Below is live coverage of the SEO Through Blogs & Feeds from the SES San Jose 2009 conference.
This coverage is provided by Patty Adams of Vertical Measures & Barry Schwartz of the Search Engine Roundtable .
We are using a live blogging tool to provide the real time coverage. You can interact with us and while we are live blogging, so feel free to ask us questions as we blog. We will publish the archive below after the session is completed.
| SEO Through Blogs & Feeds | (08/13/2009) |
| 10:09 | PattyAdams:
Speakers:
Amanda Watlington, Owner, Searching for Profit
Dixon Jones, Managing Director, Receptional LTD
Sally Falkow, President, PRESSfeed
Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board & CEO, TopRank Online Marketing
Jim Hedger, Lead Blogger, Webmaster Radio
Summary of session: Learn more about the unique advantages blogs and feeds offer to search engine optimization. |
| 10:31 | PattyAdams: It's a full room today; lots of interest in this topic. We'll leave a lot of time for Q&A. |
| 10:31 | PattyAdams: AMANDA:
As I was thinking about what to say, I realized it was 5 years ago that blogs were first discussed at this show. The room was full. As I was putting this together, I wanted to see what we've learned since then. |
| 10:33 | PattyAdams: What am I seeing? What am I hearing from clients? One big thought: Do not do the "me too" blog. Don't copy what everyone else is doing. Do something NEW, something original. Be unique. Follow the money. FOcus on the business. |
| 10:37 | PattyAdams: Plan early for a blog. Use a team approach; don't rely on one person. Make sure you're sustaining it. |
| 10:39 | PattyAdams: Blogging is hard work. Getting content for a blog is hard. It is constant, it's relentless. You need a champion for your blog. Plan for continuity. |
| 10:39 | PattyAdams: That'll insure that you have an unwaivering level of support. It's all about content. It's the content. Develop a long-term battle plan. Use your analytics to guide you on topics. Look for the most read posts. Amp up what is interesting. As we're all talking about SEO, integrate your keyword phrases!! |
| 10:39 | PattyAdams: Use the keywords regularly; don't drive content around the keywords, but use it. Blog is good for reputation. Address comments in a timely fashion. Highlight your popular posts. Encourage deeper reading. Get rid of the clutter on your post. |
| 10:39 | PattyAdams: Leverage your readers: Twitter, Facebook, etc. Announce your posts! Treat each post as a mini PR campaign. Maybe you won't post quite as frequently, but they'll be followed. Track, and analyze and adjust for other posts. |
| 10:39 | PattyAdams: It's a process. Build a strategy. Socialize the blog. Tweak it. |
| 10:40 | PattyAdams: Build readership. Blogging is going to be around awhile, so do it right. |
| 10:40 | PattyAdams: Simplfy your archiving structure for shorter, cleaner URLs. Write a good description. In summary, mainstream the blog within the marketing communication efforts. Leverage the SEO benefits. Customize it. Don't be afraid to revisit. Use a keyword list. Leverage social media. |
| 10:43 | PattyAdams: DIXON:
How many have been to the UK? Rains. Alot...
I'll cover 6 points. |
| 10:44 | PattyAdams: I'll start with how big the blogging game is. I'm Marketing Director right now. We look at backlinks. Looking at Blogspot, you can see now that there are over 4 1/2 million now. Let's look at a few...
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| 10:46 | PattyAdams: PostSecret is a success example of blogging. The net result is if you type in "Secret" you'll find this blog in the top 3. |
| 10:48 | PattyAdams: Dissecting a successful blogger's links:
Over 6,000 referring domains build for a UK SEO, David Naylor. We looked at the anchor text and how it's used; he getting great links from strong sites. This is key to the kind of people linking to him. They are people within his industry.
Only 3 links with anchor text using "UK SEO". Interesting. Yet, he's #1 for UK SEO. |
| 10:48 | PattyAdams: Using technology is another way to get links on other people's blogs. Make use of the widgets available out there. Or build your own. Find a gadget you can put on your blog. |
| 10:48 | PattyAdams: Gauge customers by how they use these gadgets and how they engage. Did you enjoy using the gadget? Thoughts? Technology is a good way to drive traffic to blogs. |
| 10:48 | PattyAdams: There are ways to get SEO benefit from RSS feeds too. There are RSS feed widgets, people will use your feeds. There is also WidgetBox but no SEO benefit for this. There isn't much code needed for it. |
| 10:50 | PattyAdams: Why you need to link to be loved: Other bloggers will notice the link love you're giving out. People appreciate it. They see the value. People will look to see what you're linking to. All successful bloggers are linking. I suggess Drupal over Wordpress. Multiple bloggers, link structure can favor news over blogs, you get more content and can empower your workforce. Thank you.... |
| 10:52 | PattyAdams: SALLY:
Speaking to the keynote speaker Charlene Li this morning, I want to continue along her theme of feeds and the social media. There are certain "rules" that make a blog what it is. But there's other content you want out there that's not appropriate for a blog. Use the content you have a socialize it. |
| 10:52 | PattyAdams: Socialize your content with News feeds. RSS. This is about people sharing content and igniting conversations. |
| 10:53 | PattyAdams: Some advice from Matt Cutts: If you want to do well in Google, know the search terms, write goo meta tags, create a blog and post...often! |
| 10:54 | PattyAdams: Marriott has a news and resources page that are being picked up and found on StumbleUpon and Delicious. Skin MD created a Skin Care Tips page. They now have a podcast, video feed and other tips; resulting in page one results. |
| 10:55 | PattyAdams: Holland America is using these pages too |
| 10:56 | PattyAdams: You create a piece of content. If you put that content into a feed, it means that those people who come to you will see it, and when you put new content up, these people will "ping them" that new content is available, and other bloggers will see it and talk about it. |
| 10:56 | PattyAdams: Other sites can republish your content. Put it in a feed so people will see it. Search engines will see the feed. They like it! Once you put the content in, again, others will be alerted when new content goes up. |
| 10:57 | PattyAdams: Google blog search will also see these feeds. All these sites that pick up these feeds have their own audiences and will pick up the feed and send it to their audience when they republish it. |
| 10:58 | PattyAdams: Use tags and "share this". Add it to your Facebook page. |
| 10:58 | PattyAdams: Many peoole now link back to the original site. |
| 10:59 | PattyAdams: Don't put a feed on a static page. You must have excellent content. If you do, it'll drive traffic to your site. In a way, it's like multi-level marketing for content. Driving new audiences to your website.
We're doing a study on this; if you're interested in the results, contact me. |
| 11:01 | PattyAdams: LEE:
Is there anybody that hasn't started a blog yet? What I decided to target today is blog link building tips. Linking tactics that we've used at our company. |
| 11:01 | PattyAdams: With blogs we work with big companies. |
| 11:04 | PattyAdams: We are a practice what you preach kind of company. There are 8 tips:
High quality content is a must! FInd out what people want.
Link out. If you make the effort to link out, deliver value.
Make a BIG list of blogs.
Get on other lists (or make your own!).
Make a "killer" tool. Maybe an RSS tool or bookmark tool. |
| 11:07 | PattyAdams: Write guests post. These are a great way to get recognition back to your post. Write for associations. Even Mashable.
Power up ReTweets - make it easy for people to retweet your comments. It can turn into links.
And last, Network OFFLINE. The real world. This is the glue to everything. You need to leverage on and offline. Meet a ton of people when you're out. Use social media to connect with people. |
| 11:08 | PattyAdams: Bonus tip: Dynamically place a link to your blog in the foot of your RSS feed. When people scrape the content, your link is embedded. |
| 11:09 | PattyAdams: JIM:
I am going to speak about the fine art of wide-casting to a narrow audience and narrow-casting to a wide one. |
| 11:10 | PattyAdams: I deal with webcast radio. We do both as bloggers and writers. Widecast is like broadcast. |
| 11:11 | PattyAdams: We narrow cast on a very wide range of topics. |
| 11:12 | PattyAdams: WebmasterRadio is a commerica radio broadcast. We have 37 unique shows. 56 show hosts. Millions of possible keyword queries. |
| 11:12 | PattyAdams: News, sitcoms, dramas, all getting broadcast to whoever can pick it up. Narrow casting is what do in our industry. It's also a very narrow focus. You must know your audience if you narrow cast. You're putting info out to a group of people specifically interested in your topic. |
| 11:12 | PattyAdams: All the content is unique and optimized for the topic. |
| 11:13 | PattyAdams: 2.1 million unique users. |
| 11:18 | PattyAdams: How our listener hear us: 53% come from distrubuted podcasts (RSS feeds). 32% download directly from the website. 15% listen live.
Makes you think: how are you audience getting your info? Distribution for us becomes everything!
We moved to a Wordpress blog. This was great for us. |
| 11:18 | PattyAdams: For us, each show has a uniqque RSS feed. |
| 11:18 | PattyAdams: Vanessa Fox is one example. Every week Vanessa gives answers to those questions about your site. |
| 11:18 | PattyAdams: Everything from SEO issues to social media. We use our keywords to describe her show, describe the RSS feed, so search engines will find it. |
| 11:18 | PattyAdams: We pack the description paragraph with keywords. |
| 11:19 | PattyAdams: All of these ways of retrieving information: Twitter, MySpace, etc...all are search engines. |
| 11:19 | PattyAdams: Consider these when you're doing an RSS feed: title, tags, descriptive text, and the RSS subscription link (text plus link). |
| 11:19 | PattyAdams: These will help get he RSS feed found. |
| 11:20 | PattyAdams: If you do your feeds right, iTunes will pick it up. |
| 11:21 | PattyAdams: With all this information, you'll get lots of links back to your site, to your blog. All keyword targeted. |
| 11:21 | PattyAdams: And feeds are picked up quickly. |
| 11:24 | PattyAdams: Q&A:
How do you emphasize links?
Always, in everything you do. The feed can be the higher driver of traffic to a site. Any way that you can get people to talk about your site, that is great! |
| 11:25 | PattyAdams: We suggest on focusing your efforts on link building, look at your analytics.
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| 11:26 | PattyAdams: For targeting South America, how do you generate links in both English and Spanish? |
| 11:26 | PattyAdams: Should I target blogs based in the US in Spanish? Or different countries? |
| 11:26 | PattyAdams: Host a blog in the targeted country. |
| 11:28 | PattyAdams: If you have several blogs with duplicate content, what is the impact? |
| 11:29 | PattyAdams: Do NOT do duplicate content. SImilar is OK, and cross link. |
| 11:32 | PattyAdams: For a new blog, can we take snippet of existing news where we don't have content? |
| 11:33 | PattyAdams: Don't infringe on copywrite laws. There are hundreds of ways to resource news but don't simply grab others' content for your own. |
| 11:33 | PattyAdams: Ultimately, if you don't have enough to blog about, either don't do a blog or encourage guest bloggers. |
| 11:35 | PattyAdams: Thank you.... |
| 11:35 | 
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