SEO in The Desert

By Richard V. Burckhardt

SEO and Social Media optimization are pretty much integrated these days.

As promised, though delayed a bit, here is the follow-up to SEO & Social Media Integration with some tips for optimizing your social media and integrating it into your overall SEO mix. Naturally, the more social links you have, the more you’ll be noticed (Hey, I’m here!) and linked to and crawled, natural SEO in any book.

• Complete your profiles and put your web site or blog URL in ALL of your profiles. Including your web site link should be a no brainer, but LOTS of folks forget this. Social content is definitely showing up in search results. For instance, a search for my name in Google comes up with several of my profiles (LinkedIn, WebPro News, Plaxo, etc.)  as I write this. Include jobs, use keywords, never turn down interview or podcast opportunities that can be included.
• Check industry trends through services like Google Alerts. Jump into breaking subjects with blog and social media posts.
• Promote blogs, social media and RSS feeds of those who link to you through your own RSS feeds. This has a viral effect that sends more links to you.
• Develop a series of “How to” videos and post them on video sites like YouTube (now 25% of Google searches). People LOVE these and will embed the videos or link to them. Post them on your own blog and in the social sites, too.
• Content is king on Twitter, just like in standard, run of the mill SEO, so use keywords and hashtags (like the #bsg tag for Battlestar Galactica fans).
• Utilize Facebook fan pages. These can have unlimited followers and can be optimized.
• Subscriptions are gold! Social Media Content = Subscriptions + Links!
• Transcribe your podcasts and post them on your blog.  Include keywords and links.
• Create widgets that will pull your RSS feeds from blogs, social media and news feeds. As a rule, links in RSS feeds are direct links without redirection or the dreaded “nofollow” tag!
• Re-optimize blog posts after their “shelf” life. Rework them and monetize them for breaking subjects. Any given blog post URL or page has history and links, so update them to keep current, ranking and posted in the social media.

OK, as always, these just scratch the surface, but you can see the optimizing for SEO and social media are pretty much one and the same these days. What you do with one totally effects the other.  Anyone who thinks they can be an SEO and ignore social media is, well, NOT an SEO.

Next up: Optimization for Social Media Integration: News

Keeping up with SEO today is not for the faint of heart.

There’s one thing that I can say about search engine optimization (SEO) today – it’s not for the faint of heart.

Anyone in the trenches these days knows that SEO left the era of tweaking title and meta tags a long time ago. With universal search, personalized search, social media, a global economy and a little thing called Twitter (who would have guessed?), keeping on top of things on a daily basis takes almost Kryptonian endurance.

Rather than going the way of the bell bottom, SEO continues to grow and expand into previously unknown territories, adapting with each. Anyone who says SEO is dead must be hiding in a cave waiting for the economy to revive. Those of us not hiding and continuing to fight the fight know that, if anything, SEOs are busier than ever in this economy, some even passing up business because they can’t handle any more work.

What’s keeping them so busy? read more »

As mentioned on my SEO Workshops page, I offer search engine optimization workshops for businesses in the Palm Springs area.

Coming soon to a palm tree near you, Beginner SEO 101 Workshops.

SEO 101 Training Workshop for Businesses This is a basic SEO training workshop for beginners, perfect for do-it-yourself businesses, advertising firms and web designers looking for ways to make their sites stand out for both visitors and the search engines. This two hour session includes: On page optimization (Meta tags, navigation, etc.) Off page optimization (Links, competition) Site clinic (I critique YOUR site) Image Optimization Social media, universal and personalized search overview. Lotsa good tips! Price: $100 per person, minimum group of three (Larger group discounts are available). I will come to your conference room or office in the Palm Springs and Coachella Valley area. Internet access is required. Contact me for more information.

I am available for SEO consultations in the desert (Palm Springs, Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert, etc.). Contact The Web Optimist for more information.

The year has passed so rapidly that I can’t believe we’re already at the end of 2008! The Web Optimist blog is an outlet for me to pass on things that I learn in my real job as an SEO (as I have the time) and I’ve published a total of 90 posts this past year, some in-depth articles and some just quicky “did-you-know-this?” items.

Here’s what I consider the best of The Web Optimist over the past year (in no particular order). You might not agree, but hey, it’s my blog.

1. S E O Tools & Tips - Want a look at what I consider essential tools for my day job as an SEO? Here’s what I use in my personal arsenal.

2. Robots.txt: Powerful but Picky! – The robots.txt file is a powerful tool, but you’ve got to be extremely careful with it. This post discusses one of it’s little idiosyncrasies that could easily trip you up. That’s my Lost in Space toy robot in my back yard in the photo. Yep, I wanted to be Will Robinson growing up! Such a geek!

3. Shopping Site Essentials - Got an ecommerce site and think you can do it on your own without product listings on shopping search sites? If so, you are missing out on a MAJOR opportunity to expand your product and brand exposure around the globe. Yes, it costs money to be in most of them, but you can strike gold if you know what you are doing. This post gives you some tips to get you started.

4. Beginning Viral Marketing - Want to get a campaign started that will spread like a virus but don’t have a clue how to start? Videos? Social sites? Freebies? Here are 14 clues to help you get going.

5. Grabbing the Longtail - No, I’m not talking about a cat, here. In this article I point you in the direction of ranking for multi-word search phrases, getting cheaper PPC traffic and increasing your site visits without a lot of work.

6. User Content Generation -User generated content basically turns your customers and site visitors into SEOs for you while generating fresh keyword rich content for the spiders to devour. You just need to know how to get them to contribute and this post provides some great pointers to encourage the process.

7. Online Retail Optimization: Will It Blend? - You can’t just post your product pages on the web and expect them to rank as well as they did in the days of ten blue links on the search results pages. There’s a lot more competition now that Blended Search (another term for Universal Search) has become the norm. To compete, you’ll need to optimize images, videos, feeds and more.

8. Google Personalized Search – The search giant has put a new spin on rankings by personalizing search results when you are logged into your Google account. To rank well for users who are signed in, you’ve got to get sticky and this post shows you how.

9. Annoying Speed Bumps on the Information Superhighway – C’mon, folks. Using the Internet should be easy. So why do hotels, software, hardware, web sites and even the search engines make things so hard? This is one of my rants on things that should be simple but aren’t.

10. Brand With Your Head, Not Your Gut – Using past experience with the local tourism bureau, I discuss online branding and how politics and misguided reliance on a name rather than a brand can trip up a campaign.

11. Will Trust Kill the Algorithm? – I’ve heard a lot of comments about whether Google is going social lately. The answer is a resounding yes and I blogged about it a year ago.

12. Is Universal Search Harder? – Despite the big push towards including everything AND the kitchen sink in search results, Universal Search can actually make finding what you are looking for more difficult. Sure would be nice to have an off switch!

And, I left the best for last because it wasn’t originally published on The Web Optimist, rather I guest posted over at Search Engine Journal. My 55 Quick S E O Tips Even Your Mother Would Love has been reposted here as Free eBook: 65 Quick S E O Tips Even Your Mother Would Love featuring ten more tips and a downloadable PDF file. Look for that to grow to 100 tips very soon when I update Mom’s tips in 2009!

I add to the blog as I have time. Thanks to all of you who have come back as return readers, commented, e-mailed and joined as Twitter followers. We’ll see what 2009 brings!

Happy New Year, folks!

It appears to me that “SEO” is going to have to be replaced by something else in the very near future.

No, it’s not that some folks who are not very Internet savvy think it stands for “senior executive officer.” Nor is it because one not-too-popular geek decided to try to trademark the term.

Search engine optimization, for which it stands, is, well, no longer just about search engines.

In the old days, everyone just wanted to be at the top of whatever search engine was the biggest at the time and we’d all merrily tweak and link and hold our breath whenever updates happened. In recent years, thie focus has been on Google updates, but several things are happening that are taking the “search engine” out of the picture. Among them:

1. Although Google is still the biggest and baddest, ranking at the top is going the way of, well, Yahoo (as I duck and run for cover). Google’s increasing use of personalized search results means that a site can rank #1 for you when you are logged into Google, but #25 for someone else. Heck, you can even customize your own Google search results with their new SearchWiki.

2. Search very often has nothing to do with search engines these days. Frequently, searchers are finding what they want through what are perceived as trusted sources on social media sites like Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg and so forth or through product reviews on shopping sites like Amazon.com. Rather than take what the search engines dish out, they get their information from friends or peers.

3. Even Google thinks you want to socialize. For instance, Google Reader allows sharing with friends. Then there’s Knol, kind of Google’s version of Wikipedia.

Anyway, my point is that the web is heading away from searching through search engines as the primary way of finding information. Yes, we’ll still be using “Google” as a verb for years to come, but we as Internet marketing professionals will need to adapt. We need to know how to not just optimize for the search engines, but the entire web.

So let’s see. What can we call ourselves? How about web optimists?

I like the sound of that!

Happy holidays!

Download the free search engine optimization basics ebook. Perfect for beginners and intermediate optimizers.

I’ve updated my training book, a single downloadable PDF document, S E O 101: The eBook to include advanced blog optimization and user generated content. It’s free, so help yourself.

There are eleven chapters that correspond to various search engine optimization posts I’ve done over the past year or so:

• On-Page Factors
• Off-Page Factors
• Keyword Research (Includes link to companion podcast)
• Image Optimization
• Link Building
• Duplicate Content
• Blog & Feed Optimization
• Social Media Optimization
• Universal Search
• Personalized Search
• User Generated Content

Included in the chapters are links to recommended sites, plugins, etc. and more.

Download the eBook today to your PC or viewer and study at your convenience. As I have time, I’ll update the file as conditions change in the SEO world.

I recently did a guest post over at Search Engine Journal titled 55 Quick S E O Tips Even Your Mother Would Love which had a very positive response. I got lots of great comments and Sphinns (If you haven’t given it a Sphinn, feel free to).

So, being someone who believes in sharing knowledge, I decided to add an expanded version of this article to my free eBook section. As time goes on, like with the previously released SEO 101: The eBook , this one will be updated from time to time. Who knows, it might become 200 or 1000 tips before it’s over.

Anyway, feel free to download the 108 Quick S E O Tips Even Your Mother Would Love PDF file.

Enjoy!

Thanks again to Loren and gang over at Search Engine Journal for using my piece!