Case Studies, Social Link Bait and How to Make Viral Content

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Most people skim articles until they find something that catches them. You could use a gimmick to grab people’s attention, but the best way to get your readers to read your entire post is to create high quality content with proof to back it up. Case studies are one easy method to get into a topic while providing your readers with quality information. They are also one of the most favorable forms of content on the internet and wonderful “social link bait” or quality links.

Creating a case study should be easy if you can write high quality content. By adding reasearch and data, you can make a superb case study.

All case studies are unique. Your experience on a given topic and the amount of time you allocate for creating content make every study different. You will have to experiment, but the more time you put in will probably decide how good your content will be. You’ll need to do a lot of reasearch so that you can disect whatever the topic is well enough for your readers to understand. True quality content takes a lot of effort and time to make something the majority of a demographic will be interested in.

Case studies have a lot of benefits, including increased website traffic, brand recognition, social link bait, networking and overall site improvement.

Out of the many benefits of creating high level content, especially case studies, one of the best is the creation of social link bait. Social link bate is “any content of feature within a website designed specifically to gain attention or encourage others to link to the website.”

Social media has become ingrained in the lives of millions.  This has lead many away from Google and SEO over the past ten years. This is why link building is essential. “People will start caring less about links in future years because social popularity will become the new link popularity.” (Point Blank)  Google and Bing have even started including social media information in their searches. It also seems logical that Google will put in place a “social rank” system to compliment the “page rank” system many are unhappy with. With these changes, more professionals have seen the divide between research and data-driven results.

Social link bait is similar to regular link bait except it is shared by more websites. Social media is the most common platform for our demographics to share link bait.

To create social link bait, remember that it must be “socially sharable.” You can use sites like ThingLink for image optimization. It even includes a way to include links in your images.

Articles are simple and classic, but content can be made other ways. Why not try out a case study and try to make some social link bait? Money isn’t needed to make viral content and trying these methods might be a great start.

Gregory Smith writes for Search Engine Journal.

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Google Granted Facial Recognition Patent

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On September 5th, the U.S. Patent and Trademark awarded Google a patent that allows one or more users to sign in to a computer using facial recognition. This patent, called “Login to a computing device based on facial recognition”, uses a computer’s camera to determinte the identity of users by facial recognition. The patent also details how information will be gathered to confirm the identity of a user.

According to the patent filing, “A method of logging a first user in to a computing device includes receiving an image of the first user via a camera operably coupled with the computing device and determining an identity of the first user based on the received image. If the determined identity matches a predetermined identity, then, based at least on the identity of the first user matching the predetermined identity, the first user is logged in to the computing device.”

At the end of 2011, Apple submitted a very similar patent for facial recognition technology but it is unkown how Google or Apple intend to use this technology. Any chance of patent wars regarding how it is used are relying on the high profile patent litigation already occuring between technology companies, such as the recent lawsuits between Samsung and Apple.

Similar, but less advanced, technology is already present in Android 4.0+ devices like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus so it is likely the patent for facial recognition technology will be put to use in future Android phones.

 

David Angotti writes for Search Engine Journal, and can be found on Twitter at @DavidAngotti

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Microsoft Wants You To Take the Bing Challenge

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The “Pepsi Challange” of the 1970’s and early 1980’s was a classic marketing move that created tons of similar advertising campaigns. In the challenge, Pepsi went to popular areas like shopping malls and had public participate in blind taste tests, in which people seemed to prefer Pepsi over Coke.

Microsoft is now using a similar marketing campaign with Bing. The new campaign, available at BingItOn.com, allows people to blindly compare search results side-by-side on the same page. Microsoft is even claiming people so far choose Bing 2:1 over Google. Microsoft believes that Bing is a higher quality search engine and are trying to convince the public to “break the Google habit.” They are even offering prizes for those who take the challenge.

First, you enter a query or choose from a list of suggested searches, and the site presents you with two sets of unbranded results. Then, you decide which you prefer. After you’ve done this five times, the site will tell you which search engine you chose.

The site doesn’t let you have the full capabilities of either website, but focuses only on basic searching and results.

 

To see the original article:
Bing Offers Own Version Of “Pepsi Challenge” Against Google: “Bing It On”

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Why Transparency is Essential for SEO Providers

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In the SEO industry, there are more than a few people out there who are more than happy to take advantage of unknowing website owners  They are detrimental to the expertise, authority and trustworthiness of the entire industry. Numerous website owners and marketing managers have been victimized by these questionable SEO providers and the largest hurdle to overcome while working with them is gaining the client’s trust. They have put faith in a supposed “expert” before and ended up regretting it. This is why transparency is essential in providing good SEO services and building client trust.

There are four keys for SEO providers to be more transparent to help establish trust with their clients.

1) Long Term Strategy

Outline a six month to a year building link strategy when working with a new client. By creating this strategy and reviewing with the client before beginning any link building activities, a reference point is established for the client.  This also establishes accountability for the SEO provider.

2) Monthly Reports

In the past, companies like Google held website owners accountable for all of their link building service. If the site owner was taken advantage of by a not-so-fastidious SEO, there was no one to turn to. The client had put blind trust into an “expert” and assumed work was being done. Monthly link building reports show precisely where you are developing links each month. Your client doesn’t have to assume anything. Keeping track of what you have built, and what you are working on helps to provide a log that can be referenced to at any time to show how your work is helping a certain client.

3) Monthly Calls

While some clients may want to keep in contact more often than others, a scheduled monthly phone call to review that month’s activities and plans for the next month helps keep the client, as well as the provider, in sync.

4) SEO Reports

Rather than overwhelming your client with analytics, send the organic visitor data and keyword reports. These two reports show what kind of effect SEO is having on their site without boggling client’s minds with too much data. They show how well you are attracting visitors to their site and how well recommended keywords are doing. 

Nick Stamoulis, of Search Engine Journal, has more on this topic. 
Transparency is Key to Building SEO Client Trust

 

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3 Valuable Internet Marketing Points to Focus On

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With so many changes and details involved in various areas of internet marketing and SEO, it’s often easy to get lost in the quest for what information to focus on. Keyword research? Competitor tactics? The truth is that there are only a few details that are truly important to improving your ROI online.

  1. Conversion rates and goal completion – This is the one difference internet marketing has between almost every other form of marketing: the ability to track conversions down to a specific action from the source. By setting up conversion tracking in AdWords or goals inside Google Analytics, you can see exactly what on your site or advertisement is triggering actions that you want to see improved. In AdWords this means knowing where your money is showing any return based on keywords you’re bidding on. In Analytics you can see the flow of your traffic and see what parts of the site help achieve the goals you’ve set up. Not taking advantage of these tools is losing a huge benefit from your online marketing setup.
  2. Existing backlinks – This is something that will become more worth investigating as Google completes their new updates (one this upcoming weekend). Learn what and who is linking to you to anticipate potential issues you’ll have to deal with from the search engines and why you might encounter any. Are the majority of your links set up with a specific anchor text? Do you have a large amount of junk links from sketchy blog networks? If too many of your links are unnatural, it may even be in your best interest to just let go and start over with a new site. It would take less time and effort to start over and do it right. To research your backlinks you can use tools like Majestic SEO or Open Site Explorer and find out what dark monsters may lurk in your web site’s closet.
  3. Visitors – In all businesses, to succeed the customer needs to be focused on. This includes any online business. One way to effectively track what people are seeing, how they’re reacting to different parts of your site and marketing plan – Google Analytics. Here you can dig down to see what pages people leave your site on (perhaps you’re missing important information they wanted to find and leave to search elsewhere), how long they stay on your site and how much they explore, and how they complete their visit. Do they just leave, or do they actually begin and complete a possible action? You can also use other metrics to learn from your visitor engagement, such as putting social media sharing options in place and seeing how much of your content is worth the trouble of sharing with others. All of these will help you learn further on how well your site connects with the visitors.

These three details are areas worth focusing on to help determine ways you can improve your site and online marketing approach. Doing this will improve your connection to your visitors and help know areas to adjust to improve sales.

Read the following for more details on these points:
The 3 Most Important Online Marketing Metrics to Monitor

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Online Paid Subscriptions For Newspapers Growing

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In the past year the number of newspapers that require paid subscriptions has doubled from approximately 10% to 20.9% of all U.S. newspapers. This is a sign that the newspapers are seeing a change happening that they’re having to adjust to, but whether or not the public will be willing to pay for online news is yet to be seen.

Read the original article here:
20% of Newspapers Now Have Online Paywalls

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Tips to Improve SEO For Mobile Phones

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Before you start worrying about SEO on a mobile device, you’ll want to check and see how many people are finding you through mobile searches. One of the easiest ways to do this is through Google Analytics. You can go in and adjust the Advanced Segments section of any page you’re interested in. On the Traffic pages you can set up Mobile as a segment and see exactly what keywords people are using to find you through mobile searches and details related to those searches.

Another tool that you can use to check mobile details is Google Webmaster Tools. You can set up a filter here to see only mobile searches for keywords and traffic (Traffic->Search Queries, then the Filters button and change the dropdown under “Search:”).

One that many people don’t realize is available is the popular Google AdWords Keyword Tool. You can change settings there to specify showing only search details for mobile searches (under “Advanced Options and Filters->Show Ideas and Statistics for”).

After doing your research, you’ll want to know what kind of results people are seeing when they get to your site. You can use Webmaster Tools again to check this out. In Health->Fetch as Google you can change “Web” to any type of mobile device and Fetch. It’ll take a little bit of time (could be a few minutes), but when completed you can see what the mobile bot is getting from your site, code-wise. You can also use a Firefox plugin (there are several) to change the agent the browser is imitating to display the look that device will get.

So now you’ve got an idea of your site’s appearance. At this point you’ll want to decide if you are going to go through making a separate site design for mobile visitors based on the traffic you’re expecting/wanting and the look mobile visitors are currently getting. Before you can make that decision, having the ability to do the proper research for your mobile market is very worthwhile.

See the video for this here:
4 Tips For Your Mobile SEO Strategy – Whiteboard Friday

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Google Is Now Showing “Hidden” Facebook Pages

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Originally Facebook was completely cut off from Google. All posts by personal profiles were hidden from the search engine, and you couldn’t do searches inside of Facebook that way. It appears that somehow Google has been able to get access, and some searches for Facebook content will display results with direct links to posts from personal profiles. This may have come from people sharing the links through other crawlable sites (such as Twitter). At any rate, some of these posts are now showing up in the Google SERPs.

Read the full article here:
Google Search Results Show Some Facebook User Posts Leaking Out Of Walled Garden

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Google Search Preferences Saved In Account Now

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Does it bother you when you have to reset your search preferences (such as turning off Google Instant) on Google when when you switch from using a laptop to an iPad or a computer? And if you change your browser, you have to reset those preferences again. Google has announced that search preferences can now be saved at the account level. As long as you are signed in to your Google account, saved search settings will be available from any computer.

Read the full article here:
New: Save Your Google Search Settings & Take Them With You

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Facebook Status Updates For Businesses: 7 Tips

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Facebook has implemented an algorithm called “EdgeRank” which adjusts the weight of importance of any post based on how popular it is. So how can you improve the EdgeRank of your posts on your business accounts on Facebook? Here’s a few ways:

  1. Scheduling – Pay attention to when your followers are most active on Facebook, when they’re most likely to see new posts. Try experimenting with different times of the day. Facebook allows you to schedule posts, so this is easier to do than you might have expected.
  2. Add tags – Pages that you’ve “liked” will be more readily available so that if you want to add a tag it will be easier to find these. To find any sort of connecting page to get a tag, just type in an “@” sign and start typing. You can discover many tags this way – it’ll help promotion.
  3. Add a location – When you do a status update, there’s a “placemark” icon that looks like an inverted teardrop you can click on. This can come in handy to tag events or to put your business location when people have a reason to come visit.
  4. Target specific locations – You can make your post in a specific place (instead of “Public”). Doing this is good if you are needing only to connect with people that are in that location, for example if you are promoting an event in that area.
  5. Target by language – Use the same customization you use for location (instead of “Public”) to target a language. This way you can do a very personal outreach to members of the public who are more comfortable with a different language.
  6. Add pictures/photos – If you put photos in your posts, it will grab attention much more readily and make it a lot more tempting to share or comment on.
  7. Emphasize a post – You can pick out special posts and draw attention by either “highlighting” it (click the start at the top of the post) to make it go across both columns in your timeline or you can pin your update. Pinning it will make it stay on top of all updates so that something of particular importance will stay at the top until you unpin it. To do this, click the pencil icon and choose “Pin to Top”.

Make your Facebook posts stand out by trying any one of these or a combination. See what works best for your page and keep those practices.

Read the original article here:
7 Tips For Crafting Local Business Updates In Facebook

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