Archive for November, 2009

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LinkedIn: Hopping on the Open Source Bandwagon

Monday, November 30th, 2009

linkedinOpen source, the practice in production and development that promotes access to an end product’s source materials like their source code (per Wikipedia), has been a trending theme in social media. There are many that dislike open source and others who praise this movement. The OSI, or the Open Source Initiative, looks to educate and advocate the benefits of open source because "open source [offers] better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in". 

Today LinkedIn will be announcing the availability of their technology to software developers looking to integrate it in their sites and apps. Their overall goal? To make LinkedIn the epicenter of convo about business on the Net. In the most recent past they’ve positioned themselves to do just that with their Outlook integration, Twitter partnership, TweetDeck Twitter application, and Amazon.com’s recommended list (allowing you to see which books are popular in your professional network).
 
Soon, however, developers will be able to provide even more applications and programs that coincide with your LinkedIn accounts. With the explosion of Twitter applications, it seems LinkedIn is on the same track. Twitter is already the online epicenter of most conversation on the web, will LinkedIn become a more niche based conversation hub? Probably.
 
So what does this mean for us in SEO? It means if you aren’t on LinkedIn already then you should really consider getting an account and optimizing it. Optimizing your LinkedIn account can be done in a few easy steps:
  • Customize your URL, that’s kind of a given but surprisingly many need to be reminded.
  • Add links to your profile under "websites" section. You have up to 3 available, so make sure to add some anchor text that is appropriate. Recently LinkedIn added rel="nofollow" to these links, but general anchor text like "my blog" seem to be dofollow….for the moment.
  • Add substance to your profile by filling it out!
  • Actually USE your LinkedIn profile: Ask questions, answer questions, get recommendations, post your resume, utilize LinkedIn groups, and participate throughout the community. This will not only help build your credibility and authority, but also give you the opportunity to build connections.
  • Add your companies profile to LinkedIn: Mashable’s "How-To: Build Your Company’s Profile on LinkedIn" is a great resource if you haven’t added your companies info to LinkedIn yet.
 
Be on the lookout for new applications and uses with regards to LinkedIn in 2010, and get your profile ready for it! In fact, you should have lots of social media profiles, we can even help set them up for you!

Kaila Strong

Kaila is a Sr. Account Manager at Vertical Measures. She works directly with clients to evaluate and analyze their overall Internet Marketing needs, creates sales proposals and recommendations. In addition she regularly reports on client rankings, gives SEO advice to brands in a variety of industries and manages client expectations.

Kaila has a background in social media marketing, link building, SEO and content marketing. She’s an active blogger on SearchEngineWatch.com, and an avid social media user (@cliquekaila on Twitter). She brings her experience to the table with new clients and enjoys writing about her experiences as well here on the VM blog and throughout the web.

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Posted in Social Media | 7 Comments »

Happy Linksgiving!

Wednesday, November 25th, 2009

Logo on Pumpkin PieAmazingly enough Thanksgiving is here, and what better time to give thanks….with links! We’ve compiled a list of Thanksgiving inspired SEO sites for your viewing pleasure. Have some to add to the list, drop a comment below and we’ll attempt to update the list. 

Linksgiving.com: This high quality directory contains user-submitted links by category. Users can vote for topics to get submitted, and they are the home of the Weekly Link Award.
 
"Thanksgiving SEO Recipe": A Thanksgiving inspired SEO recipe sure to help you out anytime of the year!
 
"Happy Thanksgiving (SEO How-to Style)": This how-to post details Robert Bucci’s success in ranking on the first page of Google for the term "SEO Thanksgiving", and gives you some great ideas on how to utilize video marketing in your SEO efforts.
 
"TipTop’s 2009 Thanksgiving Search Special": TipTop Search suggests utilizing their real-time search engine to search for Thanksgiving themed items like: what are you going to do with those darn leftovers, deserts people are craving this year, and more! Utilize their Thanksgiving search special this weekend and get answers to all your Thanksgiving related questions. 
 
Tweetsgiving: Participate in a global celebration aiming to change the world through gratitude. Share what you are thankful for this year, contribute in honor of your gratitude, and share with your friends. Follow @TweetsGiving for more details or check out their site to see how you can help. Donations go to help build classrooms, orphanages, dormitories, and cafeterias at the #twitterkids’ school in Arusha, Tanzania.
 
"A Social Media Thanksgiving": Scott Kleinberg at Chicago Now provides a few of his favorite social media-themed Thanksgiving items including: @butterball on Twitter, free Wifi, and Thanksgiving on Facebook.
 
 Fan Out Hunger and Feast For A Follow: These Vertical Measures promotions end tomorrow, so be sure to check them out. We’re donating $250 in each promotion to help end hunger. Vote for your favorite hunger charity or local food bank, and the one with the most votes can win up to $500 donated just in time for Thanksgiving!
 
Be sure to let us know which special Thanksgiving treats we’re missing by dropping a comment below.
 
Happy Linksgiving from the Vertical Measures crew!

 

Kaila Strong

Kaila is a Sr. Account Manager at Vertical Measures. She works directly with clients to evaluate and analyze their overall Internet Marketing needs, creates sales proposals and recommendations. In addition she regularly reports on client rankings, gives SEO advice to brands in a variety of industries and manages client expectations.

Kaila has a background in social media marketing, link building, SEO and content marketing. She’s an active blogger on SearchEngineWatch.com, and an avid social media user (@cliquekaila on Twitter). She brings her experience to the table with new clients and enjoys writing about her experiences as well here on the VM blog and throughout the web.

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Posted in Link Building | 6 Comments »

Hootsuite Gets a Facelift

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

HootsuiteIf you haven’t discovered the wonderful social media tool Hootsuite it’s about time you did. Last night a few of us here at Vertical Measures, myself included, were going crazy because Hootsuite was down to perform updates to its system. And what we found this morning made us all jump for joy…..I literally did a little happy dance in my chair.

Hootsuite added the ability to manage your Facebook status updates (including commenting on your friends status updates, AND ‘liking’ their posts), postdate your Facebook status updates, manage your Linkedin updates, post date your Linkedin updates, manage Twitter lists, AND when someone @replies a tweet you can see which tweet they were referring to! To my knowledge there aren’t any other systems like this….great job Hootsuite! 

If you aren’t already familiar with exactly what Hootsuite has to offer check out the details below to answer a few common questions.
 
hootsuite-owlWhat is Hootsuite?
Dubbed as the ultimate Twitter toolbox (and now the social media toolbox in my opinion), with Hootsuite you’re able to manage multiple accounts, add many editors to each of your Twitter accounts, post-date tweets, and the best thing for social media marketers: analytics. Their analytics are pretty awesome, calculating click through rates on tweets utilizing their ow.ly shortner, showing you the geographic locations of your clickers, etc.
 
With Hootsuite you’re able to RT, @Reply, DM, or favorite items too! Plus, you can click on any users name and easily follow, unfollow, see their stats (follower/following), see their bio, their last tweet, and even report them as spam.
 
Something that I personally love about Hootsuite is their ‘hootlet’ button which allows you to quickly and easily post a URL on your Twitter profile with a simple click of a button that activates a screen popup, auto-filling the message area with the shortened URL and the meta title of the page – a TRUE time saver! How many times have you seen a blog post you want to share on Twitter? Then you have to go to bit.ly or tinyurl.com, paste the link in the shortener, copy the then shortened URL and paste it into Twitter, fill out the info, etc. With the ‘hootlet’ button you can easily do this in about ½ the time and you can post it to Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin at the same time.
 
How can Hootsuite help me?
If you have multiple accounts like I do (because I manage Vertical Measures social media marketing) OR if you just have your own account you can really benefit. This web based system gives you the ability to set up different streams pulling through data from Twitter (and now Facebook and Linkedin) with the following options:
 
Twitter: Home feed, Mentions (@ reply) feed, Direct message feed, Outgoing message feed (both DM and sent tweets), Pending tweets feed, keywords (always be aware of who’s tweeting about your keywords), hashtags, and more.
Facebook: so far Hootsuite only allows you to choose a feed that has your Facebook Live Feed stream (your status messages and your friends), and another feed that lets you see your pending (postdated) status updates. Users are able to ‘like’ and comment on their friend’s status updates on Facebook as well.
Linkedin: Status message stream, and an option to see your post-dated Linkedin messages.
 
Each of the feeds you designate are placed next to one another in one tab for easy viewing. You can fit up to four feeds in each tab, and can have as many tabs as you want.
 
If you aren’t using Hootsuite now you really should, it’s a lifesaver!

 

Kaila Strong

Kaila is a Sr. Account Manager at Vertical Measures. She works directly with clients to evaluate and analyze their overall Internet Marketing needs, creates sales proposals and recommendations. In addition she regularly reports on client rankings, gives SEO advice to brands in a variety of industries and manages client expectations.

Kaila has a background in social media marketing, link building, SEO and content marketing. She’s an active blogger on SearchEngineWatch.com, and an avid social media user (@cliquekaila on Twitter). She brings her experience to the table with new clients and enjoys writing about her experiences as well here on the VM blog and throughout the web.

Website – Twitter – More Posts

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Posted in Social Media | 2 Comments »

Top 10 Features of Chrome OS

Tuesday, November 24th, 2009

Google Chrome OSDue out in late 2010, Google’s new operating system Chrome OS is already drawing some rants, raves, and criticism. Ben Parr over at Mashable has been writing lately about Chrome OS and what he has dubbed "The Google Revenue Equation". His theory is that Google is constantly looking to improve the web because their revenue is dependent upon its success: Revenue = Amount of Time on the Web. Totally makes sense right? And with Chrome OS Google is looking to get users online faster and with ease. 

Below are the top 10 features of Chrome OS you should know:
  • Chrome OS completely focuses on the most important part of your computer: your web browser. Its interface is 100% web.
  • Chrome OS eliminates time sucks: desktop. Even the fastest computer takes 45 seconds to load up!
  • Nothing is stored on your computer. Chrome OS is literally 100% web based.
  • Chrome OS will be free!
  • Chrome OS will be open source.
  • Chrome OS is not Android.
  • There are no desktop applications, Literally everything is web based.
  • Everything that comes in Chrome now will be available in Chrome OS.
  • When you don’t have a live Internet connection: you can’t store or access data.
  • Chrome OS, for now, will be on specific netbook like devices. No hybrids available that are compatible with your existing Windows OS or Mac OS. 
What does Google’s Chrome OS mean to you? Well for starters you’ll get online faster. In the SEO and Link Building world that translates to time savings for you and increased time spent online by your prospects and clients. But it’s not all butterflies and rainbows. You can’t store or access data unless you have access to an Internet connection. For those in rural areas it’s unlikely that Chrome OS will prove beneficial. Also, most people hate change. Imagine no more start button, no desktop applications, not even a CD-ROM or the ability to watch DVDs on your computer. Literally everything is web based with Chrome OS.
 
While this is a great start many are marking this is a #fail for Google due to its limitations and inflexible nature. How likely is it that we’ll all go running to get rid of the one thing that has stayed consistent with most of us who have had computers in the last 10 years: the desktop? 
 

What are your thoughts about Google’s Chrome OS? Would you use it?

Kaila Strong

Kaila is a Sr. Account Manager at Vertical Measures. She works directly with clients to evaluate and analyze their overall Internet Marketing needs, creates sales proposals and recommendations. In addition she regularly reports on client rankings, gives SEO advice to brands in a variety of industries and manages client expectations.

Kaila has a background in social media marketing, link building, SEO and content marketing. She’s an active blogger on SearchEngineWatch.com, and an avid social media user (@cliquekaila on Twitter). She brings her experience to the table with new clients and enjoys writing about her experiences as well here on the VM blog and throughout the web.

Website – Twitter – More Posts

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Posted in Search Engine Optimization | 1 Comment »

PubCon 2009 Las Vegas – A Guide To Competitive Analysis

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Competitive AnalysisOne of the best sessions I attended during PubCon 2009 in Las Vegas was one about Competitive Analysis. In SEO and Internet Marketing, competitive analysis is most often used to try to discover how a more successful competitor is out ranking your business or website online. 

Many times by performing comprehensive competitive analysis you will find information and be able to develop strategies to better compete and/or over take your competitors market share on the web.

First I’ll start with a list of strategies and end with a list of tools recommended by some of the top Internet Strategists.
 

Strategies:

1.)    Read your competitors press releases. What are they talking about and what words are they using? Sometimes a competitor may be increasing the popularity of a keyword just by talking about it. If you can figure that out early you can also focus on that keyword.
2.)    Look for reviews online about the competitor and/or their products by Googling “rate company name” or “review company name” (or product name).
3.)    Find and read forums in the competitor’s niche.
4.)    Use the “allinanchor” operator in the search engines to see who is ranking for the keywords you want. Here is an example of a Google search: allinanchor:competitive analysis
5.)    Identify strong content on the competitor’s site by using the seobook.com Firefox extension and the site operator in Google like this: “site:sitecompanyname.com” (without the quotes) The extension shows you valuable information about the competitors content.
6.)    If your competitor has a strong presence on bookmarking and voting sites like stumbleupon.com and de.licio.us take note of who submitted the content or bookmarked it and then query the sites (or Google) using “submitted by” or “discovered by” and look for trends. If the same person is regularly submitting their content they might be willing to do the same for you.
7.)    Use Twitter for research. Most companies and/or their employees are tweeting and talking about something and most companies that are not are working on a strategy to start.
8.)    Most tools listed below will offer an RSS feed of the data you seek. Use an iGoogle page to aggregate it for each client you are monitoring. Just add an RSS gadget of your choice.
9.)    The next 3 (9,10,11) could be considered "Black Hat" and even "Unethical" & "Deceptive" as most reputable companies won’t need to incorporate these tactics in their analysis.  These were shared and worth reporting so we will let you decide if you want to use them.  We are NOT recommending them.  Robots.txt files can offer some interesting insight in to what your competitors are hiding, planning or just don’t want eyes to see. With most websites you can point your browser to http://www.domain.com/robots.txt and voila. What is listed as “disallowed” could be helpful information.
10.)  This one is also a bit “black hat” and could be considered deceptive. Set up a “sock puppet” site that would not be considered a threat and make friends with your competitor (a sock puppet site is a temporary site used solely to create an online persona.)
11.)  Scour the Internet for negative press and chatter about the competitor. Do searches using derogatory words in association with their company name, brand or product. If you find negative press or conversations you can build your campaign to address that specific issue(s) with customers.
12.)  Look online for competitor employees. Loose lips sink brands. Follow them, watch what they say, who they talk to and why. Follow their tweets, company profiles, Social Media profiles and others.
13.)  Monitor job listings. This will tell you what their turnover rate is, what level people they need and possible directions they are going. You may also be able to gleen products in development etc.
14.)  SideWiki: Google’s new real time comment system can give you insight in to what your competitors are doing, how their customers feel about them, what their customers want that they may not be getting and other valuable data. If you are not familiar with SideWiki Google it.
15.)  Facebook: search fan pages, and conduct research on Facebook.
 

Competitive Analysis Tools

  1. TrendWatching.com: http://trendwatching.com/            
  2. MajesticSEO.com: http://www.majesticseo.com/
  3. Trackur: http://www.trackur.com/         
  4. Compete.com: http://compete.com/   
  5. SeoBook Firefox Extension: http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html       
  6. Social Media For Firefox: http://www.97thfloor.com/social-media-for-firefox/ 
  7. Quarkbase.com: http://www.quarkbase.com/ 
  8. Twitter.com: http://www.twitter.com  
  9. Topsy: http://topsy.com/           
  10. TweetMeme: http://tweetmeme.com/
  11. Social Mention: http://socialmention.com/
  12. Twitter Circles: http://twittercircles.com/
  13. SeoRush.com: http://www.semrush.com/
  14. Quantcast.com: http://www.quantcast.com/
  15. DomainTools.com: http://www.domaintools.com/
  16. Oodle.com: http://www.oodle.com/job/
  17. WhosTalkin.com: http://www.whostalkin.com/               
  18. Facebook: http://www.facebook.com

Posted by Chris von Nieda, Director of Search Marketing at Vertical Measures. Twitter: @SEO4Vertical

Vertical Measures

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