Essentially, companies that want to conduct market research among difficult-to-reach B2B and IT decision makers will now be able to slice and dice profiles of LinkedIn’s large member base to reach groups with very specific attributes. From the participant side, “LinkedIn members who participate in a survey can choose from a variety of rewards including gift cards from Amazon, Starbucks, Best Buy, or make a donation to charities.”

This is all good—vendors can get valuable feedback from the right sample groups based on accurate LinkedIn profiles, LinkedIn gets another revenue stream, and participants get token rewards. But it seems to me there may be an opportunity missed here.

People join social networks for lots of reasons, but I’ve never of anyone joining for the purpose of collecting $10 gift cards or Starbucks coffee coupons. Among the top reasons people join are to get recognition and to form new relationships. Bloggers often join, for example, in order to both drive more traffic to their blogs and to connect with like-minded readers and other bloggers.

So…any company can spend some money on gift cards and use the new LinkedIn offering to collect market research data. But the really smart ones will find a way to tap the motivations of LinkedIn members and create a mutually beneficial social experience that provides not just data, but understanding.

*****

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

The same principle holds true in b2b lead generation. Different types of b2b lead generation programs can be used to draw visitors to your landing page, but once there, your incentive for response is the bait that determines the quality and quantity of leads you’ll “catch.” The greater the involvement you require of respondents, the lower the quantity but the higher the quality. Several examples are shown in this illustration:

Sweepstakes require very little involvement; a site visitor gives you their basic contact information in hopes of winning an iPod, a trip to Hawaii, or whatever. They are great for collecting a large quantity of names, but often few actual sales leads.

White papers are a popular and productive incentive for response. They weed out the pure prize-seekers attracted by sweepstakes because anyone willing to take the time to download and (hopefully) read a white paper at least has an interest in the particular technology area addressed. White papers also have far more branding value than sweepstakes. They are one of the most commonly used response incentives because of the balance of relatively high quantity and quality they provide, although sales will still often end up “throwing back” many of these leads.

As the level of involvement required increases, so does lead quality, but the numbers get smaller. A respondent willing to sign up for a free trial and actually use a software product—particularly in a corporate environment where IT approval is needed—has a relatively high probability of becoming a buyer (assuming the software actually works as promised). And at the far right of the diagram above, if the only incentive for response on a landing page is to be contacted by a sales person, the conversion rate will usually be very low, but the leads generated will be serious prospects.

The diagram above shows just a representative sampling of incentives for response that can be used; there are many other creative incentives that can be offered. The point is that the level of involvement required of the visitor is the key to estimating both the probable response rate and quality of the resulting leads in your bucket.

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(Okay, I take that back; in an ideal world we’d all have movie star looks, be in Olympic athlete condition, and have the net worth of Larry Page, so none of us would worry about arcane things like SEO. But I digress.)

In the real world, however, SEOs are often called in to optimize an existing site, after all of the URLs are created, the navigation is already in place and all of the content is written. While that obviously reduces flexibility and makes certain steps impossible, the site’s search performance can still be improved using this 12-step process.

1. Compile an initial keyword list

This involves two independent activities. First, generate a list of keywords based on the content of each page. Second, ask key individuals in the company (sales, top executives, etc.) for their lists of key search phrases. It’s not unusual to turn up several important 2-4 word key phrases that don’t even appear on the website!

2. Expand, verify and prioritize target keyword list

Use SEO keyword tools to expand your initial list of key words and phrases from step one, then prioritize the list based on search term popularity as well as value to the business. In other words, ask two questions for every key phrase: 1) how popular is this term among searchers? and 2) how likely is it that a searcher using this phrase is looking for what we have to sell?

3. Match keywords to pages

Once the keyword list is established, search terms should be mapped to specific pages. Each page can support, ideally, one “core” key phrase as well as 2-3 long tail variants. So, for example, a page optimized for a high-volume two-word phrase like “blue thingamabobs” could also be the target page for “screaming blue thingamabobs,” “blue thingamabobs sales” and “screaming blue thingamabobs sales.”

An excellent way to start matching keywords to phrases is to use Google Advanced Search. Enter your key phrase in the box for “this exact wording or phrase:” and your domain (in the form company.com) in the “Search within a site or domain:” box. If no good matches are found, you may need to rewrite an existing page to target the key phrase or even create an entirely new page.

4. Review URLs / Modify content and meta tags

Modifying URLs on an existing site is much more painful than using a search-friendly URL in the initial design, but can be worth the effort if the initial URLs were chosen with no regard for SEO. For example, if you sell call recording software, then a URL like call-recording-software.html is much more likely to get you ranked highly by the search engines than is a URL such as products.html.

In addition to URLs, perform other on-page SEO work to optimize each page for its corresponding set of target key phrases by optimizing title tags, on-page headings (h1, h2 etc. tags), use of key phrases in bold and italic, and a target keyword density of 1.5% to 4%.

5. Perform initial SEO check (baseline)

With on-site SEO tasks completed, it’s time to perform a baseline SEO check. This is like the “before” photo in a weight loss ad. Run you final list of key terms through an automated tool such as the SEO Chat keyword position tool or the SEOBook Rank Checker tool. The results probably won’t be pretty, but they are important, so save this check and back it up.

6. Re-submit site to search engines / Create and register Google site map

It’s true that unless you somehow have managed to create a site that absolutely no one links to, there is no need to manually submit your site to the search engines; they’ll find it (eventually). However, this step doesn’t hurt, it can get your re-indexed more quickly, and it only takes five minutes to hand-submit a site to Google, Yahoo and MSN, so there’s no real reason not to do this.

Next, create and submit an XML site map for Google. Again, there’s no guarantee this step will improve your search engine positioning, but it will help Google to index more of the pages on your site.

7. Identify sites for linking: by keywords and competitors

Perform searches for your top key terms as well as competitor names. Compile a list of sites for link-building efforts based on these searches.

8. Build external links

External links are a critical component of SEO. In addition to getting your site linked from appropriate directories and social media sites, undertake an effort to get your site linked on sites that show up well for searches on your key search phrases (such as blogs, publications, portal sites and specialized directories) as well as on sites where your competitors are listed. Here are several more tactics for SEO link building.

9. 30-day SEO check and report

These on-site and off-site SEO efforts should begin to show results within 2-3 weeks, but give it a month to be safe. After 30 days, run an updated search position check. Normally, this will show a mix of significant improvement in search engine position on some terms, more moderate improvement on others. The results will indicate for which terms additional efforts are needed.

10. Ongoing content edits

Based on the results of the 30-day SEO check, make additional content edits to improve search engine positioning for your “challenging” terms. These include title tag modifications, image alt tags and image file names, internal in-text links, on-page headings and page content.

11. Ongoing link building

Link building is a process; over time, you’ll discover new sites and blogs to approach for links, develop new link bait content (articles, podcasts, video etc.), and establish new relationships that can facilitate links.

Make sure to maximize the link-building value of your PR efforts as well by writing SEO press releases with keyword text links. (Here are more press release SEO tips for writing search optimized press releases.) Use Interactive PR practices to get your news linked from blogs and social bookmarking sites.

12. Monthly SEO checks / Ongoing reporting, analysis and optimizing

Monitor and analyze the results of your SEO efforts on a monthly basis, so you can bask in your successes and focus continuing efforts where needed. Review critical website analytics each month such as sources of traffic, top-performing keywords and navigation paths through your site. SEO isn’t just about driving more traffic, it’s ultimately about producing ROI, so focus efforts on getting visitors to take a desired action (purchase a product, sign up for a free trial, download a white paper, or whatever). If, for example, you’ve written a keyword-rich article on “Exciting New Applications for Screaming Blue Thingamabobs” that’s drawing a lot of organic search traffic, maximize the benefit of the page by linking to relevant white papers, demos and other materials on your site.

There you have it. If you’re relatively new to SEO, I hope you find these 12 steps helpful. If you’re an SEO pro, feel free to improve on this list by leaving a comment.

*****

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Get the answers to these inquiries and more in the following blog posts and articles, some of the best written on the topic of search engine marketing so far in 2008.

5 Keyword Strategies for B2B PPC Campaigns by High Rankings Advisor

Andy Komack offers five valuable, practical tips for improving web marketing results, such as “Users Do Not Search for ‘Solutions’” (so true!) and “Apply Your PPC Intelligence to SEO.” This is a relatively quick but highly worthwhile read.

Cookies, Milk & Kramer: Converting Visitors Into Buyers @ SES by aimClear Blog

Charlene Jaszewski, self-described “Internet Consultant and Word Wrangler Extraordinaire,” provides an excellent and detailed summary of presentations by Mike Moran, author of Do It Wrong Quickly; Michael Sack of Idearc Media Corp.; and Howard Kaplan, COO of Future Now. I particularly like this piece from Moran: “What can I change on my site to improve conversions? Answer: everything, and right now…Most of what we do is wrong. Everything we do is an experiment. Let the market tell you what works and what doesn’t. Tweak something every day. See how it performs. If it works, keep it. If it doesn’t, change it again.”

Challenges of Paid Search Marketing in 2008 by PPC Blog

PPC guru Gordon Choi outlines the challenges that pay-per-click advertisers will face as this space becomes more competitive, and provides strategies for addressing these challenges, including how to structure and retain PPC staff, monitor click fraud and write more effective ads.

Using PPC for Conquesting Your Competitor’s Brand Keywords by Search Marketing Sage

As Tad Miller explains, “‘Conquesting,’ as used in the Advertising Industry, is a means to deploy an advertisement for one’s products or services adjacent to editorial content relating to the competitor or the competitors’ products. In the online world it usually means bidding on your competitor’s ‘brand’ keywords on a Pay Per Click Advertising platform.” As a PPC tactic, it tends to have a high cost but also a high value per conversion. His post outlines five challenges of keyword conquesting along with six solutions to those challenges.

2 Major Reasons Why You Should Run a Search Query Report Today! by PPC Hero

This post shows how to use the Google AdWords Search Query Performance Report to generate new keyword ideas as well as to identify negative keywords for exclusion from your campaigns.

Marketing lessons learned form pay-per-click analytics by John W Ellis

How PPC analytics take the guesswork out of marketing, providing precise, quantitative feedback on elements like ad messages, geo-targeting and keyword selection.

Essential metrics in paid-keyword campaigns by DMNews

Olivier Silvestre provides guidance on optimizing landing pages, ad copy and keywords through the proper use of actionable SEM metrics.

Campaign Maintenance – Removing dead keywords by CDF Networks

A very brief post that doesn’t say a whole lot but provides an important reminder: while it’s important to experiment with new keywords to try to maximize campaign results, it’s also critical to periodically prune unproductive keywords in order to maintain high quality scores.

The Great (And Completely Ridiculous) ‘In-house vs. Outsourced SEM’ Debate by MediaPost Search Insider

Dave Pasternack hammers home the value of using an outside specialist firm for search marketing by looking at the possible reasons some executives might still believe their in-house teams can do this just as well. There is no explanation, however, for the incredibly wrongheaded statement about SEO in the last paragraph; typo?

Yahoo Smart Start – A Handy Guide For Yahoo Advertisers by Google Analytics Blog

PPC specialist Katherine Anderson recommends the downloadable Yahoo Smart Start manual as both a valuable guide for beginners and reference for experienced search marketers, saying “the book reaches out well to its target audience and addresses common concerns of new and experienced advertisers in an easy and understandable way.”

Best of 2008 (So Far) – SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – SEO Guidance, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) – Search Engine Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – Social Media Optimization, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – Blogging for Business, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – Web Marketing Research, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – Website Design, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – SEO Link Building

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Small companies and start-ups with modest budgets will focus most of their efforts on the inner layers or rings, which are primarily designed for lead generation. As the company and its marketing budget grow, efforts can be expanded to the outer layers, which are aimed more at branding but support lead generation efforts. Ideally, a company eventually reaches the outer layer where pure branding activities (such as print advertising) help to maximize the effectiveness of lead generation programs (such as SEM) near the center of the circle.

This diagram shows how different types of web marketing programs can be prioritized in order to maximize the return from any size B2B technology company online marketing budget. (It also shows why I don’t try to make a living as a graphic artist.)

Starting from the center and working out, a phased web marketing plan can be developed:

Layer 1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Since (ballpark figures) 75% of b2b buyers use search engines to research vendors when making a purchase decision, and 75% of clicks are on organic search results rather than paid links, SEO alone has the potential to expose your company to half of all sales prospects. That makes SEO—keyword research, meta tag and content optimization, and link building—the logical starting point for web marketing.

Level 2: Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Using the figures from the paragraph above, running text ads on search engines offers potential exposure to roughly another 20% of buyers. Since Google is the dominant search engine, it’s AdWords search program is the place to start. Once the program is fine-tuned and results are maximized there, SEM efforts can be expanded to the AdWords content network, then progressively to Yahoo Search Marketing, Yahoo’s content network, MSN AdCenter, and finally to Microsoft’s content network.

Level 3. IndustryBrains

B2c marketers have a wide variety of ad networks to choose from, but for technology-focused b2b vendors, IndustryBrains (recently folded into Marchex Adhere) is far and away the leader. This networks enables you to run text and print ads across popular technology websites like PC Magazine, Network World, PC World, Intelligent Enterprise, InformationWeek and InfoWorld with a single buy.

Level 4. White Paper Syndication and Guaranteed Lead Generation Programs

Guaranteed lead gen programs generally promise X leads for Y dollars, and are offered by individual publications as well as aggregators such as ITtoolbox, TechTarget, FindWhitePapers.com and NetLine. These are also referred to as white paper syndication programs as white papers are most commonly used as the incentive for response (though other assets including case studies, reports, even podcasts and recorded webcasts with some media outlets, are also used.)

Though primarily used for lead gen (as the name implies), these programs provide some branding benefit as well. The quality of the leads tends to improve as more targeted media are used.

Level 5: Banner Advertising

Unlike search marketing and targeted network ads, which are priced on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, banner advertising is sold on a cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) basis. While network buys are common in b2c marketing, b2b banner advertising is generally purchased directly from media publishers.

Because of the low click-through rate of banner ads, they are generally viewed as primarily branding, secondarily lead generation. Again, however, this varies with the publisher: broad titles such as InformationWeek are mostly for branding, while banners on narrowly-targted sites like Wall Street & Technology are reasonably effective at lead generation (though this particular publication may not be the best choice at the moment).

Level 6: Email Marketing

Email marketing comes in two varieties: enewsletter advertising and email blasts to targeted, purchased (or rented) lists. Enewsletter advertising is generally the less expensive alternative, on a CPM basis since your ad is “sharing” space with editorial content and, in most cases, with other advertisers. However, these ads may also be better for branding as they are seen as less intrusive and your company benefits from the association with the publication and surrounding content.

Email blasts are more targeted as you can send to only a selected subset of the publisher’s overall subscriber base, filtered by title, company size, industry vertical, geographic location and/or other criteria. In addition, your ad isn’t competing with any other content in the email message.

Because the effective cost per click tends to be much higher than search engine marketing (often by a factor of 10 or more), the value of email marketing is generally viewed as primarily branding with a lead gen component.

Level 7: Webinar Sponsorships

Many publications sell “turnkey” webinar sponsorship packages where the publisher provides most (or all) of the content, promotes the webinar and delivers it; sponsoring vendors are then provided with contact information for all registrants and attendees. Although webinar sponsorship is primarily a lead generation activity, it is in an outer layer of the web marketing bullseye because of the level of investment required: programs generally range from $20,000-$30,000 for a single webinar.

Level 8: Print Advertising

Although various types of “print-to-web” programs are offered, and some publications offer print advertisers comparable space in their digital editions at no extra charge, the value of print advertising is almost strictly branding. Because companies willing to invest in print advertising are often perceived as industry leaders, this activity definitely supports online advertising and other lead generation efforts. However, costs are high and benefits difficult to measure with any precision.

Summing It Up

A “well-dressed” web marketing plan starts with solid SEO, then works outward from direct lead generation programs to more expensive and beneficial-but-difficult-to-measure branding activities. Vendors with limited budgets necessarily begin with core activities that provide easily measurable, short-term payback. As budgets increase, branding activities in the outer layers can be added to enhance the performance of core lead gen programs.

Interactive PR and social media engagement also provide branding benefit by increasing awareness and credibility for vendors. Like outer-layer web marketing programs, these activities have little direct lead generation value but can increase the return on SEM and other lead gen expenditures.

*****

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

A channel sales effectiveness study just concluded for PRM vendor BLUEROADS by Sirius Decisions shows a “clear link between the types of partner programs that top channel executives emphasize and their impact on revenue growth in the indirect channel.” Of executives “who said they focused on sales ‘effectiveness’ strategic activities such as lead management and deal registration, 62% reported an increase in revenue. Paradoxically, 80 percent of the channel investments by the vendors that were surveyed focused around tactical issues such as training, partner portals, and partner communication tools – all activities that simply automate the relationship with partners. Of those who focused investment on these types of ‘efficiency’ programs, only 40% reported an increase in channel revenue.”

In other words, the study says that channel executives, on the whole, know what works—they just don’t do it. They’re all hat no cattle, all show no go, they talk the talk but can’t walk the walk, pick your over-used idiom.

Charles Watson, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales for BLUEROADS, suggests that many channel chiefs lack the “alpha mail” orientation of their direct sales counterparts, and thus continue to make small, “safe” investment in low-return activities like training programs and partner portals. Such investments are focused more on reducing costs through improved efficiency than increasing revenue but typically don’t require executive team buy-in because they have low visibility and little impact on the enterprise. An alternative explanation may be that the corporate culture in many organizations discourages precisely the type of risk-taking that is needed to significantly improve channel sales effectiveness.

Based on this study as well as past research focused on channel partners, BLUEROADS recommends five practices that should be employed to improve channel sales performance:

• Invest in high-quality leads for partners; depending on the product category and price point, this can range from a quick visual screening to making pre-qualification calls before handing leads to the channel.

• Ensure that leads are delivered rapidly. Particularly for near-commodity products, leads can “cool off” quickly, and first-to-respond often beats best product offering.
• Get the right leads to the right partner, every time. Besides checking for named accounts and pre-established relationships, this may include sorting and routing leads based on industry vertical, company size, geographic location and product. (The folks at BLUEROADS are quick to point out that their PRM software automates this process.)
• Protect partners from channel conflict. Okay, that one’s pretty obvious.
• Help partners accelerate sales cycles with selling guidance and coaching. Engaging with channel partners as they need assistance—learning by doing—is less common though much more effective than “train and forget” programs.

Finally. the most sophisticated vendors are creating feedback channels that enable them to collect valuable market intelligence from channel partners, to answer questions such as:

• How does our product compare (in detail) to competitive offerings?

• What new capabilities are most important to the market?
• What is the “whole product” that customers (and potential customers) are buying?

The study concludes that channel chiefs, in many cases, know that they need to focus investments on high-visibility, high-impact programs aimed at increasing channel sales effectiveness, yet continue to invest in safer but lower-yielding efficiency improvements. this research from BLUEROADS suggests that those vendors willing to improvements in channel effectiveness a higher priority will ultimately prevail over their more cautious counterparts.

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Is Google turning into Pat? I hope not; I remain a fan and prefer to believe there’s still hope for Google—and I’m not saying that merely out of fear of retribution. (Actually, I think that’s past tense, considering that this copycat page gets a spot on the first page of Google while my original article on how to get bloggers to write about you doesn’t show up in the top 100 positions. That’s just not right.) But the search giant seems to be doing everything it can lately to alienate all of its core constituencies.

Death to SEOs

In order to determine how well their tactics are working (and to report results to clients), SEO practitioners use automated tools to determine how well a specific web site is showing up, for a number of different search phrases, across the major search engines. These tools have been used for years, but Google apparently decided recently that it no longer likes them. As Chris Lang reported, “Google (has) implemented a feature which is transparent to searchers but really messes up tools that are used to check your rankings in Google. WebPosition Gold as well as other ranking report tools (scraper based tools – including the SEO Firefox plugin) have been impacted.” In fact, Google doesn’t even like it if it thinks your query “looks similar” to automated requests—it will then limit the number of pages of search results it displays to you and give you a really scary error message.

That’s not the only way Google messes with SEOs. It’s commonly known that title tags play a very important role in search rankings. But as this discussion of title tags on WebmasterWorld demonstrates, changing too many title tags on a site at one time can cause your site to nearly disappear from Google search results, as “Google is very cranky about title changes lately.”

Then there is the matter of link buying. Since external links are very important to search ranking, the practice of buying links became common. And it way okay. Then some unscrupulous souls started to abuse it. So Google frowns on the practice. But not all the time. As the folks at Ranked Hard very creatively explain it, “link buying (got) out of control and Google’s way to handle it was to penalize both the link buyer and the link seller. The problem is, just about everyone is buying links in competitive markets, but only a few are actually getting penalized.” In Using Logic to Prove that Directory Links are NOT Worthless, Will Paoletto of Big Oak SEO explains this phenomenon: “Google can’t just devalue all paid directory links in the same way that it can devalue, say, sitewide links because directories don’t leave footprints that the algorithm can discover on its own. As a result, the only way Google can reduce the effectiveness of a directory link is to manually visit a directory in question and punish it.”

Kaila Colbin wraps this up nicely in The Emotionally Abusive Relationship Between Google And Its SEOs: “So Google essentially defines good practice, and then punishes you for following it too much. Got it. You’d better have the house clean and dinner ready by the time the big G gets home, as well.”

Walk Like a Monopolist

Though Google isn’t technically a monopoly, many observers believe it uses its overwhelming dominance in search to effectively act as one. Not content merely to let AdWords users bash each other over the head in bidding wars, Google continues to introduce “innovations” that can seem to be more about improving its own results than those of its advertisers.

The folks at the Digital Media World blog explain some of the AdWords changes here, stating that “The Google Adwords blog has announced a number of ‘quality score improvements’ (debatable use of the word improvements!) which will come into play for your Adwords listings in the near future…by telling people what it will cost them to appear on first page Google are prompting people to increase their bids to get the exposure.”

As Tameka Kee reports in AdWords Quality Score Changes Could Signal Stronger Q3 For Google, financial analysts see the “improvements” largely on Google’s bottom line. “UBS analyst Benjamin Schacter thinks…that the shift could potentially drive higher average CPCs. ‘We believe that Google’s decision to replace ‘Minimum bids’ with ‘First page bids’ should, over time, have an inflationary effect on average pricing for certain keywords.’”

Even Danny Sullivan, who knows Matt Cutts personally, alleges price fixing at Google. “Google already fixes prices within its own network…Since AdWords began, Google’s never sold to the highest bidder. And these days it uses a ‘quality score’ as a way of causing some advertisers to pay a premium to show up. Let’s be clear: Quality scores mean advertisers with ads deemed ‘good’ pay less. But the bottom line is that Google is interfering in the auction in ways only it knows.”

A true monopolist not only charges high prices, but also delivers lousy service—with no real competition, there’s no need to plow revenue back into taking care of customers. Judging by this post about Google lowering the bar on customer service and the ensuing comments, Google seems to be living down to this standard as well. Why is it a company that gets 1,300 resumes a day and can pick from the cream of the crop “can’t seem find anyone decent for their customer service department?”

No Greener on the Other Side of the Fence

According to John Andrews, Google isn’t only squeezing its AdWords advertisers, but its advertising partners in its AdSense network as well. In this post detailing Google’s Ad Manager service, he writes “Google’s kicking ass and I would be foolish to think they would do anything less than aggressively consume every last ounce of business intelligence they can get from me and my web businesses. How else did they get to be the winners? How else could they continue to dominate?”

Don Draper sums this up in his comment on Why Your Keyword Tracking Tools No Longer Work: “Google isn’t about making the rest of us money. It’s like having an elephant walk through your garden.”

Privacy? We’ve Heard Of It

Meanwhile, Ars Technica’s David Chartier has reported that Google’s Street View team is undeterred by “no trespassing” signs, even to the point of getting sued for taking pictures where they don’t belong. “It isn’t just a privacy issue; it is a trespassing issue with their own photos as evidence…residents are complaining now that Google’s drivers have flat-out ignored over one hundred private roads, ‘No Trespassing’ signs, and at least one barking watchdog in their quest to photograph roads and homes.” And just up the road from WebMarketCentral headquarters, the private community of North Oaks has requested that Google remove all images of its private roads and homes from Street View.

Verb: It’s What You Don’t Do

SEOs, advertisers, network partners, property owners…who’s left to abuse? Oh yeah, searchers. Google would like you to know that while you’re free to use their search engine as you choose, you’d best be careful how you use the company’s name. While most companies would love to have their corporate moniker turned into a verb, Google arrogantly blogs against it. “You can only ‘Google’ on the Google search engine.”

C’mon Google, you’re better than all of this. Show the world you’re still not evil.

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Discover all of this and more in these blog posts and articles, some of the best so far in 2008 on link building strategies and tactics.

Building Links with Big Brand Websites, Part 2 by Find Resolution

Search marketer Dave McAnally explains five link-building tactics useful for big brand websites, though some of these—integrating SEO with PR efforts and leveraging all of your digital assets, for example—are smart moves for any size company.

Analyzing Your Competitor’s Backlinking Strategies by Search Engine Journal

The brilliant Ann Smarty shows how to evaluate your competition’s niche link-building strategy, their deep linking strategy, and their targeted anchor text.

Link Building Fundamentals: A Primer by Audette Media

Internet marketing strategist Adam Audette provides just what the title states: a detailed, step-by-step guide to determining where your site should be linked for maximum SEO value, then obtaining links. Different tactics are likely to work better, and be more appealing, for different types of sites. As Adam writes, “There are many different ways to build links. There’s no `right way’ and no “best practices,” there’s only creativity, intelligence, and labor.”

List of Free Directory Submission by Everyday SEO

Here’s a list of almost 2,000 directories that allow you to submit sites for link building. Most are free; some of the sites charge for links, some require a reciprocal link, and many are spammy and have suspiciously similar submission forms. Is this a tremendous resource, or just a colossal waste of time?

Baiting and Beseeching — Obtaining the right mix of chasing links and getting them to chase you by Hamlet Batista

Writing that “a mixed approach of link acquisition and link baiting is best,” Hamlet Batista presents the tactics, pros and cons to each approach in this thoughtful and detailed post.

Link Request Strategies for Blogs, Edu’s & .Gov’s: Respect My Authoritah! by Search Engine People

SEO link guruess Melanie Nathan offers carefully crafted advice on how to obtain links from high-authority sites such as government websites and blogs. Her recomendations range from utililitarian (how to write an email requesting a government site link) to social (comment on blogs and establish a relationship before asking for a link) to provocative (“This is a bit cheeky but it helps to pay special attention to the type of site you’re emailing in regards to your name. For instance, if I am emailing a blog that is run by a 25 year old male, I am more likely to use something like ‘heidi(at)mycoolsite.com’ or ‘naomi(at)mycoolsite.com’”).

Link Building Tips by Traffic Travis

This article details 15 strategies for generating links. Most are obvious, but it’s a helpfully comprehensive list to keep handy. The strategies vary from creative (finding local link opportunities) to ubiquitous (directory submissions) to questionable (“Wikipedia – very good if you can get links from here” – Wikipedia of course uses insidious nofollow tags and its priesthood is notoriously hostile to anything that remotely resembles commercial content).

6 Ways to Get Nearly Instant Links to your Web Site by Bill Hartzer

A helpful list of tactics for generating links quickly, such as using directories, social bookmarking sites and blog comments.

Using Logic to Prove that Directory Links are NOT Worthless by Big Oak SEO Blog

Will Paoletto contends that directory links are still valuable for SEO, and that “Google only punishes directories that sell links to a.) create the public perception that buying directory links isn’t effective anymore and b.) rob directories of power in the only way it can–through manual penalties.”

5 experts demystify SEO link building by iMedia Connection

iMedia Connection deputy editor Michael Estrin gets to the heart of link building, asking five SEO experts—Conductor CEO Seth Besmertnik, SEOMoz CEO Rand Fishkin, Stuntdubl.com founder Todd D. Malicoat, Eric Ward and Alliance-Link founder Debra Mastaler—questions regarding the value of internal links, when linking out is helpful for SEO, the role of proper hyperlink text and more.

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2008 (So Far) – SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – SEO Guidance, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) – Search Engine Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – Social Media Optimization, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – Blogging for Business, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – Web Marketing Research, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – Website Design, Part 1

*****

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

1. Just send a press release.

This is likely to do your company or your client more harm than good. There is an extremely low chance that a blogger will write about you based on getting press release, but a pretty darn good chance that he/she will view you as a spammer and ignore any subsequent emails you send.

Imagine it’s a phone call instead of an email. And imagine you’re on the phone with a really influential blogger, like…Seth Godin. Seth answers the phone, you introduce yourself, and Seth says, “I’m really busy but, tell you what, I’ll give you five minutes.” Would you really spend that five minutes reading your press release to him?

Didn’t think so. You’d acknowledge his interests, then tell him in a compelling and straightforward manner why he and his readers should care about your story. So, do the same in your email outreach to bloggers, and you’ll have a far greater shot at getting some online coverage than you will with a press release.

2. Act like you expect coverage.

If a particular blogger doesn’t respond to your outreach, it may mean that your pitch wasn’t interesting, or it may simply mean that he/she was too busy to get to it. Or any of a hundred other reasons. Sending a follow-up note saying “Hey, I wrote to you about this a week ago, why haven’t you written about it yet?” is another great way to really annoy a blogger, assure that all of your future messages are viewed as spam, and you get no coverage.

Note that this is not to be confused, however, with polite, periodic follow up. It’s perfectly acceptable to send a follow-up note along the lines of, “Hi, here is a new development at our company that I thought you might find interesting. I know you’re busy, but whether you decide to write about this or not, do you mind if I send you updates from time to time on what’s happening here?”

3. Send exactly the same message two (or more) times.

This is almost worse than #2 above. Sending exactly the same message to a blogger more than once makes it appear that you are either a) hopelessly disorganized (which makes you look bad), or b) using some type of automation for blogger outreach (which makes you look even worse).

4. Promise something you can’t deliver.

This actually happened: a PR person sent a blogger a press release about a report that was coming out based on some economic research. In her accompanying note, she offered the opportunity to interview the author of the report. After a few emails back and forth, the blogger sent her half a dozen questions for the economist to answer.

She bounced the blogger back a couple of days later to tell him that the report author couldn’t answer the questions posed (despite the fact that they were rather obvious follow-up inquiries based on the high-level findings in the report). A complete waste of time.

A month later, she sent the same blogger another press release and interview offer. Unbelievable.

5. Don’t acknowledge return correspondence.

If a blogger responds to an email you send, ignore it. Just send that same blogger another message that completely fails to acknowledge their response. This is even more effective than worse practice #3 above at making your outreach practices appear automated and oblivious, and guaranteeing you a spot in the blogger’s junk mail folder from that point forward.

6. Don’t acknowledge coverage.

When a blogger actually does write about your company or product—just ignore it. Don’t send a thankyou note, don’t Digg/Mixx/Stumble or Twitter it, don’t post a link from the news area on your website, don’t do anything. Act like it never happened.

While all of the tactics above are bad practices, this one is the worst. Why? Because this is the practice bloggers are most likely to talk to other bloggers about. Sending a blogger an unsolicited press release will just get you ignored by that blogger. Failing to acknowledge, in any manner, positive coverage, can get you blackballed by an entire swath of the blogosphere.

If you want bloggers to cover your news, follow the advice of people like Dave Taylor, Cory Doctorow, or this cartoon. But if you just want to really screw up your own and your company’s or client’s reputation among bloggers, use the six worst practices above.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Learn the answers to these questions and more in some of the best blog posts and articles on website design published so far in 2008.

A Small Business Year-End Web Site Checklist by Search Engine Land

Search marketer Matt McGee provides an outstanding 10-point checklist of items that site owners should check (at least) annually, including domain registration, contact form operation, autoresponders and outbound links.

15 Ways to Get Your Website in Gear by iMedia Connection

Lisa Wehr, CEO and founder of Oneupweb, writes that if your online marketing efforts are coming up short, it may be a good time to take “a systematic look at how your website is performing and (develop) a strategy to address its shortcomings.” To this end, she recommends reviewing 15 areas, including navigation, interface design, architecture, PR and SEO.

Site Redesign: 4 Vital SEO Tips for Web Designers by Search Engine Watch

Noting that, “Many times when companies consider a site redesign…their rationale may be that they need better ‘marketing fluff’…Rarely do you hear companies say, ‘We need to redesign our Web site because it wasn’t built for SEO,’” Mark Jackson, President and CEO of Vizion Interactive, outlines the four essential considerations in a redesign. Included in his analysis is an intriguing suggestion for a CMS, and the introduction of the term “Flashterbation” (using Flash for no real reason) to the web lexicon.

Write in the Quiet to Get Your Point Across by E-Marketing Performance

Michelle Montoya provides three writing tips for getting your message across to “scanners,” the significant portion of online readers who “want the message as quickly as possible and don’t want to have to read through a bunch of muck to get to it.” Key to this is using “quiet times”—those short sentences mixed in among your paragraphs that really get your point across.

Top 10 Reasons A Website Fails To Perform by Internet Search Engine Database

You spend significant time, effort and money on a website redesign, and then get lackluster results. Why? Gary Klingsheim, Vice President of Moonrise Design, nails it in this list of 10 factors to examine, including poor definition of your target audience, underestimation of competitors, and inconsistency in design and content. Obviously, this is a great post to read before undertaking that redesign effort.

How To: Create a Great 404 Page Not Found Error Page by Conversation Marketing

Ian Lurie supplies step-by-step instructions for creating a more engaging and friendly 404 error page for your site than the standard “This page cannot be found.” As he points out, if someone mistypes a URL or follows an incorrect link from another site, why drive them away with a boring standard message? For some really creative ideas, check out 404 Pages – Funny, Geeky, Disturbing from Squareoak.

Using Google’s Custom Search Engine for Internal Site Search by Ask Enquiro

Manoj Jasra, who writes a lot of great stuff on web marketing, explains why Google’s Custom Search tool is excellent way to add this functionality to your site in this brief but informative post.

Google Wants to Help Web Sites Make New Friends by The New York Times

Saul Hansell, editor of the New York Times Bits blog, explains the features of Google Friend Connect, which lets small website publishers add social networking features to their sites. As Hansell writes, Friend Connect gives website publishers an easy way to let users log in then link their profiles from other social networks (including Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Hi5 and Google’s Orkut), and “add OpenSocial applications, written by Google and other companies.”

The 19-Hour Website Analysis, in 20 Minutes or Less by Internet Search Engine Database

Stoney deGeyter, website design expert and owner of Pole Position Marketing, explains that “Investing in SEO and PPC marketing, without having performed a thorough (usability) analysis of your website is largely an exercise in vain.” He then provides a 19-step guide, with links to prior articles, to analyzing and improving your site’s usability looking at factors like on-site search, about us, contact and FAQ pages.

The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist for Website Navigation by Search Engine Guide

Yet another highly useful checklist from Stoney deGeyter, this one detailing 21 considerations for effective site navigation, including consistency, proper categorical divisions, and the use of absolute links throughout the site.

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2008 (So Far) – SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – SEO Guidance, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) – Search Engine Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – Social Media Optimization, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – Blogging for Business, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) – Web Marketing Research, Part 1

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