I don’t really remember what I was reading or even where I saw the formula, but it made enough of an impact that I wrote the formula down as well as committed it to memory. All future conversations on rankings with clients could be presented in a different context, a simple formula; the formula for search engine rankings, a formula that everyone can understand and help remove some of the confusion around SEO.

The visibility equation is a formula that contains the core elements for rankings and how to go about improving any website’s or web page’s visibility. It serves as a reminder that no single factor will make for great rankings, but all the important pieces are needed.

V=(O+C)*L

V = Visibility
O = Optimization (on-page HTML elements)
C = Content
L = Links

The next time you wonder why we aren’t ranking for that oh so important keyword – ask yourself, did you exclude one of the factors?

The focus of optimizing your Meta Tags should then be on improving your website’s descriptions. If you have created a good Meta Description and it is useful, the information contained within the tag might be shown as a snippet within the search results page. If your tag is well written and is relevant, the Meta Description can help improve the quality and quantity of traffic to your site by increasing your site’s SERP click through rate.

Here a few things to keep in mind to help create better Meta Tag Descriptions.
Make each description unique. Each description should accurately describe the page. Site level descriptions are allowed, but should be used in places like the home page and other main category pages. All other pages found within your website should use page-level descriptions that reflect the content of each page. The Meta Description doesn’t always need to be in sentence format and can include bits of information. If your page is about a product, the Meta Description is a great place to aggregate pricing, manufacturer or other important product information.

If you are struggling with your Meta Descriptions, start by summarizing the page in a sentence or two. You want to tell a potential visitor what the page is about and the information they will find if they choose to visit. You may also find yourself having to rewrite all of your site’s descriptions, but tackle just a few a week and over time all your site’s Meta Description tags will be unique and more in-line with Google’s webmaster guidelines.

1. Let your website visitors share and bookmark your content with “add-this” www.addthis.com or “share this” www.sharethis.com
2. Build transparency and the human element into your website with videos, photo sharing and profiles of your team, customers profiles, video case studies and/or product reviews
3. Add unique RSS feeds from your social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs in categories that align to your website’s content, and open your thought-leadership content like white papers and articles up for discussion on those networks
4. Build gateways into your social networks like hub pages and newsrooms, and add persistent links out to social networks on every page of your website
5. Implement a CMS system with modules or extensions that allow for 2-way communication, so that your website can become a place where a community of your team and can interact with comments and content sharing

This webinar was “Session Three” of a three-part series presented jointly with OneSource, “The Social Media for B2B Demand Generation Webinar Series”. If you’re interested in watching recorded versions of any of these webinars, they are available at this microsite under the “Sessions” tab.

Shortly following the last webinar, we sent out a survey to gauge participants’ readiness or progress in adopting social media optimization on their website. 50 people completed the survey.  Based on their interest in attending the webinar to begin with, it’s no surprise that most participants were already convinced of the value of social media for increasing brand engagement and driving new leads and sales. The majority, however, had not yet acted upon this conviction by making their website a catalyst for social networks and social media activities. Detailed survey results are available for download here.

It was a great pleasure to have the opportunity to discuss website optimization in light of the social web, a subject that I’m exploring almost every day with clients who want to stay ahead of the curve in their Internet Marketing efforts. Thanks to everyone who attended, and especially to those who participated in the survey. If you’d like to discuss any of the subject matter of the webinar, or any related ideas, I’m very interested in continuing the conversation.

If you and your company struggle to find fresh, new content that you can not only frequently post to your website, but also optimize for search engines, it might serve well you to look right below your nose at your eNewsletter strategy for help.

eNewsletters already contain valuable information that you share with your email lists on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc., basis. Well, this information can and should be leveraged on your website to help increase the quantity and frequency of new content. Here are a few, simple suggestions on how you can incorporate this one piece of content into your search engine optimization plan:

• Archived eNewsletters: Once you send your eNewsletter, what happens to the content? Create an “Archived eNewsletter” section on your website and post it in PDF format (including all live links) or as text. Depending on your distribution frequency, you could easily add new content on a monthly basis to your website, and we all know Google loves refreshed content.

• Potential Blog Posts: Chances are, your eNewsletter has great content whether it’s a featured offer such as an eBook, a news headline, an interview, etc., that could potentially be used on your blog. Break up your eNewsletter content into a blog post format and suddenly you’ll find you have a handful of potential posts.

• Link Building: And last, but not least, now that you have all this great content on your website, you now have stronger potential to build your link popularity. Submit your new blog posts to social bookmarking sites, start talking about them on social media, and build the number of links that point back to your site.

And remember, for all of this new site content, follow your standard SEO strategy by including your target keywords, tagging all key page elements, and leveraging your internal linking strategy to turn this easy to follow plan into a successful optimization program.

As the CEO of Nowspeed, I am thankful that although we are in tough economic times, we, our co-workers, and our families do not personally face the greatest humanitarian crises of our time: The AIDS pandemic.

This is why I am committed to helping this humanitarian crises by donating $1.00 to Boston AIDS Africa for every person who becomes a Facebook fan of Boston AIDS Africa and/or follows them on Twitter between today and December 31st, 2009. Boston AIDS Africa is a Boston-based initiative to respond to the AIDS pandemic in Africa by providing essential supplies to care for those suffering with HIV/AIDS in Africa.

It’s that easy. Nothing to donate or give. Just follow Boston AIDS Africa and we’ll give up to $1,000 to this important cause. You can help support a worthy cause and Nowspeed will pay for it! Simply go to the Boston AIDS Africa Fan Page on Facebook, and/or follow them on Twitter.

Feel free to spread the word to any of your friends to help us donate as much as possible. Of course you can learn more about Boston Aids Africa at http://www.bostonaidsafrica.org.

Thanks and Happy Holidays,

David Reske,
CEO, Nowspeed Inc.
Boston AIDS Africa Fan Page
Boston AIDS Africa Twitter Page

About Boston AIDS Africa
Boston AIDS Africa is a non-profit initiative to mobilize the Boston community to respond to the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa by providing compassionate care to those suffering from AIDS. In partnership with World Vision, an NGO committed to AIDS care in Africa, Boston AIDS Africa is leading a community-wide effort to fund, assemble and ship Caregiver Kits to an affected region in Africa. Learn more at: http://www.bostonaidsafrica.org.

More Goals

Finally Google heard us, and have provided the ability to track more goals - 20 to be exact. Google is also allowing profiles to track new goals as well as engagement metrics that include time spent on site and pages viewed per a visit.

Intelligence Alerts

The analytics team has also expanded its intelligence alert function and will send an automatic email when a predefined milestone is achieved. These alerts can also be displayed within the intelligence section.

Unique Visitor Reporting

Google segmentation is becoming more refined and now you can apply a unique visitors segmentation (by cookies) to any dimension and have a true account of the actual visitors to a website.

Mobile Reporting

More and more mobile browsers are visiting websites and performing searches, and Google wants webmaster and business owners to know how their sites are performing. By adding server side code to your PHP, JSP, PERL, or ASPX mobile websites, analytics now provides a solution for you to track non-Java-Script enabled phones.

More Custom Variables

With the new custom variables feature, Analytics is now more flexible and allows for more customization to site usage data that is applicable to your core business. You can more easily define and track visitors according to attributes be it visitor attributes (member or non-member), session attributes (logged in or out), or even page-level attributes (website section viewed).

Advanced Analysis

Wanna take a deeper look at your data? Just add a secondary dimension to the data you are looking at and gain even more insight. See which keywords are used to drive visits by city or use the advanced filtering functionality to see which of those visits lasted more than 1 minute.

Share Segments and Custom Reports

And the last new feature from Google Analytics… you can now share the custom reports and advanced filters you create with the world. By sharing a link, any Google Analytics profile can import the pre-formatted template and apply the same custom report and to their own data.

Google has made their free tool even better - thanks Google for listening.

For more information about incorporating analytics data into your marketing optimization strategies, download our eBook, “Is your Website Optimized for Demand Generation?“

Here are several great ways to use each of these types of content:

• White papers. The purpose of white papers is to provide customers with information about, or solutions to, problems they might have. They serve in establishing thought leadership and expertise by showing how you can help. Some believe that providing too much information can be detrimental, others that it can be a way to capture attention and draw in audiences.
• Case studies. Using case studies, you are giving valuable content about your company and it shows customers the potential your company has to help. It exemplifies your problem solving skills and the impact you’ve had on customers.
• Webinars. Like white papers, webinars provide information that promotes thought leadership. Unlike white papers, webinars can offer a valuable chance at interaction with, and feedback from, potential and existing customers as well as others in your field.

We would love to hear more feedback about your successful-or unsuccessful- use of content in your marketing campaigns.

David Reske

Content

Success in social media does not lie in quantity of blog posts, tweets, and status updates, but rather in their quality.  Overwhelming sites with an excess of information can even have a negative effect- turning off potential clients.  Staying away from spam-type updates can be hard, especially when the most frequent complaints about social media relate to creating content.  A challenge at best, keeping up a social media campaign requires frequently updating without becoming redundant.

Content is second to presence, and is irrelevant if the right audience is not being reached.  Begin by working on establishing this presence, and content will follow.  Comment on existing posts, recycle information, and make your opinions known.  Once this audience is established, creating content may seem less daunting.  Interact with your audience through interviews, lists, stories, and questions.

Measuring Results

The best way to measure traffic, SEO, and sales is with tools available for this very purpose.  Sites such as Google Analytics, AideRSS, Feedburner, and Xinu are all handy tools.  Many social network managing and blogging platforms also offer their users access to statistics, such as Hootsuite and Wordpress.  Most marketers agree that by having specific goals and programs when creating the campaign, the results are more easily measured.

I would love to hear your comments about taking on the challenges of social media marketing and about any tools you use to measure results.

David Reske

The top four techniques that marketers felt would deliver the best results are:
• Integrate SEO and social media tracking and measurement - 57%
• Leverage social media sharing on search landing pages - 45%
• Search engine optimize social media content on web site - 43%
• Leverage video on search landing pages - 40%

Clearly, marketers felt that tracking and measurement is the most important. Additionally, marketers felt that social media sharing on landing pages, optimization of social media content on the web site and video on landing pages all promise to deliver strong results.

The top four techniques that markets were already using are:
• Search engine optimize social media content on web site - 45%
• Embed keywords into video posts and other content posts - 40%
• Write keyword filled content for social media sites with links - 33%
• Integrate SEO and social media tracking and measurement - 33%

One interesting observation here is that on average only 27% of marketers are using any of these techniques, clearly leaving marketers with a lot of work to do to integrate social media and search effectively.

So, Are They Practicing What They Preach?

This survey also showed what markets believe vs. what they are actually doing. On the following four items there was a large gap between what marketers felt would deliver great results, and what they were actually doing.
• Leverage video on search landing pages - 26% - Gap
• Integrate SEO and social media tracking and measurement - 24% Gap
• Leverage social media sharing on landing pages - 21% - Gap
• Build links from social media optimized press releases - 19% - Gap

In other words, marketers felt that these things would deliver a strong ROI, but they were not getting them done as effectively as they want to.

I hope this data helps you see where you stand vs. your peers. Please leave me a comment on whether you agree or disagree with these survey results.

David Reske

Search Marketing is critical to the success of any social media marketing program, since you must get found in order for your content to have an impact. And social media can be a powerful accelerator to any paid or organic search marketing program.

My top 10 techniques for integrating Social Media into your Search Marketing Program are:

1. Leverage video on search landing pages
2. Leverage offer comments and ratings on search landing pages
3. Advertise on Facebook and other social media sites
4. Leverage social media sharing on landing pages
5. Embed keywords into video posts and other content posts
6. Write keyword filled content for social media sites with links
7. Build links from social media optimized press releases
8. Build links from articles, blog comments and content distribution
9. SEO optimize social media content on web site
10. Integrate SEO and social media tracking and measurement

If you want to sign up for the webinar, click here.

I’m looking forward to your thoughts on these techniques and the event.

David Reske