Why Pinterest is Worth Your SEO Efforts

Third only to search giants Google and YouTube, Pinterest is a rapidly expanding social media site focused on images. Pinterest boards allow users to “pin” and “repin” images they like from content anywhere on the Internet. Because the graphics and photographs on Pinterest boards are widely viewed and can be repined numerous times, this site offers clear benefits for businesses both small and large to establish their brands.

Google Search Visibility 

Five common problems with SEO

When it comes to having an online presence, SEO — short for search engine optimization — is the name of the game. Unfortunately, for those of us interested in the ROI of Internet marketing, Google’s algorithm for SEO is ever-changing, which means that by the time we find an SEO technique that yields results, something new is already on the horizon.

When Looking For a Local Business Search Still Rules

When people are looking to find local businesses, search is still king according to research from the Local Search Association (formerly the Yellow Pages Association).

Two things jumped out at me when looking at this chart. One is that the yellow page numbers seem incredibly high. Have 62% of people really used the yellow pages in the last month?

The second is how far down social media is on this list. Is social media really the 9th most used source to fine a local business today? Is social media really behind newspapers, directories, store circulars and internet yellow pages?

Using Search Engines To Greater Effect: Knowing The Difference In Your SEO Approach

Search Engine Optimization is a buzzword in most circles on the Internet yet few really understand what it is and how it works. Given this lack of understanding, most businesses, blogs, and individuals don’t get that it’s, for all intents and purposes, the life blood of ensuring online success. Most consider SEO with the same indifference or soft approach that has allowed competition to railroad them while, concurrently, making huge success stories from other online entrepreneurs.

Don’t Build Your Brand On A Third Party Platform

This is a topic I have been thinking about for a while and the recent article on BizReport prompted me to finally write this post.

As I was travelling this summer I started to see more and more business advertise their Facebook page instead of their domain name. It was not only big brands that were doing this, but smaller brands too.

So the BizReport article ask’s this question at the top of the post:

Are Facebook Pages killing websites? Does your company need a website? This question is being asked in boardrooms around the globe as figures and consumer behavior suggests websites are losing out to Facebook Pages.

Don’t Forget Search

Really interesting research data from ad network Chitika, via eMarketer on the quality of visitors from social networking sites.

The Chitika study looked at the quality of traffic from search engines and social networks, and the results were a little surprising. According to Chitika, social sites Facebook and Digg are more likely to send returning traffic to your web site than search engines such as Yahoo!, Google and Bing.

More than one-fifth of users referred to a site by Facebook visited at least four times in the course of a week. Less than 12% of Google-referred visitors were as loyal, about the same percentage as Twitter.

Downside of Sharing

One of the best things about a blog is that you get to talk about and exchange ideas on what is working and not working in social media. That is good.

The downside is that by sharing you might wake up one morning and find out that the tactics(s) that you have been using successfully no longer work. Either because the search engines manually adjusted your site, or because a lot of people started to use that tactic thus devaluing it.

This is a topic that Aaron Wall at SEObook.com wrote about today and Brent Csutoras wrote a great post on Shoemoney.com recently about over sharing.

Speaking at Boston Internet Marketing SEO Networking Meetup

Next Monday (June 2nd) I will be talking at the Boston Internet Marketing SEO Networking Meetup about how we have used social media sites like stumbleupon, digg.com etc to create targeted links and traffic. My presentation will be followed by a round table discussion on social media.

If you are in the Boston area and are coming to the event I hope that you will stop by and introduce yourself

Talking Reputation Management With Aaron Wall

I recently had the chance to ask search engine optimization expert Aaron Wall about reputation management and how to use different social media tools to “squeeze out” negative references from showing up on the search results page. This was a topic that Aaron had written about in the past and I am grateful to Aaron to take time to answer my questions

A Look Inside A Social Media Campaign – Part 2

Last month I pulled back the curtain a little and gave a look inside a social media campaign that we are currently undertaking for soccer tickets online. The story generated quite a few comments and emails and I wanted to provide an update on how the campaign is going.

To summarize our initial efforts we created five targeted social media events focused around creating awareness for the web site. Two of the events went popular on Digg and two made the buzz page at StumbleUpon. As a result these two web sites sent over 5,000 visitors to the web site.