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	<title>SEO Strategy &#124; Social Media Strategy &#124; Website Design &#187; Search Engine Optimization</title>
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		<title>Search Engines as Affiliates + Publishers</title>
		<link>http://peermarketinggroup.com/search-engines-as-affiliates-publishers/</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 25 May 2011 09:23:36 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Affiliates]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Engines']]></category>
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		<description><![CDATA[Consumer Finance <p>Google recently unveiled Google Advisor, which ties together the concept of Google Comparison Ads with a better looking interface.</p> <p>&#8220;With Google Advisor, you enter information about what you’re looking for in a mortgage, credit card, CD, or checking and savings account.&#8221;</p> <p></p> <p></p> <p>And unlike Google comparison ads, Google is caching these pages</p> [...]]]></description>
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<h2>Consumer Finance</h2>
<p>Google recently unveiled Google Advisor, which ties together the concept of Google Comparison Ads with a better looking interface.</p>
<p>&#8220;With Google Advisor, you enter information about what you’re looking for in a mortgage, credit card, CD, or checking and savings account.&#8221;</p>
<p><iframe width="640" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XBicXcJkra4?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></p>
<p><img src="http://www.seobook.com/images/google-advisor.gif" /></p>
<p>And unlike Google comparison ads, Google is caching these pages</p>
<p><img src="http://www.seobook.com/images/google-advisor-cache.gif" /></p>
<p>When you add in <a href="http://www.seobook.com/beat-it-beat-it">BeatThatQuote</a>, AdWords, Google affiliate network, <a href="http://ppcblog.com/creating-search-inventory/">Google ads that filter content clicks through to search ads</a>, and AdSense there are at least 6 different ways for Google to sniff data on &amp; monetize the consumer financial product market. And that is if you don&#8217;t count branded display ads on YouTube as another option.</p>
<h2>Fashion</h2>
<p>If you go into the fashion market Google has AdWords, Product Ads, AdSense, the Google affiliate network, Boutiques.com &amp; branded Youtube ads. Like.com, which Google purchased in part to build Boutiques.com, also remains a live website &amp; yet another way for Google to taste the fashion market.</p>
<h2>Videos / Movies</h2>
<p>While Youtube was originally against displaying ads before videos, now that they have huge marketshare <a href="http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/youtube-extends-plans-for-ads-before-videos/">they are going to push front-loaded ads harder</a>. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/movies">Youtube offers a movie store</a> &amp; provides links to MP3s near music.</p>
<h2>Books</h2>
<p>In books Google has Product ads, AdWords, AdSense, and their ebook marketplace. As soon as Google opened up their ebook store they began ranking their books highly in the &#8220;organic&#8221; search results<br /><img src="http://www.seobook.com/images/ebooks/founders-at-work.png" /></p>
<p>In addition to ranking those ebook pages well in the organic search results, Google also offers a vertical book filter<br /><img src="http://www.seobook.com/images/ebooks/google-book-filter.png" /></p>
<h2>Travel</h2>
<p>With flight search Google has ran tests where <a href="http://www.angiescopywriting.com/seo/google-flight-serps.html">it looked like they were putting affiliate links directly in the &#8220;organic&#8221; search results</a>. <a href="http://seogadget.co.uk/google-testing-flight-search-results/">Their most recent flight search result test</a> has an extended option which puts the organic results below the fold.</p>
<p>Google is <a href="http://www.tnooz.com/2011/04/27/news/google-brings-hotel-price-ads-and-booking-front-and-center/">monetizing the &#8220;organic&#8221; results on the hotel front</a>, offering <a href="http://www.fairsearch.org/the-end-of-fair-search/google-hotel-price-ads-a-preview-of-what%E2%80%99s-to-come-in-flight-search">hotel price ads</a>, <a href="http://www.tnooz.com/2011/04/12/news/google-continues-experiments-with-hotel-ads-and-coupons/">coupons</a>, and suggesting that at some point they might price ads in a cost per booking affiliate model.</p>
<h2>Mobile/Local</h2>
<p>In any vertical Google can offer local refinement to get a taste of more of the end user data.<br /><img src="http://www.seobook.com/images/google-golf-search.png" /></p>
<p>On mobile phones Google can leverage click to call, their local &#8220;offers&#8221; in addition to using geotargeted AdWords ads. They can even use <a href="http://glinden.blogspot.com/2011/05/value-of-google-maps-directions-logs.html">a person looking up directions as a relevancy signal</a>!</p>
<p>According to Google insiders, mobile operating systems can be used to club &#8220;partners&#8221; over the head with compatibility requirements. And Google has taken advantage of that opportunity well enough that <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20110523/exclusive-france-telecom-ceo-on-apple-android-and-how-you-can-kiss-your-unlimited-plan-goodbye/">telecoms are complaining about net neutrality issues amongst the software platforms</a>. As the saying goes, bundling is evil, unless it is Google bundling. <img src='http://peermarketinggroup.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<h2>General Commerce Integration</h2>
<p>In addition to AdWords, AdSense, Product Ads, product search, merchant reviews &amp; their general web index, Google is trying to pull in information from the offline world.  They are set to <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304066504576343613260587314.html">announce a mobile payment system</a> with the ability to include coupons:</p>
<blockquote><p>For Google, the system could help boost its digital advertising business. The planned payment system would allow Google to offer retailers more data about their customers and help the retailers target ads and discount offers to mobile-device users near their stores, these people said. Google, which hopes to sell ads and discount offers to the local merchants, isn&#8217;t expected to get a cut of the transaction fees.</p>
<p>In addition to receiving targeted ads or discount offers, users could manage credit-card accounts and track spending, loyalty points and other things through applications on their smartphones.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Google also invests in technologies that blend ads in content, <a href="http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&amp;art_aid=150526&amp;nid=126943">like VigLink</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>tools will allow publishers that opt-in to <strong>insert new links automatically into their content</strong>, rather them finding the links themselves.<br />
&#8230;<br />
Roup said one of the biggest misconceptions that marketers have begins with Google&#8217;s disapproval of the affiliate marketing model. Google does not have an issue with affiliate marketing, but rather, with marketers trying to buy page rank &#8212; or links that are paid but try to fool the consumer and appear as unpaid, Roup explains. &#8220;Our links are financially motivated, so they don&#8217;t convert page rank, but neither do any other affiliate links,&#8221; he said.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Google, which claims that you need to disclose any form of paid links in human &amp; machine readable formats now invests in automated paid links, with blurred &amp; inconsistent levels of disclosure. <a href="http://www.viglink.com/demo">See for yourself</a>.</p>
<h2>Other Vertical Projects</h2>
<p>Google can make minor design tweaks to their productivity suite and then launch it under any label they like, from project management to wedding planning.<br /><img src="http://www.seobook.com/images/google-project-management.png" /></p>
<p><img src="http://www.seobook.com/images/google-wedding-plans.png" /></p>
<h2>Monetizing Dirty Markets</h2>
<p>Google <a href="http://www.itworld.com/legal/163929/google-prepares-possible-500-million-settlement-us-justice-department">set aside a half-billion Dollars</a> to <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703730804576319572448399628.html">settle an issue with the US Department of Justice</a> over selling bogus online prescription drug ads. Google was repeatedly warned over the practice, but rode it <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704083904576335483063623402.html">until they got caught in a sting operation</a>. Likewise, their general &#8220;AdWords advertisers selling counterfeit products&#8221; <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2382054,00.asp 50k counterfeit">was over 50,000 strong</a> by the time Google finally shut them down. And the whole time Google was recommending searchers search for things like &#8220;warez&#8221; &amp; &#8220;serials,&#8221; a practice which they finally stopped based on regulatory pressure.</p>
<p>In dirty ad markets where illegal goods &amp; services are pushed Google can (and does) <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/is-google-profiting-from-illegal-ads/2011/05/18/AFXsQD7G_story.html">monetize them at the general ad network level</a> until they cause public relations issues, allowing Google to capture a large portion of the reward with minimal risk.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.seobook.com/images/are-you-aaron.gif" /></p>
<p>Google can <a href="http://www.seobook.com/grading-googles-marketing-based-googles-guidelines">get to know you a bit better</a> &amp; monetize literally anything.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.seobook.com/images/gmail-ad-1.gif" /></p>
<p><img src="http://www.seobook.com/images/gmail-ad-2.gif" /></p>
<p>While Google claims ad disclosure is important,  they can <a href="http://www.seobook.com/google-disclosure">&#8220;accidentally&#8221; leave it off when convenient</a>. I just recently saw the following ad served by Google&#8217;s DoubleClick. I have no idea what it was promoting though, as I was afraid to click on it.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.seobook.com/images/google-ad.jpg" /></p>
<h3>It&#8217;s Not Just Google</h3>
<p>Obviously I mentioned Google because they are the most successful search company. However, Google is not the only search company monetizing their organic search results &amp; pushing results below the fold.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.seobook.com/ask-monetizes">Ask monetizes their &#8220;organic&#8221; results</a> via a variety of cross-promotional results.<br /><img src="http://www.seobook.com/images/ask-monetizes.png" /></p>
<p>Yahoo! has <a href="http://www.seobook.com/yahoo-begins-monetizing-their-organic-search-results">custom &#8220;organic&#8221; ad units</a> &amp; intends to <a href="http://www.seobook.com/yahoo-search-assist">further monetize search with their Search Direct offering</a>.<br /><img src="http://www.seobook.com/images/yahoo-monetizes.png" /></p>
<p>Bing, which has remained fairly clean, also offers promotional vertical results in their organic search results.<br /><img src="http://www.seobook.com/images/bing-mdg.gif" /></p>
<p>As search engines take big slices out of their search ecosystems, the gap between winners &amp; losers will only grow.</p>
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		<title>SEOmoz Pie Eating Contest Live at Noon Pacific Today!</title>
		<link>http://peermarketinggroup.com/seomoz-pie-eating-contest-live-at-noon-pacific-today/</link>
		<comments>http://peermarketinggroup.com/seomoz-pie-eating-contest-live-at-noon-pacific-today/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 25 May 2011 07:54:55 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[<p>Posted by <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/users/view/107700">Jamie</a></p> <p>As 2010 comes to end we&#8217;ve got a lot to celebrate at SEOmoz, so today we&#8217;ve decided to take a little break and do something completely silly: &#160;we&#8217;ve decided to have a pie eating contest, and you can watch it live today at noon.</p> <p>Pie Eating Contest Live Stream</p> <p>Watch the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Posted by <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/users/view/107700">Jamie</a></p>
<p><img height="133" align="right" width="200" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/shutterstock_6900835.jpg" alt="" />As 2010 comes to end we&#8217;ve got a lot to celebrate at SEOmoz, so today we&#8217;ve decided to take a little break and do something completely silly: &nbsp;we&#8217;ve decided to have a pie eating contest, and you can watch it live today at noon.</p>
<p><strong>Pie Eating Contest Live Stream</strong></p>
<p>Watch the contest and chat live with other viewers:&nbsp;Noon Pacific Time, Today, Friday, December 10th</p>
<p>  <object height="340" width="560" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" id="lsplayer"><param value="http://cdn.livestream.com/grid/LSPlayer.swf?channel=seomozlive&amp;autoPlay=false" name="movie" /><param value="always" name="allowScriptAccess" /><param value="true" name="allowFullScreen" /><embed height="340" width="560" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://cdn.livestream.com/grid/LSPlayer.swf?channel=seomozlive&amp;autoPlay=false" wmode="transparent" name="lsplayer"></embed></object>
<div style="font-size: 11px; padding-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 560px;">Watch <a href="http://www.livestream.com/?utm_source=lsplayer&amp;utm_medium=embed&amp;utm_campaign=footerlinks" title="live streaming video">live streaming video</a> from <a href="http://www.livestream.com/seomozlive?utm_source=lsplayer&amp;utm_medium=embed&amp;utm_campaign=footerlinks" title="Watch seomozlive at livestream.com">seomozlive</a> at livestream.com</div>
<p><strong>Participants</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.seomoz.org/team/aaron">Aaron</a><br /> <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/team/miranda-rensch">Miranda</a><br /> Tom<br /> <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/team/randfish">Rand</a><br /> <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/team/sarah">Sarah</a><br /> <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/team/danny">Danny</a><br /> <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/team/crissy">Crissy</a><br /> &nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>&quot;Official&quot; Rules</strong></p>
<p>The winner is the person who can eat the most amount of pie before the end of a predetermined song. (The song will be roughly 3 min 14 seconds)</p>
<ol>
<li>No Hands!</li>
<li>You must get the nod from Christine before moving on to the next pie. (Lord Christine will be the sole judge of whether or not a person is done with their pie.)</li>
<li>All pies are approximately the same consistently and size*</li>
</ol>
<p><sub>* &#8211; Except for Aaron&rsquo;s pie. He went out of his way to get a Vegan friendly pie (respect!) but chose a Pecan pie (wait what? Please someone explain density and sharp nuts to him ;-p)</sub></p>
<p><strong>Can&#8217;t make the live stream?</strong></p>
<p>We&#8217;ll post videos right here, soon after the contest.</p>
<p>
<p>Do you like this post? <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/thumbs/add/blog/11564/1/0">Yes</a> <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/thumbs/add/blog/11564/0/0">No</a> </p>
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		<title>Find Invisible Pages Using Google Analytics</title>
		<link>http://peermarketinggroup.com/find-invisible-pages-using-google-analytics/</link>
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		<pubDate>Wed, 25 May 2011 07:54:54 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[<p>Posted by <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/users/view/2448">wrttnwrd</a></p> <p>This post was originally in <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/ugc">YOUmoz</a>, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author&#8217;s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.</p> <p>One often-ignored part of SEO is making invisible pages [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Posted by <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/users/view/2448">wrttnwrd</a></p>
<p>This post was originally in <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/ugc">YOUmoz</a>, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author&#8217;s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.</p>
<p>One often-ignored part of SEO is making invisible pages visible. When I say &#8216;invisible&#8217;, I mean pages that have received <strong>zero</strong> clicks from organic search results.</p>
<p>If you can find those pages, you can decide:</p>
<ul>
<li>To keep them, but work to raise their organic search profile;</li>
<li>To keep them, but use more of their link juice to help other, higher-profile pages on your site;&nbsp;</li>
<li>Get rid of them, and 301 redirect them to higher-profile, higher-value pages on your site.</li>
</ul>
<p>Soooooo, how do you find &#8216;em?</p>
<p>Turns out, a new Google Analytics feature can make it happen: Pivot table reports</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s how you do it:</p>
<ol>
<li>In Google Analytics, click &#8216;Content&#8217;.
</li>
<li>Click the &#8216;Top Content&#8217; report:<img height="211" border="1" width="200" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4064/4251642253_99f196a5b6_m.jpg" alt="The top content report" />You&#8217;ll see a list of the most-viewed pages on your site. Not much help just yet.
</li>
<li> Now for the good stuff. At the top-right corner of the &#8216;Content Performance&#8217; tab, click the &#8216;Pivot&#8217; button:<br />
    <img height="243" border="1" width="500" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4058/4251653769_3e922aef60.jpg" alt="the pivot report button" /></p>
</li>
<li>Change &#8216;Pivot by&#8217; to medium. Leave &#8216;Showing&#8217; set as &#8216;Pageviews&#8217;. You&#8217;ll get a new table showing pages as the rows, and the mediums (media? mediumses?) as the columns, like this:<br />
    <img height="243" border="1" width="500" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4032/4252438252_746fc67158.jpg" alt="A pivot report" /></p>
</li>
<li>Now, sort the &#8216;organic&#8217; column ascending (lowest values first). You&#8217;ll see a nice, clear list of pages that haven&#8217;t received any clicks from organic search:<br />
    <img height="415" border="1" width="500" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2715/4251672665_cd8a45a48e.jpg" alt="the report, sorted by organic clicks, ascending" /></p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>That&#8217;s it! You can take a look and find the pages getting zero organic clicks.</p>
<p>A few cautions:</p>
<ol>
<li>This report will not show pages with zero pageviews overall. If a page never received any pageviews, then the Google Analytics tracking bug never fired, and the page isn&#8217;t in Google&#8217;s reports.</li>
<li>This data is a lot more helpful for pages that otherwise get lots of traffic. If a page gets 1 view overall and zero organic views, that <strong>may</strong> mean it&#8217;s got SEO issues. Or, it may mean that the page just sucks overall. Use your judgment.</li>
<li>This is only 1/2 the battle. Don&#8217;t assume the invisible pages need optimization, and that all will be well. It&#8217;s possible that these pages simply shouldn&#8217;t be there, or that there&#8217;s a problem with how you&#8217;re linking to them, or something else. Use this report as a starting point. Not an end point.</li>
</ol>
<p>Happy Analyzing!
<p>Do you like this post? <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/thumbs/add/blog/8387/1/0">Yes</a> <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/thumbs/add/blog/8387/0/0">No</a> </p>
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?a=rf8-ngldlmw:V_kqEVpu-Mo:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?a=rf8-ngldlmw:V_kqEVpu-Mo:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?a=rf8-ngldlmw:V_kqEVpu-Mo:F7zBnMyn0Lo"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?i=rf8-ngldlmw:V_kqEVpu-Mo:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?a=rf8-ngldlmw:V_kqEVpu-Mo:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/seomoz?i=rf8-ngldlmw:V_kqEVpu-Mo:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a>
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		<title>Foreign Languages As A Competitive Differentiator</title>
		<link>http://peermarketinggroup.com/foreign-languages-as-a-competitive-differentiator/</link>
		<comments>http://peermarketinggroup.com/foreign-languages-as-a-competitive-differentiator/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 25 May 2011 07:54:53 +0000</pubDate>
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				<category><![CDATA[Search Engine Optimization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Competitive]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Differentiator]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Foreign]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Languages]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://peermarketinggroup.com/search_engine_optimization/foreign-languages-as-a-competitive-differentiator/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/foreign-languages-as-a-competitive-differentiator/"class="post_image_link" title="Permanent link to Foreign Languages As A Competitive Differentiator"></a> </p> <p>A common issue online marketers have is coming up with unique differentiators. SEOs have this problem &#8211; it takes virtually no effort for an intermediate or advanced SEO to understand a competitors&#8217; main link acquisition strategies in an hour or less. That allows [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/foreign-languages-as-a-competitive-differentiator/"class="post_image_link"  title="Permanent link to Foreign Languages As A Competitive Differentiator"><img class="post_image alignnone remove_bottom_margin frame" src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/uploads/language-competition.jpg" width="600" height="300" alt="Post image for Foreign Languages As A Competitive Differentiator" /></a>
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<p>A common issue online marketers have is coming up with unique differentiators. SEOs have this problem &#8211; it takes virtually no effort for an intermediate or advanced SEO to understand a competitors&#8217; main link acquisition strategies in an hour or less. That allows new entrants into the field to easily duplicate your hard, pioneering efforts. Affiliates have this problem &#8211; there are so many people vying to sell the same thing that it&#8217;s hard to stand out. User friendliness and pricing no longer help &#8211; price comparisons, coupons, deals and reviews are now commodified. So let&#8217;s define the problem: Differentiating your site in a lasting way is difficult, because competitors can copy you without much trouble.<span id="more-12392"></span></p>
<p><strong>But what about throwing up a language barrier?</strong><br />
<em><br />
Suppose you&#8217;re an SEO</em> blogger and you start reaching out to Russian SEOs. Suddenly, it&#8217;s a lot harder for your competitors to build the same links. Even if they see where you&#8217;re getting the links, they can&#8217;t immediately figure out how you earned them. Google Translate may help, but it&#8217;s not great. Besides, it doesn&#8217;t even begin to allow them to get in touch and solicit the links. And if your competitors try to outsource Russian language link solicitation, they have to initially put blind faith into the outsourcing company that they&#8217;re not spamming and that they&#8217;re doing what they promised, and doing it well. They sure as hell aren&#8217;t going to start checking the Russian outsourcing company&#8217;s grammar.</p>
<p><em>Suppose you&#8217;re an affiliate</em> who starts producing content in French. The same problem applies to competitors &#8211; how are they going to source French language content? How will they proofread it? This simple tactical idea applies <a href="http://book.seoroi.com">advanced SEOs&#8217; 7 curiously obvious rules</a>. For example, it questions the assumption that you need to do business in the same language as your competitors. Why not mix it up? And whoever moves first, will likely have a big advantage.</p>
<p>Another example of applying the principles, is that this idea was inspired from experience. I&#8217;m currently planning a new SEO plugin, and my friend Jacob Share (who teaches folks to <a href="http://jobmob.co.il/">find jobs</a>) asked me whether I&#8217;d want it coded in a way that enables translated versions. That seemed an excellent idea to me, as my first WP plugin &#8211; <a href="http://seoroi.com/specialty-services/new-seo-plugin-for-wordpress-internal-link-building/">Internal Link Building</a> (details on <a href="http://seoroi.com/seo-roi-quality/internal-link-building-for-wp-3/">V3 here</a>) &#8211; got loads of links from around the world, and was even translated into Russian and ported to other CMSes.</p>
<p>If you liked this, <a href="http://book.seoroi.com">get a free chapter</a> from my book on advanced SEO. The text is done, and we&#8217;re finalizing the cover for printing <img src='http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif' alt=':D' class='wp-smiley' /> .<br />
<small>photo credit: <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/go/photospin/">Photospin</a></small></p>
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<p><a href="http://www.text-link-ads.com/?ref=290987"><img src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/banners/text_link_ads_F_468x60.gif"  alt="tla starter kit" style="margin:5px;border:0px;width:468px;height:60px;" /></a><br />
<h4>Related posts:</h4>
<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/case-study/using-google-sitemaps-for-competitive-intelligence/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Using Google Sitemaps for Competitive Intelligence'>Using Google Sitemaps for Competitive Intelligence</a> <small>I&#8217;m a big fan of the Google Webmaster Central Program&#8230;</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/whos-afraid-of-the-big-gray-wolf-1-in-7-seos/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Who&#8217;s Afraid Of The Big Gray Wolf? 1 in 7 SEOs'>Who&#8217;s Afraid Of The Big Gray Wolf? 1 in 7 SEOs</a> <small>I&#8217;ve been promoting my advanced SEO book&#8216;s free chapter for&#8230;</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/outsourcing-content-creation-vs-hiring-in-house/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Outsourcing Content Creation Vs. Hiring in House'>Outsourcing Content Creation Vs. Hiring in House</a> <small>One of the first considerations for a web site owner&#8230;</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/link-development/youre-all-wrong-paid-links-from-offtopic-sites-do-count/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: You&#8217;re All Wrong! Paid Links From Offtopic Sites Do Count'>You&#8217;re All Wrong! Paid Links From Offtopic Sites Do Count</a> <small>&#8220;Paid links from off topic sites get devalued and flagged.&#8221;&#8230;</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/no-more-link-begging-4-engagement-methods-for-content-based-link-building/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: No More Link Begging: 4 Engagement Methods for Content-Based Link Building'>No More Link Begging: 4 Engagement Methods for Content-Based Link Building</a> <small>Link begging is the practice of identifying link prospects, usually&#8230;</small></li>
</ol>
<h4>Advertisers:</h4>
<ol>
<li><a  href="http://www.text-link-ads.com/starter_kit.php?src=wolf_howl">Text Link Ads</a> &#8211; New customers can get 0 in free text links.</li>
<li><a  href="http://botw.org/">BOTW.org</a> &#8211; Get a premier listing in the internet&#8217;s oldest directory.</li>
<li><a href='http://www.ezilon.com' >Ezilon.com Regional Directory</a> &#8211; Check to see if your website is listed!</li>
<li><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.dirjournal.com/submit.php">Directory Journal</a> &#8211; Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory </li>
<li><a href="http://www.clarusglassboards.com/glass-boards.php" >Glass Whiteboards</a> &#8211; For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/reviews/clarus-glass-whiteboard-review/">Glass Whiteboard Review</a></li>
<li>Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my <a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/information/consulting/'>SEO Consulting Services</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.backlinkbuild.com/">Link Building</a>- Backlink Build offers 45 PR5+ Backlinks for 5</li>
<li><a  href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/go/knowem/">KnowEm</a> &#8211; Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.forumlinkbuilding.com?wolflink" >Links From PR9 Sites</a> &#8211; - Get In Top 3 Google ASAP</li>
<li><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/scribeseo/">Scribe SEO Review</a> find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.</li>
<li><a  href="http://www.tigertech.net/referral/wolf-howl.com">TigerTech</a> &#8211; Great Web Hosting service at a great price.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.sugarrae.com/random/what-motivates-you/">What Motivates You</a> &#8211; what makes you want to get up and be successful</ol>
<p>This post originally came from <a href='http://michaelgray.name'>Michael Gray</a> who is an <a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/information/consulting/'>SEO Consultant</a>. Be sure not to miss the <a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/blogs/thesis-wordpress-theme-review/'>Thesis WordPress Theme review</a>. <br/><br/><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/foreign-languages-as-a-competitive-differentiator/">Foreign Languages As A Competitive Differentiator</a> <br/></p>
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		<title>How SEOmoz Gained 1000s of Visits from Google News (You Can Too)</title>
		<link>http://peermarketinggroup.com/how-seomoz-gained-1000s-of-visits-from-google-news-you-can-too/</link>
		<comments>http://peermarketinggroup.com/how-seomoz-gained-1000s-of-visits-from-google-news-you-can-too/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 25 May 2011 06:25:08 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[<p>Posted by <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/users/profile/155620">Cyrus Shepard</a></p> <p>Consider this image below from the SEOmoz Google Analytics account. Behold a site rarely displayed in SEO blogs.&#160;</p> <p></p> <p>Notice the similarities to a typical Kansas highway.&#160;Both are dead flat, contain no peaks or valleys, and are traffic free.</p> <p> </p> <p>Such was the sad state of SEOmoz&#8217;s referral traffic [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Posted by <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/users/profile/155620">Cyrus Shepard</a></p>
<p>Consider this image below from the SEOmoz Google Analytics account. Behold a site rarely displayed in SEO blogs.&nbsp;</p>
<p><img height="226" width="600" alt="Google vs Kansas" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/Google-vs-Kansas2(1).jpg" /></p>
<p>Notice the similarities to a typical Kansas highway.&nbsp;<img height="0" width="0" alt="Google News vs Kansas" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/Google-vs-Kansas2.jpg" />Both are dead flat, contain no peaks or valleys, and are <strong>traffic free</strong>.</p>
<p>
<meta charset="utf-8" /></p>
<p>Such was the sad state of SEOmoz&rsquo;s referral traffic from Google News prior to April of this year. In truth, SEOmoz didn&#8217;t really pursue traffic from Google News for several reasons.</p>
<ul>
<li>Google News never sent us significant traffic in the past</li>
<li>In our minds, we don&#8217;t consider ourselves a &quot;news&quot; organization</li>
<li>Unlike news organizations, SEOmoz doesn&#8217;t drive revenue through advertising</li>
</ul>
<h2><strong>What Changed Our Minds?</strong></h2>
<p>In April, Rand&rsquo;s post on <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/white-hat-seo-it-fing-works-12421">White Hat SEO</a> went nuclear. The blogosphere exploded with commentary and traffic poured in from all corners of the Internet.&nbsp;We recorded 8000 visits from Google News the first two days alone.&nbsp;</p>
<p>
<meta charset="utf-8" /></p>
<p>The drought was over.</p>
<p>But why that particular post? <a href="http://www.distilled.net/about/people/rob-ousbey/">Rob Ousey</a> from Distilled pointed out that the few SEOmoz posts included in Google&#8217;s News index all had one thing in common. <em>They each contained a number in the URL. </em>For example:</p>
<p>
<meta charset="utf-8" /></p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px; ">../blog/white-hat-seo-it-fing-works-<strong>12421</strong><br />
../blog/google-told-you-so-<strong>12428</strong><br />
../ugc/dissecting-local-seo-via-competitive-analysis-<strong>12284</strong></p>
<p>Given the way Google News indexes content, this makes sense:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em><strong>&ldquo;</strong>Display a three-digit number. The URL for each article must contain a unique number consisting of at least three digits&hellip; Please note that this rule is waived with </em><em>News sitemaps</em><em>.&rdquo;</em>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br />
<em>- From </em><em><a target="_blank" href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?answer=68323">Google (publishers) Help</a></em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Our indexation was pure accident!&nbsp;By default, most SEOmoz blog URLs don&#8217;t contain numbers.&nbsp;</p>
<p>We decided to dispose of our previous perceptions and chart a proactive course in gaining visits from Google News.&nbsp;Here&#8217;s how we did it &#8211; and how you can too.</p>
<p>
<meta charset="utf-8" /></p>
<h2><strong>1. Are You Newsworthy? Yes You Are<br />
</strong></h2>
<p>You no longer have to be a big news player (or a spammer) to find your way in Google News. Google clearly states both <strong>blogs</strong> and <strong>news organizations</strong> alike qualify for inclusion.</p>
<p>Ask yourself the following questions. Consider yourself a candidate if you meet the following criteria.</p>
<ol>
<li>Do you discuss current events?</li>
<li>Is your content timely?</li>
<li>Do you offer commentary?</li>
<li>Is your blog itself newsworthy?</li>
</ol>
<p>These are some of the same qualifications that make for great content in any context.&nbsp;The number of categories in Google News is <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=42993">staggering</a>. It includes topics as varied as business, education, humor and even ice hockey.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>There&#8217;s room for <em>everything</em> in Google News. Love to write about hair? Yep, there&#8217;s <a href="http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&amp;pz=1&amp;cf=all&amp;ned=us&amp;hl=en&amp;q=hair">news for that</a>.</p>
<p>Don&#8217;t sell yourself short. <strong>If you&rsquo;re not already producing newsworthy content, you should.</strong></p>
<p><img alt="Rock Purr" width="600" height="153" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/rock-purr.jpg" /></p>
<h2><strong>2. Qualify Your Site</strong></h2>
<p>Not everyone gets in Google News automatically. To see if you&#8217;re already included in the index, perform&nbsp;a &ldquo;site:&rdquo; command within Google News using your domain. In our case,&nbsp;<a href="http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&amp;pz=1&amp;cf=all&amp;ned=us&amp;hl=en&amp;q=site%3Aseomoz.org">SEOmoz was already included</a>.</p>
<p>If Google hasn&rsquo;t included your site in its news index, you can&nbsp;<a href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;answer=191208&amp;rd=1">request inclusion</a>.</p>
<p>
<meta charset="utf-8" /></p>
<p>Rand addressed how to improve your chances of appearing in Google News in a recent <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/webinars/new-opportunities-in-googles-search-results">PRO Webinar</a>. He recommended improving your site&#8217;s substantive metrics, including such factors as the <strong>number of inbound links</strong> and <strong>subscribers to your blog</strong>. Having a good user interface can also help.</p>
<p>Again, even if getting in Google News isn&#8217;t your focus, <strong>these are the same benchmarks for increasing your visibility on the Web in any market</strong>.</p>
<p>
<meta charset="utf-8" /></p>
<h2><strong>3. Get Your Content Indexed</strong></h2>
<p>Google keeps it&#8217;s news index separate from it&#8217;s regular web index. Just because Google crawls your site and you appear in search results, doesn&#8217;t mean your content is included in Google news.</p>
<p>There are two ways to get your content included in the index:</p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px; ">1. Number your URLs (see above)<br />
<em>or</em><br />
2. Create a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;answer=74288">Google News Sitemap</a>.</p>
<p>The sitemap contains a number of advantages over simply numbering your URLs. Sitemaps allow you to tag your article with proper titles and publication dates. In addition to categorizing your content more accurately, sitemaps also give you the ability to annotate your content with metadata such as keywords or stock tickers.</p>
<p><img alt="Tag Your Content With News Sitemaps" width="600" height="195" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/tag.jpg" /></p>
<p>The downside is news sitemaps can be complicated to build if you lack development skills. Google dictates that your news sitemap should only contain articles published in the last 24 hours. So you&#8217;ll want an automated system. In our case, Casey Henry was able to build a custom sitemap generator that met these specifications.</p>
<p>If you run a blog using a third party platform, a number of good solutions exist for <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-news-sitemap-generator/">WordPress</a>, <a target="_blank" href="http://googlenewssitemap.com/">Joomla</a>, <a target="_blank" href="http://drupal.org/project/googlenews">Drupal</a>&nbsp;and <a target="_blank" href="http://drupal.org/project/googlenews">more</a>.</p>
<p>
<meta charset="utf-8" /></p>
<h2><strong>4. Rise to the Top</strong></h2>
<p>A number of great articles have been written about <a href="http://searchengineland.com/google-news-ranking-stories-30424">how Google News works</a> and <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/getting-started-with-google-news">how to get indexed</a>. Indexation relies on several factors:</p>
<ol>
<li>Topic Factors &ndash; How hot is the story topic? Last week it was <a href="http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&amp;pz=1&amp;cf=all&amp;ned=us&amp;hl=en&amp;q=Arnold+Schwarzenegger">The Governator</a>, but it could be anything, even <a href="http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&amp;pz=1&amp;cf=all&amp;ned=us&amp;hl=en&amp;q=kittens">kittens.</a></li>
<li>Story Factors &ndash; How relevant and fresh is your specific content to this topic.</li>
<li>Publication Reputation &ndash; Sort of like Domain Authority, except specific to news publication.</li>
</ol>
<p>Timing is key to Google news. Paraphrasing from Rand&#8217;s aformentioned webinar: &quot;<strong>If you break a big story first, you can see more traffic than you ever imagined from the first page of Google News.&quot;</strong></p>
<p>But timing a great story is hard to predict.</p>
<p>What you <em>can</em> control are a number of on-page factors that improve your chances. For example, adding a good photo next to your headline increases the likelihood of Google displaying the photo, which also helps your CTR.&nbsp;Adding a unique video to your post (along with maintaining an active <a href="http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=80472">video sitemap</a>) also improves your chances of rising to the top.</p>
<p><img alt="images and video in Google News" width="600" height="223" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/video(1).jpg" /></p>
<p>Other best practices to consider include&nbsp;<a target="_blank" href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;answer=93981">titles</a>,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;answer=93979">article text</a>, and more. This great&nbsp;<a href="http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-josh-cohen.shtml">interview with Josh Cohen</a>&nbsp;highlights many of these techniques.</p>
<p>
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<h2><strong>5. What About the Results?</strong></h2>
<p>After we added a sitemap, Google News became the <strong>4th largest referring traffic source</strong> <strong>for SEOmoz,</strong> bigger than Linkedin, StumbleUpon and Hacker News (but significantly behind Twitter, Facebook, and Google Image search.)</p>
<p><img height="182" width="600" alt="Google-News-Much-Improved" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/Much-better.jpg" /></p>
<p>In the last month, three different posts received over 1000 extra visits. Our future posts are &quot;primed&quot; for more. To be fair, this isn&#8217;t a huge amount of traffic for a site like SEOmoz. The traffic has a high bounce rate and low conversion rate.</p>
<p>That said, SEOmoz has not changed its content one iota to gain more traffic from Google News. We don&#8217;t &quot;chase the algorithm.&quot; Were we to optimize our content towards this goal, our traffic would undoubtedly rise higher.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Got a success story or more tips? Please share in the comments below.</p>
<p>
<p>Do you like this post? <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/thumbs/add/blog/12774/1/0">Yes</a> <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/thumbs/add/blog/12774/0/0">No</a> </p>
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		<title>Article Marketing in a Post Panda World</title>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 24 May 2011 18:32:11 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/article-marketing-in-a-post-panda-world/"class="post_image_link" title="Permanent link to Article Marketing in a Post Panda World"></a> </p> <p>Article marketing has been one of the foundations of link building ever since I got started in SEO. However, since sites like <a href="http://ezinearticles.com/"title="ezinearticles" >Ezinearticles</a> and <a href="http://www.suite101.com/"title="suite 101" >Suite 101</a> have taken a <a href="http://www.sistrix.com/blog/985-google-farmer-update-quest-for-quality.html">huge loss in ranking and traffic</a> as [...]]]></description>
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<p>Article marketing has been one of the foundations of link building ever since I got started in SEO. However, since sites like <a href="http://ezinearticles.com/"title="ezinearticles" >Ezinearticles</a> and <a href="http://www.suite101.com/"title="suite 101" >Suite 101</a> have taken a <a href="http://www.sistrix.com/blog/985-google-farmer-update-quest-for-quality.html">huge loss in ranking and traffic</a> as a result of the <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/tag/panda/" >panda update</a>, should article marketing still be a part of your overall strategy? We need to take a step back and look at the big picture to find the answer &#8230;<span id="more-12207"></span></p>
<p>While many people will debate this, I don&#8217;t believe sites like Ezinearticles were passing much link equity for quite some time. The links acted more like pointers and helped with discovery. The pages themselves could accumulate trust/authority/pagerank, but they weren&#8217;t transferring much of that value to the website linked to in the bio paragraph.</p>
<p>Secondly, if the article was republished somewhere else, it was most likely treated as duplicate content. Ezinearticles had more trust than the almost any other site republishing the article, so they were given credit as the original content &#8220;owner&#8221;. The real value from Ezinearticles was finding people who were interested in taking your content and publishing it in exchange for a link, then tracking the competition in the space to see what other link building sources/methods they were using.</p>
<p>So should article marketing still be a part of your strategy? Yes&#8211;just a much less important one. First, you need to be honest about the quality of the articles you submitted. Chances are good that the  articles with 250 words that read like it was written by an ESL student working the night shift at an all night convenience store while his boss wasn&#8217;t around isn&#8217;t worth spending time/money on anymore. Most <a href="http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2011/02/search-engine-algorithm-changes.html">article directories have raised the bar for quality</a> while trying to get back in Google&#8217;s good graces. So, if you are going to use article directories, you will need to send them higher quality content. Unless you are a brand new website, I wouldn&#8217;t create more than 15-20 articles a year: the ROI just isn&#8217;t there anymore. Keep in mind that you will have to point links at your articles from a variety of sources if you want them to have maximum effect.</p>
<p>If you are doing any ORM work, article marketing is still viable. Get the person/company name in the title, point a few links, and, unless you are competing against major sources, you should be good to go.</p>
<p>Your link building activities should never be dominated by just one tactic.You need to have a blend/mixture for maximum effectiveness. If you focus on just one technique, you run the ris:k of losing all your rankings if that tactic gets devalued.</p>
<p>So what are the takeaways from this post</p>
<ul>
<li>Article marketing should still be part of your overall marketing strategy&#8211;just a less important one.</li>
<li>Bring the quality of your articles up to good or better.</li>
<li>Submit to 3-4 article directories, not just one.</li>
<li>Submit 15-20 articles per year.</li>
<li>Point links directly at your articles from your website and other sources.</li>
<li>Don&#8217;t expect a huge transfer of link equity. Think of it as a &#8220;fresh pointer&#8221;.</li>
<li>For ORM, article marketing can be used much more aggressively.</li>
</ul>
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<p><a href="http://www.text-link-ads.com/?ref=290987"><img src="http://www.wolf-howl.com/wp-content/banners/text_link_ads_F_468x60.gif"  alt="tla starter kit" style="margin:5px;border:0px;width:468px;height:60px;" /></a><br />
<h4>Related posts:</h4>
<ol>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/getting-more-out-of-article-distribution-websites/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Getting More Out of Article Distribution Websites'>Getting More Out of Article Distribution Websites</a> <small>At this stage of the game syndicating your content with&#8230;</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/archives-high-volume-website/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: How Do You Archive Pages on a High Post Volume Website'>How Do You Archive Pages on a High Post Volume Website</a> <small>Today&#8217;s post is an answer to a question I took&#8230;</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/interviews/andrew-wise-linkwheelers-panda-update/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Andrew Wise of SEOLinkWheelers Talks About the Panda Update'>Andrew Wise of SEOLinkWheelers Talks About the Panda Update</a> <small>The following is a sponsored post. For today&#8217;s post we&#8217;re&#8230;</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/google/forbes-article/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: Forbes Article'>Forbes Article</a> <small>I&#8217;m mentioned in a Forbes article about Google along with&#8230;</small></li>
<li><a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/what-is-a-compilation-post/' rel='bookmark' title='Permanent Link: What is a Compilation Post'>What is a Compilation Post</a> <small>I came across a post today that was actually pretty&#8230;</small></li>
</ol>
<h4>Advertisers:</h4>
<ol>
<li><a  href="http://www.text-link-ads.com/starter_kit.php?src=wolf_howl">Text Link Ads</a> &#8211; New customers can get 0 in free text links.</li>
<li><a  href="http://botw.org/">BOTW.org</a> &#8211; Get a premier listing in the internet&#8217;s oldest directory.</li>
<li><a href='http://www.ezilon.com' >Ezilon.com Regional Directory</a> &#8211; Check to see if your website is listed!</li>
<li><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.dirjournal.com/submit.php">Directory Journal</a> &#8211; Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory </li>
<li><a href="http://www.clarusglassboards.com/glass-boards.php" >Glass Whiteboards</a> &#8211; For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my <a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/reviews/clarus-glass-whiteboard-review/">Glass Whiteboard Review</a></li>
<li>Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my <a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/information/consulting/'>SEO Consulting Services</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.backlinkbuild.com/">Link Building</a>- Backlink Build offers 45 PR5+ Backlinks for 5</li>
<li><a  href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/go/knowem/">KnowEm</a> &#8211; Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.forumlinkbuilding.com?wolflink" >Links From PR9 Sites</a> &#8211; - Get In Top 3 Google ASAP</li>
<li><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/scribeseo/">Scribe SEO Review</a> find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.</li>
<li><a  href="http://www.tigertech.net/referral/wolf-howl.com">TigerTech</a> &#8211; Great Web Hosting service at a great price.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.sugarrae.com/random/what-motivates-you/">What Motivates You</a> &#8211; what makes you want to get up and be successful</ol>
<p>This post originally came from <a href='http://michaelgray.name'>Michael Gray</a> who is an <a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/information/consulting/'>SEO Consultant</a>. Be sure not to miss the <a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/blogs/thesis-wordpress-theme-review/'>Thesis WordPress Theme review</a>. <br/><br/><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/article-marketing-in-a-post-panda-world/">Article Marketing in a Post Panda World</a> <br/></p>
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		<title>PubCon South Dallas 2010 Highlights</title>
		<link>http://peermarketinggroup.com/pubcon-south-dallas-2010-highlights/</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 24 May 2011 08:04:02 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[<p>Yesterday was the last day of PubCon South here in Dallas. There was no shortage of chatter around the sessions, yet somehow I had a song in my head all day. It was something about, “Chinese food makes me sick,” and “Abercrombie and Fitch.” If you know what song that is, you are probably the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignright size-medium wp-image-7574" title="classroom" src="http://www.seo.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/classroom-250x219.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="219" />Yesterday was the last day of PubCon South here in Dallas. There was no shortage of chatter around the sessions, yet somehow I had a song in my head all day. It was something about, “Chinese food makes me sick,” and “Abercrombie and Fitch.” If you know what song that is, you are probably the guy who was two rows behind me humming it. Anyhow, let’s recap with a few of the best sessions of my experience here. If you saw others that I missed, grab me on twitter, @andychesnut. I’m wishing that I had cloned myself for this conference.</p>
<h2><strong>Scott Stratten – Keynote Speaker &#8212; ROI and Social Media<br />
 </strong></h2>
<p>Scott split the curtains wide to open up the conference day by making every reactionary businessman on the globe feel silly for having referred to talking as “Social Media.” I wholeheartedly agreed with his expressions of frustration. Whether it is text, audio or video, you are talking. If what you are saying is worthless, that worthlessness just became magnified by the virtual channels you released it through.</p>
<p>His best tip of the morning – If you are asking, “what’s my ROI? You are thinking about it WRONG!” Talk with your customers. Use the virtualization “talking” platforms as a chance for publicized customer service. You can try to put a dollar sign in front of the effort required to appreciate and engage a customer, but if the dollar sign is thought about before the happiness of the customer, you’re going to flop in the social platforms.</p>
<h2><strong>Jessica Bowman – Inhouse SEO</strong></h2>
<p>This next bit applies to the Inhouse SEO, the agency that is trying desperately to understand client business strategy, and the IT department manager who is suddenly having his project scope swamped with SEO requirements. For the SEOs, Jessica was pleading that you understand the SEO-IT gap can exist between the executive vision and the action level.</p>
<p>While your CEO and VPs may be absolutely pumped about the <a href="http://www.seo.com/seo/">SEO strategy</a>, you may be shooting yourself in the foot if you are skipping the directors and going down to the developers. You can bet that when the development team sees how much SEO strategy is going to add to the budget, hours and scope of their next launch, they are going to take it up the line. Please, take the time to work with everyone in the chain.</p>
<p>To those in IT, be patient with your SEO. <a href="http://www.seo.com/about/">Search engine optimization specialists</a> have a tendency to stick their nose in everything. So ask them SEO questions and take a little time to understand the SEO strategy. You may not be able to implement everything at first, but work with the SEO team in baby steps if you need to.</p>
<h2><strong>Bill Hunt – Large Scale and International Search Strategy</strong></h2>
<p>I got to sit in on two of Bill’s sessions, and I was sponging (is that a word?) everything he said. He talked about his experiences with helping to organize IBM’s global search program. He shared his thoughts on making global site templates a priority in any international brand. He also emphasized the impact that can be had from getting involved in the corporate policies and letting them work to the benefit of the search team. I got the chance to talk with him for a long while afterward and he was kind enough to volunteer some thoughts about managing massive keyword databases.</p>
<h2><strong>Rob Snell – E-Commerce</strong></h2>
<p>Rob talked a great deal about the story behind his family business. I could recap the whole thing here, but it’s far more entertaining from him in his Mississippi steez. The highlights I pulled from him are:</p>
<p>Do everything you can to interact with your customers online the way you interact with them on the phone. Steve (Rob’s brother) would spend 30 minutes on the phone with each customer letting them get to know him. Do you let your online customers know who you are?</p>
<p>Content happens in the 15 minutes you have while waiting for your next meeting. As a site owner, use downtime to be writing a product review, a description, or an FAQ. Generating unique quality content requires time, so find the time.</p>
<h2><strong>Ian Lurie – Query Deserves Freshness</strong></h2>
<p>Ian had some great thoughts for those of you who are starting small and feel overwhelmed with the task of beating out the behemoths in the search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s called QDF and its not anything new, but it is becoming more and more popular.</p>
<p>To break it down, in the event of a spike in searches for a given term, the search engine will boost new content that is relevant and reliable to the top of the SERP for that term. This means that if you are involved in the topic, or well aware of the trending topic, you as a small competitor can grab some traffic from the trend wave. Few big brands are using QDF to their advantage, so take hope, if you are agile enough to post content while the topic is trending, you can get some of that traffic.</p>
<p>There were other sessions about some great search tools, and some thoughts on gathering competitive intel. Michael Gray gave some insight into Google using social network data as an influence in universal search rankings – quantity of retweets, etc. Amanda Watlington was also on the Personalized and Universal Search panel. She made some bold statements about the coming death of rankings. I’ll have a blast posting about that one at a future date because I disagree on so many levels. Rankings will be a key metric for many years, even if the metric is modified. What do you think? Is rank headed for the trash? To be clear, I’m a fan of Amanda and her Ph.D in Linguistics. If ever there were a person who could teach about keyword research and search intent, it is her!</p>
<p>I have about twenty other pages of notes from the sessions, but I just can’t fit it all into this post. Tell me what you thought of the conference.</p>
<div>
<h3>Related Posts:</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.seo.com/blog/conferences/pubcon-2008-las-vegas/" rel="bookmark">PubCon 2008 Las Vegas</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.seo.com/blog/10-business-uses-for-twitter/" rel="bookmark">10 Business Uses for Twitter</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.seo.com/blog/site-content/brand-your-competitors-into-irrelevance/" rel="bookmark">Brand Your Competitors Into Irrelevance</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.seo.com/blog/how-to-screw-up-a-web-project-during-the-sale/" rel="bookmark">How to Screw Up a Web Project &#8211; During the Sale</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.seo.com/blog/marketing-blog/is-it-really-better-to-give/" rel="bookmark">Is It Really Better to Give?</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
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		<title>Everyone Should Hire &#8216;Social Media Experts&#8217;</title>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 24 May 2011 08:04:01 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[<p>Posted by <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/users/profile/63">randfish</a></p> <p>I caught a post this week from Peter Shankman entitled &#34;<a href="http://shankman.com/i-will-never-hire-a-social-media-expert-and-neither-should-you/">I Will Never Hire a Social Media Expert and Neither Should You</a>.&#34; It&#8217;s not the first of its kind, nor was it the best argued, but it struck a nerve and has made a number of waves around the web. [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Posted by <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/users/profile/63">randfish</a></p>
<p>I caught a post this week from Peter Shankman entitled &quot;<a href="http://shankman.com/i-will-never-hire-a-social-media-expert-and-neither-should-you/">I Will Never Hire a Social Media Expert and Neither Should You</a>.&quot; It&#8217;s not the first of its kind, nor was it the best argued, but it struck a nerve and has made a number of waves around the web. Needless to say, as someone who employs multiple team members with a great deal of social media expertise, I strongly disagree with the substance and sentiment of the piece.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s Peter&#8217;s argument in his own words:</p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px; ">No business in the world should want a &ldquo;Social Media Expert&rdquo; on their team. They shouldn&rsquo;t want a guru, rock-star, or savant, either. If you have a &ldquo;Social Media Expert&rdquo; on your payroll, you&rsquo;re wasting your money.</p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px; ">Being an expert in Social Media is like being an expert at taking the bread out of the refrigerator. You might be the best bread-taker-outer in the world, but you know what? The goal is to make an amazing sandwich, and you can&rsquo;t do that if all you&rsquo;ve done in your life is taken the bread out of the fridge.</p>
<p>The full piece makes a passionate case, but an entirely false one. There&#8217;s no evidence, only opinion; no examples, just speculation; no data, but loads of stereotyping. The author is certainly one of the premier benefactors of social traffic and of a new, more socially-connected web (Mr. Shankman founded and sold <a href="http://www.helpareporter.com/">HARO</a>, the service that connects journalists to subject-matter experts), yet he somehow manages to ignore the benefits social media has brought him (and his clients/company) to write a scathing dressing-down of anyone who dares claim expertise in this marketing discipline.</p>
<p>As with <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/white-hat-seo-it-fing-works-12421">my arguments against Mr. Roadruck last month</a>, I&#8217;m worried that I&#8217;m falling for trollbait again. But, the people who do great social media marketing deserve a strong defense, and I believe the evidence is almost entirely in their favor. Besides that, as an SEO, I&#8217;ve long felt the brunt of baseless attacks by ignorant skeptics. I feel both a kinship and a duty to stand up for those who&#8217;ve had their profession ridiculed.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s start by exploring the popularity of social media experts in comparison to another job role Mr. Shankman pointed out, traffic planners:</p>
<p align="center"><!-- BEGIN TREND GRAPH --></p>
<div align="center" style="width: 540px;" class="chart"><img alt="Social Media Expert, Traffic Planner trends" src="http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobtrends/graph/q-Social+Media+Expert,+Traffic+Planner/t-line/embed" /></p>
<table align="center" width="100%" style="font-size: 80%;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td width="2%">&nbsp;</td>
<td align="left"><a href="http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobtrends/trend/q-Social+Media+Expert,+Traffic+Planner">Social Media Expert, Traffic Planner trends</a></td>
<td align="right"><a href="http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobs/list/q-Social+Media+Expert">Social Media Expert jobs</a> | <a href="http://www.simplyhired.com/a/jobs/list/q-Traffic+Planner">Traffic Planner jobs</a></td>
<td width="2%">&nbsp;</td>
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</tbody>
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<p><!-- END TREND GRAPH --></p>
<p>As you can see, there&#8217;s a dramatic rise in interest and demand for social media folks. I don&#8217;t think this is because companies are &quot;wasting their money.&quot; In the current economic climate, <a href="http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/gdp/2011/gdp4q10_3rd.htm">corporate profits are at record levels</a> and companies are hiring with a much greater eye to the bottom line than any other time in the past 20 years. These businesses are investing in high ROI projects + people, and social media is part of that.</p>
<p>The primary point Mr. Shankman appears to make is that social media skills and expertise are merely &quot;common sense&quot; that every marketing professional/department already has. Thus, there&#8217;s no need to specialists or experts to assist in understanding the tools, opportunities or nuances of the field.</p>
<p>I beg to differ.</p>
<p>Product, marketing, engineering and customer service departments can all benefit from greater knowledge and understanding of social media, and very little of it is common sense. From knowing the difference between an original tweet and a retweet (on the basic end of the spectrum) to <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-get-past-last-touch-attribution-with-google-analytics">crafting lifecycle attribution</a> by melding tools like <a href="http://bit.ly">Bit.ly PRO</a>&nbsp;and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/insights">Facebook Insights</a> with analytics packages (on the advanced end), social media expertise more than just useful, but often critical to improving overall performance.</p>
<p>Facebook has 600 million users; Twitter&#8217;s at nearly 200 million; LinkedIn is over 100 million; Blogs have hundreds of millions of readers and tens of millions of publishers; Tumblr alone has <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/17/tumblr-pageviews-a-day/">250 million pageviews</a> in a day and D<a href="http://blog.disqus.com/post/5192492910/the-numbers-of-disqus">isqus reaches 500 million visitors</a> each month. Social&#8217;s driving an increasing proportion of the web&#8217;s traffic, conversions and value. How can anyone logically proclaim that experts are worthless?</p>
<p>As a thought excercise, I created the following chart highlighting some of the critical knowledge areas in social media:</p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><img alt="Spheres of Social Media Expertise" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/spheres-social-expertise.gif" /><br />
<em>NOTE: As I am not a social media expert, these are likely more illustrative than they are accurate</em><br />
&nbsp;</p>
<p>I don&#8217;t see how Mr. Shankman can believe A) that these pieces of knowledge won&#8217;t help organizations improve B) that such knowledge is innate and requires no specialization, research or study.</p>
<p>As further evidence, I&#8217;ll call to the witness stand some exemplary individuals and companies that I&#8217;ve seen have a massive impact on improving KPIs, processes and internal use of social media. While I&#8217;m a passionate supporter of social media marketing, these are the true experts:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.aimclearblog.com/author/aimclear/">Marty Weintraub</a> of AimClear is one of the industry&#8217;s shining stars. His research, clients and results speak for themselves. No one has ever seen Marty speak and not come away in awe of the passion, dedication and deep expertise he shines.</li>
<li><a href="http://danzarrella.com/">Dan Zarrella</a> of Hubspot has put together some of the most respectable and useful research in the field of social media and helped to turn HubSpot into a shining beacon of knowledge dissementation across the web. His presentations, webinars and data have made him the web&#8217;s pre-eminent social media scientist, and someone whose expertise is backed by more data than nearly anyone else in the marketing field.</li>
<li><a href="http://ie.linkedin.com/in/ciaranj">Ciar&aacute;n Norris</a> of Mindshare Digital, whom I&#8217;ve known for years and who grew from a talented search marketer into an even more talented social and brand marketer. He now runs digital media marketing for Mindshare in Ireland and has helped dozens of big brands build remarkable, revenue-generating social strategies.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.seomoz.org/users/profile/137262">Thomas H&oslash;genhaven</a> is currently engaged in a unique project to study and make recommendations around SEOmoz&#8217;s internal social community, analyzing how users interact with each other, when high vs. low quality behavior emerges and how to encourage the former while minimizing the latter. I fully expect Thomas&#8217; expertise and his work will be invaluable to our community and to the long-term prospects of this part of our business.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.seomoz.org/team/jen">Jen Lopez</a> of SEOmoz runs community management here at Moz. She&#8217;s helped to scale our social presences, stayed in touch with events, questions and engagement across multiple networks and is directly responsible for a substantive portion of our traffic, conversions, retention and brand-building efforts. Her expertise spans tools, platforms, branding concepts, social launches and more. See, for example, the recent Mozcation program she&#8217;s turned into an amazing outpouring of community effort and attention.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/kristybolsinger">Kristy Bolsinger</a> of Ant&#8217;s Eye View has consulted with dozens of local and national firms to help devise successful social media + web marketing programs. I&#8217;ve personally heard great feedback from folks who&#8217;ve worked with her, which is why I continue to refer those seeking consultants her way.</li>
</ul>
<p>There are remarkable people with social media expertise. Some of them even use the highly appropriate title &quot;social media expert&quot; or &quot;social media specialist.&quot; They provide a ton of value to the organizations they work with and neither Mr. Shankman, nor anyone else, should belittle their profession.</p>
<p>In fact, I recommend the opposite. Do as we&#8217;ve done, and hire folks with social media knowledge and expertise. It will open opportunities that wouldn&#8217;t be otherwise available, and if your other processes around monetization and customer acquisition scale, social is a phenomenal compliment to whatever channels you&#8217;re currently pursuing.</p>
<p>On a final note:</p>
<p style="text-align: center; "><a href="http://www.investinsocial.com/"><img alt="Peter Shankman in the directory: InvestinSocial" src="http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/peter-shankman-investinsoci.gif" /></a></p>
<p>Mr. Shankman, if you despise social media expertise and those who earn a living from sharing that knowledge with others, might I suggest that you remove your &quot;featured&quot; listing from this directory of social media consultants? Also, let&#8217;s get a beer sometime. I bet you&#8217;ve got a ton of social expertise that could help my company (totally serious &#8211; I&#8217;ll even buy).</p>
<p>
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		<title>Now All Blogger Outreach Campaigns Will Be Considered Spam Too :)</title>
		<link>http://peermarketinggroup.com/now-all-blogger-outreach-campaigns-will-be-considered-spam-too/</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 23 May 2011 20:07:58 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[<p>Not that long ago I highlighted how infographics were largely being destroyed as a link building tool by <a href="http://www.seobook.com/how-out-yourself-buying-links">some unscrupulous folks who were offering to pay people to host the infographics to their sites</a> &#8211; in a sense making the word infographic seem &#38; feel like spam, just like paid links. </p> <p>After killing [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Not that long ago I highlighted how infographics were largely being destroyed as a link building tool by <a href="http://www.seobook.com/how-out-yourself-buying-links">some unscrupulous folks who were offering to pay people to host the infographics to their sites</a> &#8211; in a sense making the word infographic seem &amp; feel like spam, just like paid links. <img src='http://peermarketinggroup.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif' alt=':D' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p>After killing that source of links, the folks behind that work are proudly moving on to fake non-profits and awards for bloggers, launching multiple fake charity sites in the last couple months, and then mass emailing bloggers with fake awards and link buying offers. <img src='http://peermarketinggroup.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p>Any website with only 4 pages of content, that claims to be a non-profit, yet has no contact information available, while claiming to be 3 or 4 years old (<a href="http://domain-history.domaintools.com/?q=bloggingalliance.net&amp;page=results">even the domain name was only registered 2 months ago</a>) is probably somewhat sketchy. </p>
<p>As a marketer, you want anything you do to pass the sniff test. So if your stuff looks anything like this fake scammy crap garbage then you are not going to have much success with it. Largely because the folks who are sending out millions of emails are going to sterilize the market and turn the web cynical toward even more marketing techniques. So you need to make your marketing efforts that much more personalized, and it also helps to have a real presence in the field, that way bloggers won&#8217;t dismiss you as just another scam, like they might those folks promoting the fake charity angle. </p>
<p>This is another reason why it also helps to create things in entirely unique formats. The gamers exploiting stuff burn out one opportunity after another, but most of their new &amp; creative slants are simply extensions of things that worked for others. Getting out in front of the scammers on a new trend &amp; format is far more profitable than following in their footsteps. But be aware that marketing ideas have a curve to them. An idea which starts off pure and is successful &amp; profitable will end up coming under the eye of scammers at some point. And most forms of fraud are based around trying to look like the real thing, so eventually a format that was once profitable eventually loses its potency and you must move on.</p>
<p>The best forms of marketing which help you differentiate yourself from the scammers are those which build trust over time: branding, awareness, social interaction, etc. The person holding up a puppet might be able to compete with you here and there from time to time, but if you build something with depth and substance they will have a hard time competing on a sustainable basis.</p>
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		<title>The (Sub)Human Network</title>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 23 May 2011 20:07:57 +0000</pubDate>
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		<description><![CDATA[<p>The New York Times has an interesting article about <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/technology/23cisco.html?partner=rss&#38;emc=rss">Cisco&#8217;s roll in the Great Firewall of China</a> + more:</p> <p>Cisco, the maker of Internet routing gear, customized its technology to help China track members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, according to a federal lawsuit filed last week by members of the movement.</p> <p>The [...]]]></description>
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<p>The New York Times has an interesting article about <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/technology/23cisco.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss">Cisco&#8217;s roll in the Great Firewall of China</a> + more:</p>
<blockquote><p>Cisco, the maker of Internet routing gear, customized its technology to help China track members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, according to a federal lawsuit filed last week by members of the movement.</p>
<p>The lawsuit, which relies on internal sales materials, also said that Cisco had tried to market its equipment to the Chinese government by using inflammatory language that stemmed from the Maoist Cultural Revolution. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And that from a company which promotes itself using the label &#8220;the human network.&#8221;</p>
<p>And how did Cisco react when the above information became public? &#8220;When evidence of the company’s activities in China became public in 2008 through a leaked PowerPoint presentation, Cisco disassociated itself from the marketing materials, stating that they were the work of a low-level employee.&#8221;</p>
<p>That is what big brands do. The PR team steps in and says &#8220;Oops it was a rogue marketer/trader/monkey/employee who was smoking crack at work and they have now been fired. We were ignorant of our actions but we really care about people. We promise to not (get caught) doing it again!&#8221; TM</p>
<p>As Google pushes to make the web more corporate, it is worth taking a step back and considering what that means for &#8220;the human network.&#8221;</p>
<p>Google likes to pretend that something is good just because it is a big brand, but many big brands have big ad budgets *precisely* because their business model contains hidden costs. For instance: <a href="http://www.badfaithinsurance.org/">bad faith insurance</a> which takes your money as long as you pay &amp; then disappears the minute something goes wrong.</p>
<p>The legal system granted large corporations more rights than human beings. Not because they are any better, but because they are more corrupt. I bet many Google engineers are disappointed to see Google following suit &amp; taking the easy way out. <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html">Spy &amp; personalize</a>. And when in doubt, brand, brand, brand. <img src='http://peermarketinggroup.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p>With the vast potential of the web should we settle for making it as corrupt (or more corrupt) than the real world?</p>
<p>The following song is brought to you by <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281504576329441432995616.html">the Facebook <strike>&#8220;like&#8221;</strike> spy button</a>. <img src='http://peermarketinggroup.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
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