Dear Client,

This is a proposal for consulting work. Regardless if you use our services, we want to suggest that these are important aspects for a successful online presence and that they be pursued internally or by consulting with experienced professionals.

Keyword Research

• Research keywords, keyword frequency and value, competitor keyword ranking
• Deliverable: list of keywords to track and to design web page content (pages and blog) in order to achieve high SERP on target keywords
• Keyword-based domain name strategy

Brand, Offering Design Articulation

• The set of visuals communicating the brand (favicon, avatars, 140 character bios, tagline, trueline, etc.) needs to be clearly articulated especially for social media integration and deployment
• These are graphics and tightly designed text. Business cards are one deliverable

Search Engine Submission, Analytics Configuration

• Google, Yahoo, Bing registration (which gains access to the search logs) and sitemap.xml registration.
• Create Google Analytics account, configure async code for speedy delivery, with options, configure conversion settings

Website Design and Usabilty

• Initially we generally recommend using an open source content management system such as WordPress (or Drupal) as the content wrapper and CMS for any given website. Any additional programmed functionality or features such as client management tools can be wrapped by a CMS and operate "inside of it" as a separate but apparently integrated system. Re-inventing the wheel such as sitemap generation and search engine updates, RSS feeds, etc. is simply too time consuming, when WordPress and other tools have these as built-in or easily configured extensions.
• Design needs to be done by design professionals for a modern look and feel. We work with local award-winning graphic artists who have designed dozens of sites and can get the brand meaning communicated visually with a crisp visual value proposition
• Websites should be tested with real users but can be iterated quickly

Customer Acquisition Strategy Research

• Size of market
• Cost of customers
• Expected profitability of customers
• Customer acquisition channels (advertising, referrals), etc.
• Adwords, banner ads

Linkbuilding

• Backlink analysis
• Competitor analysis
• Linkbuilding plan and execution

Content Strategy

• Content strategy
• Content work schedule

Social Media Integration

• Social media account creation and configuration
• RSS and other syndication configuration

Ecommerce Strategy

• Ecommerce research, recommendations
• Ecommerce implementation

Resources

• Don't Make me Think by Steve Krug
• Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity by Jakob Neilsen
• Web Analytics: An Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik
• Designing For The Social Web by Joshua Porter

Technorati code FHQC4ZMK2Q3J

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Ack, this is way too difficult for as simple a task as it is. Here is how we currently have things all SEO-ified in the social media messaging frontier, as of today, anyway:

Background and Criteria

SEO Chiangmai has quite a few clients and internal projects. It is just not practicable to log a browser in and out of a lot of accounts all the time, we need tools which will allow us to communicate to several accounts through one tab in a browser or at least one tab per client/site in a given browser.

Twitter and Identica, the Microblogging

Twitter is a big pain and Identica is only slightly less of a pain. This evens out because there are lots of tools (most inadequate or barely so) that can be used to help out manage the Twitter. Not so with Identica.

Some will say to use a service like Ping.FM or HelloTXT. Been there and done that. Both are regularly non-functional or have limitations which make management with them ridiculous.

Issue 1 - Posting Messages

The criteria is to post a message without logging in (or logging in more than one time to cache a password or grant OAUTH access). We do this now with Laconica Tools, a precursor to (and simply better implementation than, due to simplicity) the Twitter Tools and other plugins or libraries.

(Of course we commented out the URL shortening feature--what is the point when PageRank and Link-juice are actually primary criteria?)

Note: Twitter is handled directly through Identica's echo service to Twitter, configured from within the Connect button inside of Identica. Keeps things tidy.

Issue 2 - Responding to or Retweeting Messages

TwitIQ is still the best of the bunch, though limited significantly in terms of blocking users, modifying Twitter account settings, and having access to the original Twitter tweet permalinks, not to mention not supporting Identica. Still, the drop-down change-of-account is killer, as well as some nice search features.

Facebook Pages, Managable and Multi-user

This is one tool that has it together regarding multi-user, administration delegation, etc. Sure there are lots of broken bits but multiple users can have administrative access and pages are managed as resources rather than a logged-in account. Win.

To import the blog feed or any RSS feed there is the excellent RSS Grafitti. Win and double win as we can manage this in one place and not have to bounce around inside of individual page settings to configure them. Great stats for a triple double, no doubt.

Flickr, the Image Uploading

jUploadr is the great multi-account uploading tool. Unfortunately it won't allow for editing or deleting. However, uploading (with tags and titles) is half the battle.

YouTube, still Tears

Ah, sigh. Ye Olde YouTube, Excellent Social Media Video sharing with great SEO secrets. Well, we do have TubeMogul to make a single account post to multiple video sites, but not a single account to manage multiple accounts on one or more video sites. Nothing for the consultant, the marketing agency, the social media manager. Sigh and double sigh.

Final Piece Missing

The final piece that is missing is being able to handle short messages from the blog but without them showing up in the blog, or to syndicate messages not as a Title and URL but as a message content itself (aka a Tweet). These still need some work to get working, but it is no longer such a pain with a hacked version of Laconica Tools to the rescue.

What do we get with all this configuring? A system and a process that allows us to use WordPress installations as the primary messaging tool, to syndicate to Identica, Twitter and Facebook, as well as bare RSS feeds and email subscriptions to those feeds (via Feedburner). Whew.

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Twitter Website an Abomination

An axiom of Social Media is Twitter is not going away anytime soon. The corollary is that the Twitter.com website is not improving much anytime soon. Even the latest retweet feature was clearly implemented by aliens who have never actually retweeted, since the messages do not append whom it is being retweeted or the ability to change the message (e.g., truncate when exceeding 140 characters by adding the retweeted tweeter).

Alternate Twitter Web Clients

Yes, I am sure your mobile or laptop client works great, but that is not what we are talking about here. We need clients for the web. There are a few clients and tools worth mentioning. Actually only one:

• TwitIQ is great for a number of reasons, the primary one is being able to switch between twitter accounts with a drop-down list, as well as a nice retweet button that works correctly (i.e., copies RT @user + retweeted text into the text box and lets you edit).

However, there are still some features not present, such as one-click unsubscribe from the messages view, as well as the ability to view the homepage of the user on Twitter, as well as edit the profile of the logged in Twitter user.

Enhancements to Twitter.com Web Client

What we need at various times are enhancements to the web client itself. The best approach, or at least the least tedious and most flexible approach is to use the tried and true combination

• Firefox - This needs to be mentioned as not 100% of visitors to our site use Firefox
• Greasemonkey - Wikipedia article
• Userscripts.org greasemonkey script repository

Ah Greasemonkey, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

There are various, myriad, dozens(?) of scripts available. For a while we were trying out the @troynt script but it does too much and slows down the browser enough to notice. We continue with the best-of-breed approach (vs. all-in-one) and use several scripts.

Userscripts for Twitter.com Enhancement

To keep things simple, we really only need a few enhancements: retweeting and unfollowing. That's it.

• Twitter Unfollow Buttons
• Twitter Enhancements - Retweet This
• Twitter Remove Non-followers - This script is useful but bit tedious (20 users at a time). For speedier results, try the TwitIn web application.

Behold, after the first two scripts are running, insta-better!

Another Twitter Unfollow Webapp

Just have to mention another Twitter Unfollow Web App, and that is UnTweeps. Works great, as it quickly detects Twitter users who have not tweeted in 30 days (stale Tweeters), and allows for rapid unfollow. Too bad after three logins they block you for a month if you don't pay them. That's pretty stale. Haven't they heard of the advertising business model? Or fremium? Don't take away free, bro.

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We interrupt the 30-links-in-30-days linkbuilding campaign postings (1/2 way through at 15 days finished), to bring you a few helpful Social Media Tips on managing Facebook Pages.

Facebook Applications for Facebook Page Management

The best approach at this point in the development of Facebook is to use Facebook Applications, rather than tools external to Facebook, which much of the time tend to fail, quite regularly.

Thankfully we can report that there are several fairly robust Facebook Apps to help out with this management task. The main management tasks divide into three components:

• Managing the Facebook Page layout and design
• Managing the Facebook message posting
• Managing the response/feedback

We have found tools to help with the first two management tasks, Facebook page layout and design and the Facebook message posting. For the third task of follow up on responses, we are not aware of any reliable tools which make this easier than using Facebook itself (though using a particularly configured business account is certainly helpful and the task can be delegated).

Managing the Facebook Page Layout and Design

The best approach we have found is to use the applications Static FBML--with an astounding 11+million active users, Extended Info and More Extended Info (which is a clone enabling two different customizable info boxes).

What we do next is remove most of the built-in applications such as discussion, video, photos, etc. We love social media and sharing is great, but we prefer to manage our content on external networks such as the SEO Indochina YouTube and SEO Indochina Flickr accounts. When you deal with dozens of sites, having to manage duplicate content on multiple sites is both time-consuming and limits the linking-and-following behavior which brings customers to your other brand destinations.

Managing the Medium - Managing the Messaging

The meaning of Marshall McLuhan's famous The medium is the message is that the way in which information is delivered and the potentials within that shape of delivery is a message itself. Facebook very much as the linking and aggregating features of say, Google, however the individuals and smaller network of communication renders Facebook a neighborhood (a better characterization than the inapt use of walled garden). However, the use of Facebook for other purposes, namely marketing requires a different management model than dropping in on the neighbors to spend a few minutes or hours in social interaction, no matter how pleasant.

RSS to the Rescue

Thank goodness for RSS. The powerful RSS Graffiti application makes page management of multiple RSS feeds a pleasant affair, once the configuration and approval (per page) is accomplished. Click, click, click, clickety-click, click, click. Bah.

Final Suggestions

We prefer to use both the SEO website blog and the SEO Identica microblog as the source for RSS feed replication into Facebook. These are generally the two forms of messaging (besides perhaps an external email campaign management tool. Up next we are developing a WordPress plugin to enable posting messages from any WordPress installation and make message transmission into the various microblog and social network sites a single point of management.

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This post languished as a draft for many days, sorry for the delay, hope it was worth the wait!

Day 15 means we are halfway there! Thank you everyone who has followed some of our 30 links in 30 days linkbuilding campaign series. The daily requirement (even though sometimes the blog postings bunch up) has been very helpful in working through this part of the tactics we endorse and use for our clients's success.

SlideShare is Social Media

Unlike Docstoc and Scribd, SlideShare remains pure Social Media with an emphasis on networking and embedding. Their flash player has improved over time and their uptime and website responsiveness which is still occasionally flaky is now much, much better than it was in the early days.

Share, Share, Share Alike

The best way to use SlideShare (all links are nofollow, so that sucks) is to get people to intensively engage with what you have to offer. That means providing a high quality experience. Once can do that two ways:

• The Presentation is valuable, the information "disappears"
• The Information is valuable, the presentation "disappears"

Engagement with media that is portable, embeddable, and linked, that is the high value, rather than the PageRank value of the links (SlideShare is very stingy with link-juice).

The value of Presentation and the Presentation of Value

There are many powerful ways of presenting information using presentation software. In an earlier life, I created this presentation which demonstrates four distinct presentation genre. This particular presentation is done only in one of the four, the unfinished task is to create four different presentation genre to really show how the same information can be presented in very different ways with a different effect.

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We venture into an area which is one aspect of Linkbuilding, although perhaps not the most savory. That is, comment links. This is where we go to a site specifically because of the following:

• Comments are allowed
• Follow links are enabled
• The pages themselves gain enough PageRank

Comment Follow Links - Blogs

Blogs are one area where comment links are common, though follow links and PageRank are much less common. There are a few sites run by folks (usually SEOs) who like to use their blog for giving linkjuice out to their buddies, their customers, and their wife. Hey, it's all good. That is why we are in this business.

Bluehat SEO, such a nice site

Besides being nerve-tingling, chilling reading, the BluehatSEO site has great follow links and like most commenting systems uses the users name as the anchor text, so you can get some non URL keywords. By chilling reading I mean the kind of feeling you get when you consider that it is possible (actually likely) that some of your acquaintances are either robots or aliens (or robot aliens). You know, what made The Matrix such an excellent flick.

With Bluehat SEO and other sites, the trick is to comment on the ~100 or less commented posts with PR2 and above (better PR3).

How many Comments per Site? How many Links?

Only a few comments are useful, is our intuition. Don't waste time doing too much more than that. At least that is what we first thought. Research shows more links is better (though not additively better). Lots and lots of links (with similar niche verticals) is even better. But for regular, irrelevant links, go for 10-15 or so. That should be tiring enough. Here are a few to start with, all from our friends at Bluehat SEO:

Some PR3 Pages on Bluehat SEO

• Bluehat SEO Article
• Bluehat SEO Article
• Bluehat SEO Article
• Bluehat SEO Article
• Bluehat SEO Article
• Bluehat SEO Article
• Bluehat SEO Article
• Bluehat SEO Article
• Bluehat SEO Article
• Bluehat SEO Article
• Bluehat SEO Article
• Bluehat SEO Article
• Bluehat SEO Article
• Bluehat SEO Article
• Bluehat SEO Article

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In early November, a few big acquisitions set the strategic tone for the coming year. Current Trends for the web are more mobile (which is small, but growing) and more social (big and growing bigger). What this means for SEO and SEM is the topic we take up here.

Signs of the Times - Facebook App and Mobile Ad Acquisitions

• Playfish, the Facebook game company was acquired for $400m USD
• AdMob, the mobile advertising company was acquired for $750m USD

More Mobile

Embedded in the article on AdMob is some analyst kool-aid.

Kelsey Group projects the U.S. mobile ad market will reach $3.1 billion in 2013, up from $160 million in 2008.

Of course it's crazy talk. Nonetheless there is more mobile in the future of SEO and SEM. Mobile means small interfaces which Google deems relevant for different devices. Mobile also means a platform for Internet advertising. In Google AdWords, mobile search is an opt-in/opt-out option for the search network. At some point "mobile-only" should be an option, for an interesting set of delicious complications. Do keywords perform differently in Mobile, does advertising text? You betcha.

More Social

True, some could say that Facebook games are more anti-social, but some games are played with other people (at least to some degree).

Whatever. The point is that the social web, social networks, social media are all places where search (and therefore Search Optimization) and Marketing (and therefore Search Engine Marketing) are important.

SEO and SEM for Mobile and Social

What does this mean for SEO and SEM? Clearly two things

• SEO for Mobile is small but becoming more important
• SEO for the Social Web is big and becoming even more important

Search Engine Marketing should be the focus for the Social Web, as there is less search and more on-page, in-game application marketing to be had.

Passive search, as in optimized Facebook Pages are of course important and a part of the SEO toolkit

• 5 Elements of a Successful Facebook Fan Page
• 5 Tips for Optimizing your Brand's Facebook Presence
• 8 Best Practices for Retailers on Facebook Pages
• How to Optimize Your Facebook Page for Your Business

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Following up on yesterday's post and culminating in the post tomorrow on SlideShare, we continue to review the link-building opportunities in file sharing social media.

A Review: Filesharing and Linkbuilding

In Day 13 of the 30 Days of Linkbuilding we discussed the simple sharing of files (which granted, can become quite complex) represents a significant opportunity and challenge. The complexities are as follows and raise the question of the value of links and link-building:

• A link as a reputation verification opportunity (aka PageRank)
• A link as a traffic generating opportunity (aka visitors)
• A link as an ecommerce transaction opportunity (aka money)

Docstoc is a Marketplace

Ecommerce, baby! Sell those docs. But also give them away. Build your value. Hosting is free, inbound links (in the case of Docstoc, links to LinkedIn and to Facebook) are free.

Docstock and PageRank

The Docstoc homepage has a respectable PageRank of 6. Individual pages accrue PageRank, and as on other document sharing sites, it is the inbound links both onsite and off which drive traffic and PageRank of the profile and document pages.

Docstock and Linkbuilding

SEO for the Docstoc profile includes follow links for linkedin and facebook profiles but an inexplicable nofollow on the professional web address. The account profile does have a nice accountname-friendly URL.

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Filesharing and Linkbuilding

The simple sharing of files (which granted, can become quite complex) represents a significant opportunity and challenge. The complexities are as follows and raise the question of the value of links and link-building:

• A link as a reputation verification opportunity (aka PageRank)
• A link as a traffic generating opportunity (aka visitors)
• A link as an ecommerce transaction opportunity (aka money)

Opportunities, opportunities, opportunities. They abound! But let's be clear, you don't get any of these without focus, focus, focus. It will not be raining PageRank, visitors, or transactions anytime soon.

Scribd as a Market for Documents

Scribd is really a marketplace for documents, first and foremost. I may have started as social media, but it has become a marketplace and that is how we need to think of it. Brilliant. It is important, therefore, to use Scribd in that way, as a marketplace.

• A marketplace is where you can sell things
• A marketplace is where you can advertising things
• A marketplace is where you can build your brand (namely visibility)

Scribd Sells Documents

In addition to Amazon and other ebook and pdfs for sale Scribd supports ecommerce. Recommended.

Scribd Hosts Documents for Free

But also think about using Scribd to give away documents (the original concept was sharing). Along with Docstoc and Slideshare, Scribd is a great place to house your pdf documents for external use. Anything that an organization makes available to customers, either on websites, downloads or regularly emailed attachments can be nicely placed online in these document sites, all the while increasing reach.

Scribd and PageRank

The Scribd homepage has an impressive PageRank 8. Clearly there is lots of valuable inbound linking going on. Individual pages can gain healthy PageRank.

Scribd and Links

The Scribd user profile handily provides a nice follow link on handy username URL. No anchor text. However the profile supports a variety of information and can become SERP-competitive if the right document titles and descriptions are uploaded and available for the spiders.

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