Tapping Into The SEO Goldmine - The Customer Network

transcript

Lithium Confidential1

Tapping Into the SEO Goldmine –The Customer NetworkMarch 2010

Speakers:

Phil Soffer

Lithium Technologies

Ray "Catfish" Comstock

BusinessOnLine

Tapping Into the SEO Goldmine – The Customer Network

About Lithium Technologies

Lithium Social CRM: Driving Real ROI

Your Customers

Innovate

PromoteSupport 66% increase in

customer purchases.

Increase Sales$3MM saved from 300K

calls deflected annually

Reduce Costs

300% increase in beta

program participation.

Accelerate Innovation

Powering the Customer Network

BusinessOnLine

Senior Search Strategist,

BusinessOnLine

Overview• About BusinessOnLine

• Convergence of Social Mediaand SEO

• Online Social Community Benefits

How Communities Affect SEO• Content

• Links

• Real Time Search

About BusinessOnLine

Founded: 1996

Headquarters:

San Diego, California

BusinessOnLine is a

performance-driven online

marketing agency focused

exclusively on search engine

and internet marketing

strategies.

Selected as one of

Magazine’s

Top Interactive Agencies

for 2008, 2009 & 2010

• Google Adwords Certified Company

• Yahoo! Search Marketing Certified

Ambassadors

• MSN Certified AdCenter

Professionals

• HFI Certified Usability Analyst

• Omniture Certified Professional

Certifications

Performance-Driven Online Marketing

Web Analytics

Web Development

User Experience

Online Strategy

SEO/SEM

Social Media

+178% Total Traffic

+113% Organic SEO Traffic

+23% traffic from organic search results

+ 372% Organic Traffic in Google

+ 293% Organic Traffic Overall

+ 75% Total Page Views

+38% in Material Sales

+11% in Avg. Dollar Sales

+75% Online Renewals

+53% Monthly Returning Visitors

+74% US Site Conversions

+122% Overall Site Conversions

Social Media & SEO Convergence

• Social Media has been creating content/links since the first forum

• Blogs are a huge force in the world of SEO

• Yelp reviews get pulled into Yahoo local search

• Universal search integrates social media components

• YouTube is now the worlds second largest search engine

• Google real time search

Online Community Benefits

SEO – Allows you to rank higher for

target keyword phrases.

• User Generated Content

• Authoritative Links

• Real Time Search Opportunities

Audience Poll

1Are you currently operating an Online

Community?

How Online Communities Affect SEO

1 Content

2 Links

3 Real Time Search

Content Strategy

User generated

content (UGC) can be

generated through

social media in a

number of ways:

• Forums

• Blog Commenting

• Reviews

• Videos

Content Strategy

UGC tends to be keyword focused and is

typically effective at targeting the “long tail”

which occurs naturally in online

conversation.

Content Strategy

Community platforms,

such as Lithium allow for

user generated content to

be created in an SEO

friendly manner.

Content Tactics

Be an active

participant in your

community.

Content Tactics

Ensure that your

community’s

information

architecture is

keyword focused.

Content Tactics

Optimize top

level category

pages by hand

(Page Titles &

Meta Data).

Content Examples

http://forums.logitech.com/

Pages Index in Google: 83K +

http://forums.t-mobile.com

Page Indexed in Google: 121K +

Link Strategy

A Link is a Vote, take advantage of your:

• Internal Links

• External Links

Internal Link Strategy

Social Media is effective at creating keyword

focused internal links:

• Communities provide thousands of new opportunities for you to

internally link social media content to relevant content within your

• Communities allow users to internally link content for you

• Tags allow users to create keyword focused links

External Link Strategy

Social Media is very effective at generating external links that influence SEO.

• Many links are generated as a result of increased visibility through Social Media (Community Engagement, Blogging, Video, etc)

• Some links are generated by asking for them through Social Media channels (Lithium Community, Twitter, Blogging, FaceBook, etc)

• Some links are generated as a result of your community being an authoritative hub of information about your relevant subject matter

Link Tactics

Link text (or alt text) should be keyword focused, especially on homepage

logo links.

Link Tactics

A right hand column menu for

“Most Popular Products” is a

potential mechanism.

Links Example

Barnes & Noblehttp://www.barnesandnoble.com/bookclubs/

Links include:

Forbes Best of the Webhttp://www.forbes.com/bow/b2c/category.jhtml?id=230

Austin Public Library

http://www.austinlibrary.com/referral.cfm

Friends of Rutgers

http://english.rutgers.edu/alumni/newsletter/spring_summer_05/beyondtheclassroom.html

Eagle Valley Library District

http://evld.org/br.resources.cfm

Townsend University

http://tiger.towson.edu/users/plige1/istc653/bookclubs.htm

Real Time Search

Audience Poll

2How many of you have integrated Twitter

with your Online Community?

Real Time Search Strategy

Google now incorporates real

time search results:

• Twitter

• Facebook

• MySpace

• FriendFeed

• Jaiku

• Identi.ca

• Yahoo Answers

• News Articles

• More

Real Time Search Tactics

• Encourage users to use Twitter

• Show users genuine value in subscribing to your Twitter feed

• Announce blog posts through Twitter

• Create keyword focused hash tags

• Time Sensitive, Twitter-only coupons and discounts

• Attribution analytics

Real Time Search Examples

T-mobile

Lithium Twitter

integration

encourages users

to tweet.

Phil Soffer – VP, Product Marketing

Summary

Lithium Platform: Lots of Keyword Opportunities

Conversations contribute

keywords for SEO

User generated tagging,

kudos, and labels expand

keyword attribution

SEO friendly mark-up and

hand-optimized category

Extensive Linking Opportunities

Tribal Knowledge Base:

Authoritative hub linked

internally and externally

URLs optimized for SEO

http://supportforums.blackberry.co

m/t5/Your-Stories/bd-p/YourStories

Users link community

content

Enhancing Real-Time Search

Twitter Integration

increases volume of

Tweets with your content

Active community links in

multiple social networks

Speakers:

Phil Soffer

Lithium Technologies

BusinessOnLine

Next Steps

Complimentary SEO Performance Labs

• Discuss different SEO tactics with a subject

matter expert that can help achieve your

marketing objectives

Lithosphere Community

http://lithosphere.lithium.com/

• Check tomorrow for more Q&A posted from

today’s webcast

Thank You!

BusinessOnLine SEO Blog:

http://www.businessol.com/seo-blog

Follow Catfish On Twitter:

http://twitter.com/BOLSearch

Tapping Into The SEO Goldmine - The Customer Network

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