Google "Isonic" - SEO Hits the Mainstream

Search engine optimization hits the mainstream on ESPN's Mike & Mike in the Morning.  In between light jabs and sports commentary, a quick (commercial) reference was made to the sound quality of the Polk Isonic Audio System this morning. In a rather subtle, yet distinct move, the call to action very effectively tells the radio listener, "just Google 'isonic' to learn more about the Polk audio system. 

Brand Positioning and SEO
How does a brand become a household name?  We already know that popular shows such as Sex and the City, through the casual conversation of "Google this" or "Google that" have brought the Google brand name to the mainstream market.  The Mike & Mike in the Morning show claims thousands of listeners every morning through 700 affiliates. Listeners that may or may not be technologically savvy in terms of demographics. While most listeners are familiar with Google, do they specifically associate a keyword with Google?  With a brand? With being able to use a keyword to represent a brand?  I'm not sure of the correct answer here. 

The keyword "isonic" had somewhere around 1000 and 1500 keyword searches last month, a reasonable number, but not extraordinary (primarily because it lacked mainstream awareness).  Once a term or keyword association hits the mass media, or is representative of a company, brand name or product, keyword popularity improves and ultimately, the SEO landscape gets more competitive. Brand names such as "John Deere Tractor" or terms such as "search engine optimization" would have no competitive significance to the market if there were little mainstream significance. In another week, it's plausible that a dozen websites may feature the keyword "isonic" in their content, in order to maximize their presence online through search results as Mike Greenberg (possibly) continues to promote the Polk Audio System. 
Just Google "Isonic". 

Latest Search Market Share Report

According to a report released Monday by Internet metrics company comScore, Google and Yahoo gained slightly in overall search market share (0.3 and 0.1% respectively), while MSN dropped by 0.2%.  As of October, Google now processes 45.4% of all searches on the Internet.  Yahoo ranks second at 28.2% and MSN a distant third at 11.7%.  Holding their own, Ask.com sits at 5.8%.

I personally can't help rooting for Ask.com to overtake MSN by the end of Q1 2007 (of course this statement brings a recent post in SEOMoz to mind).

Big Three Support For A Sitemaps Protocol

Its worth noting that the big three search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN are joining together to collaborate on a unified sitemaps program.  You can find out more of the program at sitemaps.org, which is offered under the terms of the Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License.  This post is one the myriad of posts out there on the topic, so to find more information and commentary, here's a link to Google's official announcement on their webmaster blog and Yahoo's post as well..

 

Adding "Digg This" Links to Your Blog Posts

Have you seen "Digg This", "Digg It" and other various Digg-related hyperlinks at the bottom of blog posts recently (including this one)?  PR Squared recently had a good post answering some basic questions on the Social Media News Release (SMNR), especially when dealing with the subject of SMNR's and Technorati tagging to establish thematic relationships with your news releases. 

One portion of the post dealt specifically with adding "Digg It/Digg This" capability to the bottom or your SMNR or Blog Posts in order to allow users to easily submit your releases to the popular article community site, Digg.  This blog post provides examples of more advanced ways to enable users to automatically submit your article (with title and URL) to Digg, without manually entering in the information.  Specific Digg material on integrating Digg into your site and SMNR's can be found here.

A Couple Initial Notes on Digg

• You still need to have a registered account to submit information.
• Make sure to adhere to the Digg TOS for quality guidelines and read their FAQ ahead of time.

General Social Media News Releases
The additional code for your hyperlink to "Digg This" is very simple and requires only a slight bit of coding on the author's part.  Simply hyperlink the "Digg" text as follows using standard HTML:

• <A HREF="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=DOMAIN.COM&title=STORY TITLE">DIGG</A>
• In this case, substitute DOMAIN.COM with the web address of your SMNR and "STORY TITLE" with your specific Title.
• You can add more information to this hyperlink (such as description and topic), but I find that this can get a bit cumbersome for code purposes and offers more potential for error in coding.

Adding "Digg This" to TypePad Blogs
Because blog posts are dynamic in nature, it is slightly difficult to manually enter you code in each individual post.  Rather, your blog administrator can adjust the template of the posts to incorporate the functionality automatically. 

Instead of static parameters, TypePad users need to implement the code associated with appropriate tags in order to implement "Digg This" functionality.  That means that:

• url=<$MTEntryPermalink$>
• title=<$MTEntryTitle$>

The code that needs to be placed in the template will look like this:

• <A HREF="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=<$MTEntry
  Permalink$>&title=<$MTEntryTitle$>">DIGG</A>

WordPress Functionality
Bloggers using WordPress need to follow these guidelines for proper coding:

• url=<?php the_permalink() ?>
• title=<?php the_title(); ?>

And your code for the WordPress template:

• <A HREF="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>">DIGG</A>

Using Digg with Blogger
I'm not a fan of adding a lot to Blogger in general, because if you don't save your files, then decide you want to use a new template, anything you do from a customization standpoint is lost.  That being said, here is the code for Blogger as well:

• url=<$BlogItemPermalinkUrl$>
• title=<$BlogItemTitle$>

The final product:

• <A HREF="http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=<$BlogItemPerm
  alinkUrl$>&title=<$BlogItemTitle$>">DIGG</A>

The only thing left to do in any of these instances is locating the exact place where you want this link to appear.  I suggest having it at the very end of your post(s), somewhere in the footer section.  If you have any difficulty, or need assistance, feel free to comment back and I'll see if I can assist with placement and specific locations.  Enjoy!

What Makes a Good SEM Client?

SEOmoz ran a post this morning titled, “When Search Marketing Firms Turn Clients Away”. The article discusses some of the reasons SEM companies may not take a client. Factors such as company size, industry focus and competition are listed as obvious reasons while politics, personality match and company background are smaller ones.

While there are clearly a number of reasons why firms turn down clients, what are some of the reasons they take them on? Removing the monetary aspect, what exactly makes a good client when it comes to search engine marketing?

The first thing that comes to my mind is willingness - Willingness to learn about the process, willingness to accept recommendations and the willingness to make the recommended changes. The toughest part about being in the consulting business is that it’s just that, consulting. It is up to the client to make the changes and without that willingness there is little likelihood for improvement.

A second factor is ability - Does the client actually have the ability to make the recommended changes? When working with a large company there can often be many obstacles. Maybe your contact is in the marketing department but they have to get approval from the head of marketing who has to get approval from the VP who has to get approval from…okay you get the idea. By the time any changes have been made two months may have passed.

Finally, another factor is understanding – Does the client have a good understanding of search engine marketing and SEO? As SEO has grown, so has the number of firms offering “guarantees” and quick fix tactics. It takes more than changing a few keywords and getting links for a website to be successful. The client needs to know that search engine optimization is a process and a travel site with ten pages isn’t suddenly going to be competing with Expedia because they have been doing SEO for a month.

Now I know that this is a very short list and that these are not factors you can always assess ahead of time. However, they are things you can try and get a feel for before choosing your client. Finding someone who fits into all of these can be search engine marketers dream come true!