video or audio podcasts

So how are you getting on?

If you been inspired to post today as a result of the breakfast (or as a result of the Glasgow event), be it about the event itself or otherwise, please tell us in the comments below and feel free to add a link!  (Thanks to Nadine Pierce at Eden Scott for this great idea!).

The next breakfast will be an internet marketing question time. 24th September in Glasgow, 21st October in Edinburgh. Booking details.

This morning sees the first New Media Breakfast being run in conjunction with Renfrewshire Chamber of Commerce and of course fatBuzz.

It’s an updated version of the Facebook event recently run in Glasgow and Edinburgh.  The speakers are fatBuzz’s Gordon White and our very own Attacat Joel.  Hannah took full notes last time which you can read here.  I’ll try to capture the updates below.

The event was kicked off with the trailer for the forthcoming Facebook film (bound to be an Attacat trip if you want to join us).

Gordon noted the stats showing social media use exceeding use of search engines for the first time in May (Attacat view: think quality not quantity 😉 )

But how does it fit into marketing? Proctor & Gamble aim to establish meaningful Facebook communities around all their brands in 2010. Should you be doing the same?

A fun and at the time, ground breaking, use of Facebook was the Ikea photo tagging viral featured in this video

Privacy Update

Look into Facebook places settings in privacy. It’s possible, with the default settings, that your friends can check you into places without you being there and without your permission (been to a brothel recently?). Easily changed in your settings.

New Case Studies

Phoenix Car Company, a leading Scottish Car Dealer are providing the venue for this mornings event, so some time was spent looking at their Facebook page.

(Attendees arriving for the breakfast at Phoenix Honda)

Attacat Joel looked at how BrewDog (the social media savvy Scottish brewer) could use Facebook ads to attract drinkers into their Aberdeen pub using Facebook ads.

Apparently there are still 80 wannabee ninjas in Edinburgh (according to Facebook profiling options)

I’m sure I missed other updates but there’s masses on the post from the previous Facebook event.

Thanks to Renfrewshire Chamber for having us!

The Edinburgh New Media Breakfast this month coincides with the Pope’s visit to town.

(Tickets & Info about this Breakfast | More about New Media Breakfasts (#NMB))

photo credit: roblisameehan

The Pope has been gracious enough to ensure that the worst of traffic disruption will not start until well after the Breakfast has finished. We assume this is because of his known enthusiasm for this month’s topic: blogging (The breakfast will be led by Gordon White from fatBuzz, I’m going to be doing a ten minute slot on SEO & blogs as part of the Breakfast)

There will be some closures in place that will make getting to and from the breakfast a little more difficult than usual.  To save you the trouble of deciphering the various traffic info documents, I’ve been through them in detail and here is my interpretation.

Getting There

Gordon will start his talk at 8 (i.e. more promptly than usual) so please aim to arrive a bit earlier.  This is to ensure that it is easier to get away afterwards (see below).

• By Car – At this time the only places to avoid are Holyrood, Holyrood Park and part of Princes St. Crossing Princes St should not be too difficult as you will be able to get across at the Mound or the Bridges. Parking is going to be less straight forward as parking around the venue is going to be suspended (see shaded area on map for suggestions for nearest on street parking)

(Larger Map)

• By Bus – several routes are operating on special timetables and altered routes.  Detailed info here.
• On Foot – Shouldn’t be a problem

Getting Away

The Mound will be shut by the end of the Breakfast so if you need to drive to the north of Edinburgh, use the bridges.

At 10.15 most of the arterial routes coming from the West including the Western Approach Road and Corstorphine Road will be shut until 11.30 as his Holiness comes into town from the airport.  It is anticipated that the breakfast, including the Q&A will be finished by 9.30 at the very latest to give those who need to get west the chance to get clear without any problems

Almost all roads will be reopened by 3.30 in the afternoon so getting home in the evening should be no problem at all.

Viewing the Pope

If you want to see the Pope whilst you are in town, then from what I can work out he will be coming down Princes St at around 12ish.  My daughter and I will try to catch him between 12.30 and 1.00 as he makes his way up towards Morningside for lunch.  If you want to join us let me know!

Attacat Ben was talking this morning at the Glasgow New Media Breakfast on his pet topic of Google Analytics.  (The presentation will be repeated in Edinburgh next week)

Ben set the attendees five bits of home work that they could do today to make changes that will improve their site.

1. Referring Traffic with Goals

Identify the referring sites delivering you the most goals.  Think what you can do to increase the number of visitors from that site.  Can you build a relationship with that site?  Can you convert the existing traffic more easily.

Google Analytics – Referrals and Goals from Attacat Internet Marketing on Vimeo.

2. Keywords Report with Goals

Find the 10 keywords driving the most conversions (goals).  Then see where you are ranking in the organic listings.  Then seek to improve the ranks on these phrases where you can.

3. In-site search

Your home work is to either set it up, or to examine the report.  Look at the top ten searches and then put them into the search box on your site.  Can you improve the experience?  Could you stock the product they are looking for?

4. Play with Advanced Segments

In the Analytics dashboard, have a play with advanced segments.  Look for rises and falls in particular segments when compared against the rest of your segments.  This sounds much more complicated than it is:

1. In the “Dashboard” (first report page you come to) click the “All Visits” button



2. Select the three major traffic source segments (Search Traffic, Direct Traffic and Referral Traffic in addition to the all visits one that was pre-selected)



3. Look for lumps and bumps!

5. Utility pages on Exit Page Report

Exit pages can be difficult to read but if you focus in on the “utility pages” (delivery page, faq, about us) then you can get insight.  When someone visits these pages, they have a question in mind.  If you have a high exit rate, that question is not being answered.  Try to work out what that question could be.

After two days of presentations and a good few hours going through my notes, here is the list of points that I took away from the organic search and social media tracks at SMX Advanced London (the premier high level search conference this side of the Atlantic).

I’ve bolded what I consider to be the very best tips.

What gems have I missed here? Were you on the paid search or conversion tracks?  Please share your SMX insights in the comments.

Wolfram Alpha Keynote

1. Wolfram Alpha is getting better by the day and should be added to the researcher’s arsenal. Fact Engine Optimisation anyone? Beular?
2. Wolfram Alpha’s forthcoming widgets and plugins will be great ways to add content to your website. Keep an eye out for a sponsored link program too

2010 Ranking Factors

1. Recommended reading: Random surfer vs Reasonable Surfer patent (Links on the page that people are more likely to click may be considerably more valuable than those they are not likely to click on)
2. Tweets may or may not be treated as links by Google but likelihood is that they will be as this is where the bulk of the freshness links are occurring.
3. There is a suspicion that data is not flowing from Facebook to Google. Bing on the other hand does have relationships and therefore likely to see effect of Facebook on SERPs here first.
4. There is a strong correlation between position of keyword in title and rank [compelling evidence for keyword first, brand second].
5. H1s not an important ranking factor (position on page more important than whether the header is defined by an H1 or not)
6. Keywords in Alt attribute slightly better correlated with rank than use of H1 – but only slightly
7. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) (similar to Latent Semantic Indexing) looks very promising as a ranking factor so modify your SEO copywriting. Clue
8. Are 301s passing less link juice? Perhaps canonicals are the solution. Perhaps you’ve just got to get off your arse and get the links moved.
9. Now easier to get your home page ranked than internal pages. Has the value of internal linking been reduced?
10. Mix up your anchor text more than you used to. Non keyword anchors are probably now a must
11. It may be that more effort is now required to make pages appear unique. Have your search results style or category pages taken a hit?
12. Have a process for checking website source code and robots.txt for hacking attacks – they are getting more subtle. Can use link tools to find strange anchor text
13. Worry less about code validation and more about amount of code. Reduce and compress
14. If a page in SERPs does not correlate with standard ranking factors, it could be due to freshness algo. An algo that is still evolving and not all that clever in the UK yet (Often see US results in QDF results in UK)
15. Canonicals require care
16. Archive your Twitter content, Twitter isn’t

Leveraging Digital Assets (aka Universal Search)

1. It’s easier to rank universal content than conventional content due to less competition and less sophisticated algorithms
2. Yahoo Answers content is very trusted and in some cases treated as universal content so worth having a proactive Yahoo Answers strategy
3. Press releases viewed as universal content (Ask Jeeves)
4. Search engines love structured data such as FAQ and help pages
5. “Master the micro & inject it into the macro” – e.g. understand how to rank in Product Search, then gain benefits of being in main rankings
6. Use microformats in general but specifically for product search (SEOGadget.co.uk has good guides to microformats)
7. Video can improve the ranking of a site that has initial rankings
8. If self hosting video, use commonly used video players to ensure that it recognised as video by the search engines
9. Can use Facebook meta tags to specify that you have video in your page
10. Your XML site map for Google should include video url, website url, meta data and compelling thumbnails
11. One to watch: YouTube are experimenting with allowing you to link back to your site
12. Google News is for everyone, not just news sites
13. Images are important for getting into news (use standard sizes 300×250 or 180×150). Make alt tag same as headline
14. To get into news your site needs to have articles from three different authors posted within the last seven days. Include author names in page and Google News XML
15. If get rejected from Google News, contest it and be Billy Big Balls about it
16. Consider separating out industry news (so can submit to Google News) and company news (keep as blog content)
17. Rather than use fake rating services, use the more expensive (but lower risk) services that have individuals with a real love for content

Link Building

1. The Inconvenient Truth of Link Building – value of links has changed as a result of low quality/no quality rot
2. Zemanta and Outbrain worth investigating as part of a “link development” strategy
3. There’s mixed opinions on the SEO benefit of Facebook like buttons but agreement on marketing benefit
4. Google Reader’s “More Like This” functionality has a role to play in link building/development
5. Speed is of the essence in gaining links. Yahoo Pipes can be used to keep you swift. Monitoring press release sites will show you what the news is about to be.
6. Look into PuSH Bot if you aren’t already
7. Link Building is about Relationship Building (PR anyone?)
8. TagCrowd is useful for visualising excel anchor text data
9. Reclaim old links – use tools such as Majestic or sift old server logs.
10. Most influential links helping a competitor rank are likely to be those that link to the actual page ranking.
11. Have a strategy for getting links from government and university sites (See Kelvin Newman’s excellent tips here)
12. Narrowing down a large list of potential link opportunities to blogs updating daily will allow you to rapidly produce a list of target sites to start building relationships with – especially if you have a new SEO tool to pitch 😉

Keyword Research

1. Create a keyword “Editorial Calendar” that considers seasons, scheduled events, trends etc and dovetail it with your plans for PPC campaigns, blogging, twitter updates, YouTube videos etc – prepare them in advance
2. Use PPC for real keyword research
3. Add Mozenda (a scrapping tool) to your keyword research armoury by thinking laterally. Combine it with Google XML API to scrape Google Suggest. (Alternative suggestion 80legs)
4. Other research tools that are useful with imagination include: Xenu Link Sleuth, Microsoft ISS, Mechanical Turks
5. Keywords can not be translated
6. The length of the keyword long tail varies by language. Spanish short, Dutch and German longer than English
7. Yahoo Suggest will through up different keyword ideas to Google Suggest
   

Here is a  quick recap as well as presentation slides from Richard Gregory’s session on Yahoo! & Microsoft Search Alliance: The New Search Powerhouse by Latitude

Social Media Measurement

1. There is no simple formula for measuring value from social media. Majority of companies are still very unsophisticated in the way they are measuring social media. [Opportunity]
2. Focus social media measurement for e-commerce on the impact it has on awareness, conversion rates and return rates
3. Consider which search phrases should be attributed to social media rather than SEO
4. Focus social media on customers you have, not the customers you want
5. Social Media ROI may be reduced costs (e.g. of customer service). Consider costs of not doing social media
6. Consider calculating social media impressions and compare to standard advertising impression metrics
7. The number of hyper engaged individuals may be your most important social media metric
8. Paid Social Media tools tend to improve workflow and are better at sentiment analysis when compared to free offerings

Video Marketing

1. Use the YouTube Keyword Tool
2. The YouTube algorithm is simpler, more based on popularity and tagging than the Google algorithm
3. Blog post idea: Build top 10 lists from great YouTube content e.g. Mashable top 10 wedding dance videos on YouTube
4. Consider using RDFa (meta data for video)
5. Virals: “Shit that people like to share”
6. Don’t neglect paid promotion for encouraging content to go viral
7. Lest we forget: E mail is still the most used medium for spreading content
8. As you deserve a break from tips, here are the videos used to illustrate what works:
   • funny ,
   • unbelievable
   • pose a question ,
   • informative (good for B2B – if it has real insight)
   • or piggyback on cult phenomena “talent imitates, genius steals”
9. In B2B even a few views can = successful viral
10. If someone embeds your video, work out how you can drive traffic to them
11. According to a YouTube Senior Industry Manager initial results on tests of using Google’s audio to text capabilities within the ranking algorithm has been very favourable. Interpret as not being used yet but likely to become a signal in due course. He also suggested use of Google Goggles type technology for ranking videos was someway off.

The Facebook Opportunity

1. The Content Network does work. It’s just called “Facebook Ads” and it’s quality score slap free
2. Recruiting? Use Facebook Ads to target competitor brands.
3. Facebook ads need to be refreshed regularly. Special offers, linkbait, localised and personality driven ads work well
4. Apply keyword research approaches (especially lateral thesaurus) to Facebook interests (but remember they are interests, not keywords)
5. Segment landing pages by social groups rather than keywords. Keep your landing pages consistent with your ads. Think 2, 3 or 4 stage sales process
6. Facebook is awash with marketing opportunities and is the future of demographic research. Take advantage whilst you can. And don’t rule out B2B
7. Philanthropy rocks on Facebook
8. Friend your competitors friends (but do not fake it). The refresh button is your friend (find more than six of your competitors friends). Can also use Facebook ads to target competitors friends
9. Use Google Ad Planner (imagine this being delivered in a Baz Lurhmann “Use Sunscreen” manner http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfq_A8nXMsQ)
10. Remember Facebook controls your fans and could separate you at any time. Get e-mail addresses
11. LinkedIn profiling could be very interesting

Crisis and Reputation Management

1. Journalists are hungry for information during a crisis – this is opportunity but speed is key
2. Plan for a crisis possibilities: have press releases pre-written, PPC campaigns built, FAQ page written etc so you can saturate SERPs quickly
3. You know you need to grab your brand name on social media sites. You might not have done it on these ones yet: Crunchbase, slideshare, Knowem and Scribd
4. Some opportunities to increase “friendly” real estate proportion in the SERPS: Set up site links. Put in a sub directory. Update wikipedia page. Do a press releases to get into news. Go to affiliates, gave them a page to put on their site. Ditto for job sites. Add a linked in profile.
5. “everyone has right to speak, but not necessarily be heard”
6. Consider buying sites that appear on brand searches and have negative comments on them (through third party)
7. Monitor both brand phrases and names of key personnel for negative comment
8. If a site has a page with negative comments ranking, see if you could link build to another page on the same site or try injecting a new page (e.g. to a community site)
9. Yahoo Analytics has much deeper detail about individuals coming onto site than Google Analytics
10. Value of SERPs reputation management is still not properly appreciated.

Other

1. Infographics garner backlinks when they show lots of data, complex ideas or boring topics in an aesthetically pleasing way.
2. Give your best linkbait/virals to a high profile site in return for a link.
3. Thank those that link to you – it opens the door for next time
4. Investigate the Social Media for Firefox plugin
5. Bait and Switch is now just Bait and build a Trusted site (some of the time anyway)

As Andrew Girdwood explained so eloquently many of the presentations at SMX Advanced (at least the ones I attended) fell short of the “Advanced” label but there were notable exceptions that more than made up for some of the overly basic or salesy presentations.

The stand out session was the Killer Facebook Tactics “show”.  And “show” it really was. If you want a KPI for measuring the way a presentation is being recieved, then the number of times the door slams as people sneek into the auditorium after the presentation starts is a pretty good one.  The word got out on Twitter and the room kept filling up.

Guy Levine set the tone with a fast moving humourous presentation that uploaded a huge number of tips in 11mins 38 seconds (his timing, not mine).  It was the perfect compliment to what came later.

The sensible filling was provided by Marco Covsaro.  But then came the conference’s unique duo.

With a charachter like Marty Weintraub you might feel that you wouldn’t have a chance of shining as a co-presenter.  However Marty’s colleague Merry Morud more than held her own.

(Calm before the storm: the Facebook panel prepare)

Their talk was a call to action to take advantage of Facebook opportunities, delivered with pure comedy.  Guy and Marty then provided one of the most informed Q&As of the show.  The session is undoubtedly the one that will bring the biggest benefit to our clients (as much for the philosophy installed as for the tips)

Other highlights included the Ranking Factors in 2010 seminar, Link Building and various contributions from Mikkel deMib Svendsen.  Barak Berkowitz’s keynote provided insightful thought to the way the web is going.

The greatest travesty of the event?  Bringing Rand Fishkin over to the UK and only giving him 12 minutes.

Key Takeaways

We’ll compile a list of the best tips tomorrow but here are the key things that I am thinking about as a result of the Conference:

1. Facebook is being underestimated as a marketing medium – Facebook data and Ads rock (oodles of tips here)
2. Are 301s something to be avoided? (See Rob Kerry discussion)
3. The need to investigate Mozenda (Sam Crocker’s top tip)
4. Feel strangely guilty for this one: Making use of the YouTube Keyword Tool
5. Spending more time with Yahoo! Analytics (mentioned a few times)
6. Making use of Wolfram Alpha as a research tool and wait for their widget and API release. (Keynote notes)
7. Jumping on the infographic band wagon. (as per Chris Bennet notes)
8. Getting more scientific about SERP reputation management (MdM special)
9. Taking website security more seriously
10. Archiving Twitter data
11. Being less sceptical about alt tags, more cynical about H1s, paying greater attention to Latent Dirichlet Allocation and loving home pages more. (Rand Fishkin Research)

(My complete notes from the two days are available here.  I’m working my way through them bolding what I deem to be the best tips and will pull them altogether into a list in the morning)

If you were at SMX, what were your key take-aways?