Personally, I am in the camp that refers to SEM as paid search, not SEO

Being the Danny Sullivan fan boy that I am, it’s rare that I find myself in disagreement with him, but that’s where I find myself after reading his Search Engine Land post Does SEM = SEO + CPC Still Add Up? where he opines that SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is an umbrella for all forms of search marketing, paid and organic.

In the article, Danny gives quite a bit of history supporting his idea that all forms of search related marketing should be lumped under SEM. It’s a great read.

Nonetheless, I have always been in the camp that feels that SEM refers to paid search marketing. My reasoning is very simple. With search engine optimization you have SEO. That’s it. With paid search you have all kinds of variations – PPC, CPA, CPC, banner ads, etc. If anything needs to have an umbrella, it’s paid search.

And, what about other forms of web related marketing (example: e-mail marketing) that aren’t necessarily search related. They don’t fit under a “search” umbrella.

Personally, I feel it makes more sense for the umbrella for all web marketing to be something as simple as, well, “web marketing.” That allows better segmentation of organic (SEO), paid (SEM), social media optimization (SMO), e-mail marketing and affiliate marketing while keeping them all under a “web marketing” category.

That said, the fact that Danny has “found it annoying that over the years, more and more people use SEM to mean paid search, as if SEM excludes SEO” points out the fact that if we in the industry don’t have a standardized definition of what SEM is (and SEO, SMO, etc. for that matter), then how are companies trying to hire us going to be anything but clueless as well?

I am frequently contacted by businesses looking for help with their sites. As I am an in-house SEO without time to take on extra clients (other than SEO workshops and speaking), I try to refer these folks to my SEO buddies, but I am amazed at how often these companies confuse what is SEO, what is paid, etc.

For instance, for months I noticed an ad running on LinkedIn and on just about every web marketing blog I went to for an SEO position at a major entertainment site (I won’t mention a name to protect the innocent. They would be SOOOO embarrassed). Finally, out of curiosity I clicked on the ad. The title was “SEO (Search Engine Optimization)” but the job description was completely about paid search. What they were really looking for was a Google Adwords expert. No wonder the ad ran forever.

Go on any job listing site like Craigs List and you’ll see it all of the time. An ad for an “SEO Manager” will mix in PPC, blog editing and e-mail marketing. Another ad for an SEM might give a job description that includes web design and social media optimization.

Obviously an industry accepted definition for each segment of our industry is a must. What we need is for our leading Internet marketing organizations (SEMPO, eMA, etc.) to agree on exactly what “SEM” is so that we are all in agreement.

With a standardized definition of exactly what SEM is, Danny and I could agree and I could retain my fan boy status!

And, it would make finding jobs for folks in the various segments of web marketing less of a crap shoot.

My Opinion: SEM=Paid Search is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

108 Quick SEO Tips Even Mom Would Love is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

by Mark Maynem

Optimizing the images on your site can help your SEO efforts.

Before undertaking image search optimization many search marketers will evaluate its value in relation to its clients. Will the value of this activity be higher than another SEO activity? This is important, as image optimization can be time consuming and lends itself to being more beneficial to some sites than others.

Image Optimization Tips

Filenames – Include the keyword you are targeting within the file name. Remember to use hyphens for spaces between the keywords.

Image Formatting – Make sure you use the correct image formats. For example save photos as JPG files etc.

Image Quality – Use good quality images, which will read well when shown in a thumbnail format. Poor quality images are unlikely to get click throughs.

Strings – Avoid using strings in image urls. Make your image urls as a readable as possible to human beings.

Use the ALT Attribute – Mention your keywords within the ALT tag where appropriate. Remember that ALT tags are used to help people who are visually impaired use your site. The ALT tag should not just be the keyword itself. This could be seen as spammy.

Text surrounding the image – Search engines will look at the text surrounding an image to help get an insight to what an image might be about. Make sure the images relate to the content that they are in close proximity with.

Don’t restrict access to images – Adding image folders to robots.txt files is a common mistake and prevents your images from being indexed.

Image originality – Original photos or image work is much more likely to be given special attention. If you have created original images then it might be an idea to use watermarks or set special permissions to users. Retailers can have the most difficulty here as they often use images produced by the supplier. Think about why a search engine would favor your images over another.

Most good search marketers put conversions and return on investment at the centre of their campaigns. Many retailers have reported low conversions in relation to image search because many are simply there to steal their product images. The thing to keep in mind is what will the visitor find once they arrive at your site. Can you provide reasons for visitors to explore your site a little more?

Despite the experience of some retailers more and more consumers are shopping using image search. This is because they can quickly find what they are looking for without having to sift through many sites with promotional material distracting them. In some specialist or very niche areas some sites won’t show images so consumers will use image search to find the closest thing to what they were looking for.

Ranking in image search can also provide opportunities to empower your brand and build up your reputation. Many sites have gained large volumes of traffic through image search.

I think almost any site can benefit from image search but a careful analysis needs to be made first. Is image search optimization a good use of your clients time?

Basics of Image Search Optimization is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

By Richard V. Burckhardt

I recently upgraded from the original iPhone to the iPhone 3GS so that I could take advantage of the increased speed, both hardware and Internet-wise, because some of the apps that I had installed, many purchased, just weren’t working well on the old phone.

For instance, the TVU Networks app, which lets you watch a lot of Internet based TV, was just too much for the old girl. The picture would freeze and the audio and video would be completely out of sync, even on a fast wi-fi network. Other apps like Last.fm and Pandora would sputter on the Edge network while I was out on my daily walk in the Palm Springs sunshine.

Anyway, it was with much anticipation that I brought home a brand new iPhone 3GS to play with. The apps worked ever so much better!

The battery in the phone was a totally different story, however. With the new 3GS phone, I would find myself recharging two or three times a day as the little power bar would start plummeting after just a few phone calls or other use. I was getting frustrated and firmly believe that Apple should be ashamed to have introduced a phone with such sucky battery life. Apple will tell you to disable all of the things you got the phone for to prolong the battery – 3G, bluetooth, etc. Lame!

Fortunately, someone heard my cries of dispair and I was given a Mophie Juice Pack Air Case and Rechargeable Battery for iPhone 3G, 3G S (Black) as a gift. This little jewel effectively doubles my battery life with just a small bit of added bulk to the phone. This is especially handy if you are traveling or out of the office all day and have no way to plug your phone in to charge it.

The Mophie Juice pack is a two-piece holder for the iPhone. You take the top off, slide the iPhone in and slip the top section back on. As you see your battery draining down to nothing, you flip a switch on the bottom of the Mophie and the external battery starts charging the phone while you continue to use it.

I give the Mophie Juice Pack three out of five stars. I have to knock two stars off for a couple of reasons. First, the Mophie has its own charger, so don’t plan on slipping this baby into your iPhone crade. I generally just charge the Mophie on its own and slip the iPhone into it as I need it.

Second, the top of the Mophie that slips off so that you can insert the iPhone is a pain. It’s awkward to slip it back on when you place the iPhone in the battery pack case and it’s difficult to remove while the iPhone is there. It would have been much better for the Mophie Juice Pack to be designed as a flip up case (like the original Star Trek communicator) where you just flipped the cover up and slipped the phone into the open slot. This would be so much easier and provide protection for the screen, something missing now.

But, I am extremely happy with this battery pack. Apple claims that the battery life for their new iPad will be ten hours! Must be the bigger battery. My iPhone would never give me close to that on its own.

It can now.

Mophie Juice Pack and Rechargeable Battery for iPhone 3G, 3GS is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

By Richard V. Burckhardt

Got something to say? Guest blog at The Web Optimist.

Just so you know, The Web Optimist blog is open to guest blogger articles related to SEO, VOIP and search marketing. These guest posts are free, of course (take that, Google!) and posts must be a minimum of 200 words in length.

Guest blog post in the following categories for free – SEO, News, Reviews. All are moderated and edited. Inappropriate posts will be deleted. Be civil, folks! A total of three links are allowed within the body text. Obvious spam, inappropriate or off-topic content will not be considered. In other words, if I do not like it, I will not publish it!

Simply go to the Contact page to submit your article idea. I’ll set up frequent contributors with an author’s account.

Call for Guest SEO Blog Articles is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

By Richard V. Burckhardt

When I started out in web development way back in the dark ages (1998), I was doing web design for an in-house agency. Primarily, we did sites for the publications that the parent publishing company produced, but we also took on local Palm Springs area clients and built web sites for them.

It went something like this. For a certain amount of money, like $500, we’d build a ten page static web site. We’d do the design work, but the client provided images and text. We’d do the SEO as it existed in those days (title, meta tags, submit to the search engines/directories) and then there would be a monthly hosting/maintenance fee (about $50). Quarterly changes (pictures and text) were part of the fee, anything else cost extra.

Of course, the client was sort of at our mercy as they had no way to make changes themselves. They had to go through us. This could get frustrating for clients who needed frequent changes to their sites, like real estate agents or those with products that needed changing constantly.

Fast forward to today. Yes, if you really need a complicated site with a web designer, programmer and so forth, that option is definitely available more than ever. But, if what you want is a smaller site that you have complete control over and won’t cost a fortune, it can be had quickly and inexpensively.

Where you ask? Simple. Find yourself a hosting company that is WordPress friendly (most are) and that can easily install this free blog platform in the root on your hosting account (Hostgator.com and Godaddy.com are two that come to mind). Check on this before opening the account as some hosts want to place the blog in a subdirectory by default. Moving it to the root so that your domain points right at it can sometimes take some server side acrobatics that are beyond the scope of an SEO 101 reader.

What, you say, I don’t want to blog! I don’t have time to blog! Why in the world would I want to use WordPress?

The answer is that WordPress is more than just a blogging platform. It is also a content management system that gives you control over your content, pages and site features in an easy to use control panel. For instance, instead of sending text and photos off to a designer to place on your site, you just login to your WordPress admin and enter the text and upload the image in a WYSIWYG format, not unlike using a word processor (though HTML view is available, too).

And, WordPress offers the power and potential of thousands of plugins and widgets that add functionality you control that no web designer can hope to offer. For instance, I am also the editor of The Eye Zone, a blog about vision and eyewear. If you take a look at that blog, you’ll notice the large featured images section at the top of the front page. That’s a free plugin called Featured Content Gallery that installs easily. You provide the images and upload them to your hosting account. You have complete control.

But, how does this help you if you only want a web site, not a blog?

WordPress can be used as if it were a web site. You can create pages, just like on a web site and turn off comments until or unless you decide to start using the blog functionality. Since the front page of a WordPress site lists posts by default, you’ll either want to write a single post for the front page or make the front page show a designated page instead.

You do this in the WordPress admin under Settings > Reading. See image below.

Take a look at AddictionInterventionServices.com. This is a small web site that was recently changed to WordPress from my original (nice, but dated) design done several years ago. The site has eight pages, all of which the site owner can now edit himself. The video in the right nav was simply YouTube code pasted into the text widget that WordPress provides for placing code in nav bars. Simple cut and paste, no programming needed.

The same is true with the “Addiction Facts” section. That’s simply a plugin (Stray Random Quotes) code pasted into a text widget, just like the video mentioned previously.

If you look at the bottom of the pages, you’ll see social sharing links. These are provided by another free plugin, Sociable. The Link to this Page link is also a free plugin, LinkToThisPage.

This site points to the Intervention page as the home page (see image above). And, the site owner has indicated that he might want to do some blogging at some point, so he’s all set.

WordPress itself is fairly SEO friendly, but you can extend your search optimization through some great (and free) plugins like HeadSpace2, Canonical URL’s for WordPress and Google XML Sitemaps.

Need to do a redirection? With a WordPress site it’s easy with the Redirection plugin. No need to contact your webmaster/system admin.

And, there are literally thousands of themes for WordPress, free and paid, that you can use to get just the right look for whatever your site is about. There are e-commerce, real estate, SEO-ready and even Twitter-inspired group themes. Or, you have the option of hiring a theme developer.

Need something more than a few static pages? Let’s say you are an affiliate or want to pull a product feed. As they say, there’s and “app” for that, too.

For this article, I used one of my parked domains to create a shopping comparison site for Internet, wireless and wi-fi products. Using the same techniques above, the site features various pages of products all created by setting up a free DataFeedFile.com account, installing the Include It plugin, selecting merchants in my DataFeedFile.com account and saving the keyword search php code (generated through simple tools at DataFeedFile.com) in individual plain text files (example: voip.php) for the plugin to pull. I created each keyword based page (like VOIP) and pasted the Include It code (a simple text string) on each, which calls the php code from the designated keyword focused file (example: voip.php) and, voila, instant shopping comparison site!

By the way, that’s a free WordPress theme that is being used for the site. Check the footer on the site to find out which one.

If what you want to do is pull a feed into a WordPress site, take a look at the DataFeed Poster plugin. It’s not free, but very good at what it does.

I hope you can see just how powerful a WordPress driven site can be, even for those who only want a web site and have no interest in blogging. The tools, functionality and SEO capabilities that you can have yourself (no web developer needed) are incredible compared to just a few years ago, and we didn’t even touch on what you can do with Twitter and social media with plugins.

And, if you ever do want to begin blogging, something this SEO recommends, it’s just a matter of getting started because the functionality is already built into your site.

SEO 101: Need an SEO Friendly Site? Think Blog! is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

By Jill Whalen

Each year around this time, I like to review the traffic trends to our High Rankings website, and compare the traffic to the previous year. I usually learn a lot from this exercise, and I highly recommend it to everyone. Thankfully, with Google Analytics it’s very simple.

Some of the things I look at are total number of visits to the website, as well as the number of visits to certain sections or pages of the site. And of course, I especially like to look at which keyword phrases drive search engine traffic.

Because our site is all about SEO, in addition to learning how we’re doing with our own optimization and overall online marketing initiatives, I can also learn about overall trends in the industry. High Rankings has a number of authoritative articles on fundamental SEO techniques that are typically ranked #1 or #2 for the keywords that relate to them. In fact, those articles tend to have more page views than any others on the site.

Today I thought I’d share some of these insights with you. Please remember that you have to take these “trends” with a grain of salt because many factors could be at play beyond just what people are searching at Google.

With that said, here are some statistics for you, with my commentary on what they might (or might not) mean.

For this exercise I looked at just Google visitors, rather than all search engine visitors, because it was easier to filter the data that way. Our overall Google visitor number was about the same in 2008 as it was in 2009 (–0.24%), which is good for purposes of looking at the trends. If we had substantially more or fewer Google visitors, the numbers of visitors based on keywords would be skewed because of that.

Meta Keywords? Really?

I had hoped that searches related to “meta keywords” would be way down. Silly me: I assumed that certainly by now nobody still thought they were a useful part of SEO. I was unpleasantly surprised to see that they were, in fact, up (+32.04%). [Sigh] (Now, remember – it’s possible our meta keyword article wasn’t ranking as highly the entire year in 2008, which could also account for the difference, although I’m pretty sure it was.) Even worse was that people were still searching for information on whether they should use commas or not in their keyword tag! (+95.83%) [Even Bigger Sigh!]

Surely They Know Title Tags Are Key?

I had also hoped to see title tag keywords up significantly, and they were, but only (+19.84%). It never ceases to amaze me that our title tag article typically receives only a third of the page views as the meta keyword article. It appears that a whole lot more education on that is still needed.

They Love Their Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions continue to be hugely popular, though. In fact, our meta description article is the single most viewed page on the website. Description keywords from Google were up (+34.94%). This is interesting because, while meta descriptions are somewhat useful for SEO, they’re not as important as some make them out to be. Assuming you have great keyword-rich content already on your pages, they’re often not necessary. So even with this one, it’s a shame that it has so many more page views than the title tag article.

Good Riddance, Keyword Density!

There was good news on the keyword density front as searches with the word “density” in them were down (–32.91%). Yay! My hope is that this means people are finally getting away from seeking out that secret-super-duper-all-encompassing keyword density formula or percentage that will magically put all their pages in the #1 spot.

SEO Training’s In – Site Audit’s Out

It also looks as if more people are seeking out ways to be trained in SEO, as our training keywords were up (+62.40%) and our classes keywords up (+121.35%). More people may be looking to learn how to do SEO themselves as opposed to having website audits done by other companies because audit-type keywords were down (–31.01%).

Google Really Does Love You!

People are increasingly looking for answers to frequently asked SEO questions as our FAQ keywords were up (62.69%). And even better is the fact that fewer people are wondering “why Google hates them” as page views of that page were down (–7.79%). From what I’ve seen via forum questions, this is corroborated because there do seem to be fewer people complaining about being penalized for no reason at all than in previous years. This was especially common when Google had their aging delay for new domains in full force.

And Speaking of Forums…

It seems that forums may be going the way of the dinosaur. Our forum page views in general were down (–32.26%). I think this can be attributed to the fact that newer people online are just not as familiar or comfortable with forums as they are with other forms of social media. That said, people searching using SEO forum keywords were in fact up (+16.71%). Perhaps it will be a few more years before we have to put the ole High Rankings Forum out to pasture after all!

Can We Get a Little Closer?

More companies interested in outsourcing their SEO are seeking out local SEO companies. We’ve definitely noticed this with clients and potential clients this year. And searches that contain the word Boston were up (+80.10%) over last year, which seems to corroborate this.

How about you? Have you noticed any trends in your analytics as they relate to the search marketing industry?

Jill Whalen, CEO of High Rankings and co-founder of SEMNE, has been performing SEO services since 1995. Jill is the host of the HRA SEO newsletter and the High Rankings SEO forum.

SEO Trends for 2009 is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

By Richard V. Burckhardt

Link building doesn’t have to be all about begging. Try building relationships and self branding instead.

Ask just about any SEO what their least favorite part of search engine optimization and a lot of them will give link building as the answer. Begging for links from authority sites is no one’s idea of fun. Rejection feels so, well, rejected!

Building organic links to your site is something that we’d all like to put on auto pilot as much as possible. There are ways to do this, but they can be different depending on whether your site is brand spanking new or a seasoned veteran.

So, we’ll divide these tips and suggestions into two parts: New Sites and Established Sites.

New Sites

1. Comment on blogs and forums that allow either a link in the text or (more likely) a signature link. Use your real name, too.
2. Offer plugins or gadgets that link back to you. Popular plugins and gadgets can be a gold mine for back links. For example, check out Twitter Doodle and RSS Doodle, WordPress plugins which create mash-up posts for your blog from Twitter chatter and RSS feeds, respectively.  At the bottom of each page of mashups, you’ll find a link back to the creator of the plugins (Check out this sample page). In addition, folks love cool, free stuff, so you’ll also be getting goodwill, authority and branding.
3. Create great content and give it away. Guest post on related blogs, offer articles with links back to you to quality article services or even online news publications.
4. Spin your great content three ways to article sites after it has been published on your own blog or site.  Once you see your first version cached, submit the spinned versions to other sites. This creates additional unique versions of the article that are linked back to you from off site.
5. If your site isn’t a blog, add one! They’re great for on-the-fly content and announcements and terrific for community building. Your content (with links back to you, so use absolute links) will be distributed by RSS for possible reposting elsewhere across the web.

Established Sites

1. Rather than check out links to you competitors and try to get links from those sites, build your own unique link community. Linking to competitor backlinks just strengthens them. Don’t reinforce your competition.
2. Focus on relevant links, not quantity.
3. Link out liberally. I know this makes some SEOs cringe, but when a search engine sees you link out to authority sites, some of that authority can rub off on you.
4. Forum marketing should not be overt. Respect the Terms of Service, make useful posts and create a positive reputation. Focus on your niche. Make sure you understand the forum policy on links and signatures.
5. Control the conversation. Make your site, forum or blog the informational authority for you niche. The links will come.
6. Use Twitter (You really didn’t think we’d get through this without Twitter, did you?). Twitter conversations can bring links to you and it’s a terrific resource for finding related sites to partner with.
7. Watch for press releases for ideas. See what others are doing and be ready to respond to breaking news with blog posts, articles and your own press releases (which are still good for back links). Post your response quickly to be one of the first. Go back and edit later to monetize or adjust the title for ongoing rather than breaking news searches.

This barely scratches the surface of beginning SEO and is intended to get you started in the right direction. I go into more detail in my SEO 101 workshop, offered to web site owners and small businesses. Check my blog at http://www.weboptimist.com for more information or contact me to set up a custom workshop for your business group in the Palm Springs area of Southern California. Travel is possible for large groups.

Organic Link Building is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

By Richard V. Burckhardt

Twitter has become an important communications tool. Here are some tips to optimize your tweets.

Who would have thought? I have to admit that when Twitter was first launched, I was one of those folks who thought it was downright silly. Who cares that you’re sitting in a coffee shop texting a 140 character status report? Sheesh. Bound to disappear in a few months…

Wow, was I ever wrong. Twitter has taken the world by storm, providing communications for everything from patriots in repressed regimes to emergency information services. And, yes, you’ve still got those nerds tweeting about sipping a latte at Starbucks, too. Oh, well…

Twitter has been a natural magnet for SEOs and Internet marketing tweeple, er, people.  Twitter allows an unprecidented way for an individual or company to get immediate insight from around the world, allow you to break out of your social group (follow friends of friends, industry leaders), grow your channel of distribution and build your brand.

Here’s a list of twips, er, uh, tips to make your tweeting twouble fwee, ah, er, uh, trouble free!

• Don’t follow every conversation. It will drive you nuts. Be selective, but participate. Jump in and out of conversations.
• Incorporate “Tweet This” functionality on your landing pages to encourage, well, tweets! For WordPress blogs, check out the plugin appropriately named Tweet This.
• Ask questions. There’s no better way to get started, make friends and become known.
• Answer questions. Let others know that you are an authority. This is particularly great for companies.
• Bring attention to others, not just yourself. Keep self promotion to a minimum.
• Answer all of your direct messages (DM) and replies (@).
• Tweet brief information that is not worthy of a full blog post, but valuable information nonetheless.
• Tweet regularly, but not too often. Think value, not volume, just like with links in SEO.
• Drop links to valuable sites and information.
• Reweet good stuff. This can be really powerful and can become viral.
• When someone retweets you, thank them.
• Seek out and engage people who retweet in your industry.
• Keep your tweets to about 120 characters to allow room for retweets.
• Tweet with care. Remember, once you tweet something, it’s out there and can’t be deleted.
• Follow folks who you might want to direct message (DM). You can only DM with folks you follow back.
• Follow @spam. This is where you can report spammers by DM. @spam will follow you back.
• Be personable. Even if you are using Twitter for a company profile, make it appear there is a person there, not an autoresponder.

And, chances are you will find yourself monitoring multiple Twitter accounts. Check out the Twhirl client, my current favorite. Not only does it handle several accounts, you can set it up to auto update Ping.fm and Jaiku with your tweets.  Seesmic offers the Seesmic Desktop client, too, which now interfaces with Facebook. And, a lot of folks swear by TweetDeck. Check them out. They’re fwee, uh, FREE!

Read more SEO 101 articles in the SEO Training category of this blog.

SEO 101: Twitter Twips, uh, Tips for Tweeps is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO

By Richard V. Burckhardt

Social news sites are about content for the reader, not self promotion.

This is part two of my series on Optimization for Social Media Integration, this time covering social media news.

The top two social media news sites today are Digg and StumbleUpon, so I’ll concentrate on these. However, Propeller.com, Reddit.com, Mixx.com (do-follow links) and Buzz.Yahoo.com are all worth a look.

The main thing to remember about social media sites is that the news on these sites is chosen by the users, making popular items even more so because bloggers look at this content for cool, link-worthy stuff and then re-post or write about them. The stories get great visibility and natural editorial links. In addition, the content is targeted, making it great for boosting your ranking and authority.

In brief: Digg utilizes outside voting, requires LOTS of votes for an item to go popular, generating less illegitimate content. StumbleUpon features toolbar voting, send page to a friend ability (which pretty much forces a view) and even includes the option to buy more views at a whopping 5 cents each.

Here are some general guidelines to make your social news more popular and to provide those nice surges of traffic to your blog or site. These spikes can be fantastic!

Content

• Give quality. Readers (voters) appreciate hard work, like learning, hate spam, SEO and marketing. They strictly want news, not fluff, so make sure that news, not self-promotion, is what you’re presenting.
• Be concise. Save time for everyone by not overdoing the amount of text. Social news readers like to skim without too many clicks. In other words, they are anxious to vote and want to get it done right away!

SEO

• Use titles in your blog posts that are positioned for back links with great SEO text. Page titles can have more keywords.
• Post regularly. Keep that great content coming.
• Don’t be tempted to 301 redirect old content to new posts. Let the content be.
• Garner trust because trusted domains are more likely to hit the front page of Digg.
• Stay on topic.
• Make your news linkable.
• Adhere to the Terms of Service for the news site.
• Optimize, rework and monetize your articles 30-60 days after they have gone viral.
• Utilize RSS feeds to help drive links from other sites.  RSS feed links are not nofollow.

One final thought. You can actually dominate longtail results with proper social news optimization even if your site isn’t optimized, a terrific byproduct. Links generated to your news article can push even pagess with no SEO to speak of higher.

Optimization for Social Media Integration: News is a post from: SEO in The Desert | More about Palm Springs SEO