What's the most important mobile marketing tactic?

by Mike Moran

Perhaps this doesn't sound like a headline that belongs in Search Engine Guide, but trust me, it is. I was at the Brandhackers Meetup Monday night in New York City on a panel focusing on what marketers need to know about mobile marketing. But what struck me is how much the audience needed to hear the most important idea about mobile marketing, which is that you don't do it in isolation. Your mobile marketing must be
integrated with everything else you do for maximum effect, and I shared my opinion on what for most companies is the most effective mobile marketing tactic--search.

In the U.S., the latest stats I see are that les than half of all phones are smartphones, so they still have clunky browsers and no apps. Even for smartphone users enjoying those capabilities, they still conduct an inordinate number of searches, compared to everything else they do.

Why? In part it is the form factor. Search is something that works well on a small screen, much better than clicking links on Web pages. And it works on most phones, not just the smart ones.

Image via Wikipedia

What's more, local search is probably the most important mobile app. It works not only on phones but on the computers that people are using before they become mobile. Now some mobile marketing is advertising from big brands that don't care a whit about local, but if you are a company trying to drive people to your physical location, your mobile strategy should begin with your Google Place page. If you haven't claimed it, you don't know what is being shown about you. It is not as unusual as you think to have incorrect phone numbers or even addresses.

Fancy phone apps and mobile advertising are excellent tactics in some situations, but many companies that I see asking what they should do about mobile haven't really done what they can about search yet. If that's you, then you need to start with search before you get fancy.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

Source: http://www.searchengineguide.com/mike-moran/whats-the-most-important-mobile-marketin.php

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What bayonet-wielding professors can teach you about online marketing

You’re a plumber. You want to rank #1 for ‘Seattle plumbing’. That means you have to write interesting content about plumbing, in Seattle, every 2 days, for the next year. All you can think is “Oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap.”

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Well, Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (ex-college professor) laughs at your silliness. You think you’ve got it rough? Try being a college professor, leading a regiment that just ran out of ammunition, with a bunch of crazed Alabamans charging up the hill at you.

Do something irrational. It’s only reasonable.

The Battle of Gettysburg—during the US Civil War, for you folks who aren’t in the US—was a defining moment in US history. And the defining moment of the battle was arguably when the 20th Maine, led by Col. Chamberlain, ran out of ammunition.

Chamberlain did something totally irrational. He ordered his regiment, which had a handful of bullets left, to fix bayonets and charge down the hill.

Given the circumstances, it was the only reasonable thing to do.

The courage to be bizarre

Chamberlain had the courage to be bizarre if it meant achieving his goal.

Do you have the same? Yes. Especially since no one’s shooting at you.

If you have to write about plumbing, write about the plumbing required for the Death Star. Seriously, how would that work?

Need to talk about spa treatments? How many famous historical figures would’ve benefitted from a quick mud bath? I bet George Washington would’ve smiled for the occasional painting.

Every subject can become fascinating if you let it. You just have to have the courage to be bizarre every now and then.

I’m not suggesting you write one ridiculous post after another. But taking a flyer now and then can’t hurt, and it might attract whole audiences you didn’t know you had.

Sometimes, bizarre tells the story

Every now and then, explaining what you do in a totally unique way helps your audience understand.

I tried to explain PageRank and authority for years. What finally worked? Turning pages into buckets

Want to understand the problems with quantum theory? Read about a cat in a box.

Weird can be a great teaching tool.

So, what happened?!

Oh, yeah, the battle.

If I’d been in Chamberlain’s place, we’d all need passports to visit South Carolina.

But Chamberlain’s move worked. The 20th Maine ran screaming down Little Round Top with sharp pointy things at the ready. The 15th Alabama was exhausted from a long march, no water and a day of fighting uphill. Chamberlain’s regiment turned the battle at a critical moment. The move helped the North hold the line and possibly win the Civil War.

If Chamberlain and his regiment could do that in the face of dying, I’ll bet you can come up with a few creative ways to explain your business to your customers.

Like writing about Civil War battles…

Other stuff

• 14 nice things you can do for your customers
• Automate Linkscape reporting with Google Spreadsheets
• Why all web developers should learn SEO
• Why SEOs should learn programming
• Dan Cobley: What Physics teaches about marketing
• Analytics plus SEO equals content
• Follow me on Twitter
• The Real World Unscary Guide to SEO Copywriting

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/v8G_APqEF-4/bayonet-wielding-professors-marketing.htm

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How SEOmoz Gained 1000s of Visits from Google News (You Can Too)

Posted by Cyrus Shepard

Consider this image below from the SEOmoz Google Analytics account. Behold a sight rarely displayed in SEO blogs. 

Notice the similarities to a typical Kansas highway. Both are dead flat, contain no peaks or valleys, and are traffic free.

Such was the sad state of SEOmoz’s referral traffic from Google News prior to April of this year. In truth, SEOmoz didn't really pursue traffic from Google News for several reasons.

• Google News never sent us significant traffic in the past
• In our minds, we don't consider ourselves a "news" organization
• Unlike news organizations, SEOmoz doesn't drive revenue through advertising

What Changed Our Minds?

In April, Rand’s post on White Hat SEO went nuclear. The blogosphere exploded with commentary and traffic poured in from all corners of the Internet. We recorded 8000 visits from Google News the first two days alone. 

The drought was over.

But why that particular post? Rob Ousey from Distilled pointed out that the few SEOmoz posts included in Google's News index all had one thing in common. They each contained a number in the URL. For example:

../blog/white-hat-seo-it-fing-works-12421
../blog/google-told-you-so-12428
../ugc/dissecting-local-seo-via-competitive-analysis-12284

Given the way Google News indexes content, this makes sense:

“Display a three-digit number. The URL for each article must contain a unique number consisting of at least three digits… Please note that this rule is waived with News sitemaps.”   
- From Google (publishers) Help

Our indexation was pure accident! By default, most SEOmoz blog URLs don't contain numbers. 

We decided to dispose of our previous perceptions and chart a proactive course in gaining visits from Google News. Here's how we did it - and how you can too.

1. Are You Newsworthy? Yes You Are

You no longer have to be a big news player (or a spammer) to find your way in Google News. Google clearly states both blogs and news organizations alike qualify for inclusion.

Ask yourself the following questions. Consider yourself a candidate if you meet the following criteria.

1. Do you discuss current events?
2. Is your content timely?
3. Do you offer commentary?
4. Is your blog itself newsworthy?

These are some of the same qualifications that make for great content in any context. The number of categories in Google News is staggering. It includes topics as varied as business, education, humor and even ice hockey.  

There's room for everything in Google News. Love to write about hair? Yep, there's news for that.

Don't sell yourself short. If you’re not already producing newsworthy content, you should.

2. Qualify Your Site

Not everyone gets in Google News automatically. To see if you're already included in the index, perform a “site:” command within Google News using your domain. In our case, SEOmoz was already included.

If Google hasn’t included your site in its news index, you can request inclusion.

Rand addressed how to improve your chances of appearing in Google News in a recent PRO Webinar. He recommended improving your site's substantive metrics, including such factors as the number of inbound links and subscribers to your blog. Having a good user interface can also help.

Again, even if getting in Google News isn't your focus, these are the same benchmarks for increasing your visibility on the Web in any market.

3. Get Your Content Indexed

Google keeps it's news index separate from it's regular web index. Just because Google crawls your site and you appear in search results, doesn't mean your content is included in Google news.

There are two ways to get your content included in the index:

1. Number your URLs (see above)
or
2. Create a Google News Sitemap.

The sitemap contains a number of advantages over simply numbering your URLs. Sitemaps allow you to tag your article with proper titles and publication dates. In addition to categorizing your content more accurately, sitemaps also give you the ability to annotate your content with metadata such as keywords or stock tickers.

The downside is news sitemaps can be complicated to build if you lack development skills. Google dictates that your news sitemap should only contain articles published in the last 24 hours. So you'll want an automated system. In our case, Casey Henry was able to build a custom sitemap generator that met these specifications.

If you run a blog using a third party platform, a number of good solutions exist for Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal and more.

4. Rise to the Top

A number of great articles have been written about how Google News works and how to get indexed. Indexation relies on several factors:

1. Topic Factors – How hot is the story topic? Last week it was The Governator, but it could be anything, even kittens.
2. Story Factors – How relevant and fresh is your specific content to this topic.
3. Publication Reputation – Sort of like Domain Authority, except specific to news publication.

Timing is key to Google news. Paraphrasing from Rand's aformentioned webinar: "If you break a big story first, you can see more traffic than you ever imagined from the first page of Google News."

But timing a great story is hard to predict.

What you can control are a number of on-page factors that improve your chances. For example, adding a good photo next to your headline increases the likelihood of Google displaying the photo, which also helps your CTR. Adding a unique video to your post (along with maintaining an active video sitemap) also improves your chances of rising to the top.

Other best practices to consider include titles, article text, and more. This great interview with Josh Cohen highlights many of these techniques.

5. What About the Results?

After we added a sitemap, Google News became the 4th largest referring traffic source for SEOmoz, bigger than Linkedin, StumbleUpon and Hacker News (but significantly behind Twitter, Facebook, and Google Image search.)

In the last month, three different posts received over 1000 extra visits. Our future posts are "primed" for more. To be fair, this isn't a huge amount of traffic for a site like SEOmoz. The traffic has a high bounce rate and low conversion rate.

That said, SEOmoz has not changed its content one iota to gain more traffic from Google News. We don't "chase the algorithm." Were we to optimize our content towards this goal, our traffic would undoubtedly rise higher. 

Got a success story or more tips? Please share in the comments below.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/qtNMcZvFPgQ/how-seomoz-gained-1000s-of-visits-from-google-news

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Google Adds Flight Schedules to�Search

We’ve known for a long time that Google has a high priority on getting travel information to its searchers. After all, they offered�ITA$600 million and persisted through the legal earthquake that resulted to get access to flight data. Now we’re seeing the first in what’s expected to be a long list of new travel-oriented features: [...]

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Google Adds Flight Schedules to Search

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/SearchEngineJournal/~3/Z_FvC6KYWZ0/

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Official: Google?s New Travel Search OneBox

Source: http://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/searchengineland/~3/XqZCuEK73b0/official-googles-new-travel-search-onebox-78882

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Google Wallet: Android NFC Payment System Announced

With smartphone usage growing exponentially, this afternoon, Google announced the release of their long-rumored and long-awaited Near Field Communications (NFC) payment system, Google Wallet. Google Wallet is a mobile application for mobile device...

Source: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/pLDeiYTPe80/Google-Wallet-Android-NFC-Payment-System-Announced

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Winning Multinational eCommerce SEO Strategies

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Ecommerce lives and dies on its conversion rate. That's true for all channels, not just SEO.�Get the three key areas covered here right, and you'll be able to conquer those new territories while not just protecting, but actually&n...

Source: http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~r/sewblog/~3/cBc3weCVPE0/Winning-Multinational-eCommerce-SEO-Strategies

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Groupon's days are numbered

Yesterday I wrote about how discounts are addictive, and can kill your business. The addictive nature of discounts is why I think Groupon should’ve sold to Google. Most of the businesses that use Groupon have no idea how to handle discounts as a marketing tool. So they fling deals out left and right.

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That leads to bad press for Groupon. It hurts Groupon’s customers (the businesses). And it frustrates consumers. In the long run, Groupon is selling a drug that hurts its customer base. And unlike the tobacco industry, Groupon doesn’t have billions of potential customers.

It’s not Groupon’s fault

I need to make something really clear: This is not Groupon’s fault. They’re not deceiving anyone. They’ve created an exceptional company with a pretty cool business model.

But for Groupon to survive, a sizable chunk of American businesses figure out how to use Groupon’s service without getting addicted. If they don’t, those businesses will themselves, or at least marginalize themselves to the point where they can’t use Groupon any more.

Ironically, Groupon may kill off its customer base.

How to fix it

I’m sure Groupon is way ahead of me on this one. But they need to provide oodles of training content for business owners. Give a business owner a coupon, he gets happy customers for a day. Teach a business owner to use coupons, and he gets happy customers for a lifetime. Er. Or something.

If Groupon can:

1. Advance the ‘Groupon Store’ concept; and
2. Teach business owners how to retain customers won through Groupon.

…then they’ve got a model that lasts forever.

It doesn’t matter how they do it. But one way or another, Groupon is going to have to educate every business that uses their service. They must teach those businesses to derive long-term value from the short-term high discounts deliver.

Other stuff

• Discounts: The vicodin of internet marketing
• Companies need tension: Avoiding the ‘you go’ effect.
• Don’t be a literary prude: How to write with personality
• 10 phrases that mean your blog post is worthless
• 10 reasons you’re not an ‘advanced’ SEO
• Buy my analytics e-book, will ya?
• Or at least follow me on Twitter. Throw me a freakin’ bone, here, people.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/conversationmarketing/MRJI/~3/MI-4Gy9XWrM/groupons-days-are-numbered.htm

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