Captico » presentation

Advanced Tactics to Maximize Your SEO Opportunities from Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz

Corrie Davidson — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 18:18:10 +0000

Rand Fishkin, the CEO & Founder of SEOmoz.org, managed to stuff an inspiring presentation on “Advanced Tactics to Maximize SEO Opportunity” into a too-short 25 minutes presentation at the What’s Next DC 2011 Conference on Monday, January 24th. With organic search results becoming increasingly competitive, Rand’s specific tactics supplemented with examples and case studies had me eager to try some new techniques to pimp out our website. You can view his slidedeck here. (All photos by Nakeva Corothers). Some key takeaways included:

Google & Bing said: Facebook public shares and Twitter tweets directly impact search engine rankings. An individual users influence also affects this.
SEO is still under-invested. SEO surfaced links (organic listings) get 82% of clicks from the 1-2 billion searches on Google every day. Much more than PPC terms which only get 18% (People are ignoring the “ads” or paid listings). Yet 85% of budgets go to PPC campaigns, and only 15% on SEO (firms, consultants, software, etc.)
Human beings search for really weird stuff. We really are unique snowflakes. The top 12,000 keywords only account for 18.5% of searches! 70% of searches are long tail odd terms.
According to Google, 25% of searches that occur every month have never been seen before, have never been typed into Google before (10+ years).
Google has happy searchers – despite what critics are saying. “Noise” or irrelevant returns are people’s biggest complaint. When asked, “How well do search engines help you find information?” 47% said Excellent. 42% said Good. 10% said Fair. 0% said Poor. 1% said Not Sure.
Key SEO Principle: Accessible, good quality content.
Avoid all-flash intros. They are the WORST thing to do for SEO. Search engines will not find you.
Key SEO Principle: Keyword research & targeting. You have to target things people are searching for, and optimize your titles accordingly.
Key SEO Principle: Link Building.
Key SEO Principle: Social Sharing. Engage users on your site (social). Utilize social media and viral marketing.
What Matters in Search Engine Rankings: 24% Trust/Authority of the Host Domain. 22% Link Popularity of the Specific Page. 20% Anchor Text of External Links. 15% On-Page Keyword Usage. 7% Traffic and Click-Through Data. 6% Social Graph Metrics. 5% Registration and Hosting Data.
Be Cautious: Don’t get jaded if junk ranks higher than you. Being the best knowledge source does not mean you will rank highest. Popularity is a big factor in SEO. You may not be best or brightest, but if people like you, you’ll do well.
Remarkable SEO Tactics: Own and control your Link Juice. Google’s “nofollow” is a no-go now. (Rand mentions the #whatsnextdc website as a stellar example of consolidation and using link anchors wisely.)
Take advantage of 301 repoints and Rel Canonical. (Rand recommends putting it on every page.)
Find and fix the errors on your page! Save your SEO juice! There are free programs that can help you do this.
Be a Link Magnet. Build a platform where users contribute on your site and give users an incentive to contribute. (Example: Quora.) Get influencers to guest blog for you. Use Embeddable content to make linking a default behavior. (Example: Vimeo.)
You can “Skip the Normal Rankings”. Videos rank higher easily (submit video xml sitemaps). Get included in Google News. Images. Blogs. Social Circle. Rich Snippets.

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The Future Shopper, How Offline is the New Online from Bryan Eisenberg

Corrie Davidson — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 00:43:21 +0000

Bryan Eisenberg, Managing Partner at Eisenberg Holding, was the second presenter at yesterday’s “What’s Next DC – Your Marketing Communications Roadmap” Conference. He held one of the two 45 minute time slots with “The Future Shopper, How Offline is the New Online”. It was a great presentation on how the convergence of communications, logistics, and financial technology continues to evolve to reduce the friction in the customers’ buying process. (Photo by Nakeva Corothers) Takeaways included:

Yes, we need to teach more college students about digital marketing as that is where the world is headed, but you can’t understand the future unless you understand what happened in the past. You must understand old trends to excel at new ones.
We are due for a major change in financial transactions. Facebook credits for example. 41% of people on Facebook play games like Mafia Wars, Cityville, Farmville and use “virtual credits”.
Logistics: When Romans built roads, trade expanded. People could buy/sell more things with more people. Introduce planes, trains & automobiles – an ever expanding marketplace.
Communication evolution is all about how do you get the message out to more & more people – beginning with the advent of the printing press.
Everyone in marketing should read “The Clue Train Manifesto“. In 1999 its authors proclaimed “the end of business as usual” and recognized the changing trends.
Social media is all about connecting individuals together.
87% of internet users have used the internet to browse and research products and services.
42% of shoppers research products online and then buy online.
51% of people research products online and then buy in store.
32% of people research online, go and visit the store, and then come back and buy online!
16% of people visit a store and then buy online.
“All media is digitizing today.” Examples: AXA is the first Insurance Company in Belgium to launch an iPhone app. They launched it with the first iAd in newspapers and magazines. Users placed their iPhone on the ad which then comes to life on their iPhone. At the end, a product demo plays and then users are prompted to download the App.
CBS and Pepsi actually embedded a screen into a the print magazine Entertainment Weekly with ads for tv shows.
Best Buy: Why Best Buy Loves Mobile “Our job as retailers is to create tremendous buying experiences for our customers.”
Recent Study: More people willing to go without sex for 30 days than go without their cellphones. The world is changing.
Google Dashboard has more info about you than most people you know… have you checked yours lately?
Mobile is changing the way people are buying, the way we are shopping. See: TaxiMagic. See: Red Laser (over 2 million downloads). See: ShopSavvy. See: Layar – Watch video.
3000% growth in mobile shopping queries.
If everyone knows everything about your products and everyone else’s, why should they buy from you? How are you going to stand out?
Future: Personalized, customized ads and experiences. “People want this kind of technology.” Personalization is HUGE. Amazon knows this.
“Recommended for you” statements converted 74% of survey respondents in regards to mobile shopping.
Online, every detail matters. Do you have a model in your ad? Have you tested her eye direction? Having her look at product as opposed to looking at you, generates better response. People want to know what shes looking at and so interact with the product better.
You can’t persuade people on Facebook the same way you do on Google. It doesn’t work. It never will.
There are 4 basic personality types, and they all gather information differently. Logical-Competitive: if info isn’t right there and tell them exactly what they are looking for, they bail. Logical-Methodical: they look at every little detail, analyzing every link. Emotional-Spontaneous: attracted to pictures, etc. Emotional-Deliberate: look at reviews, personalized things.
Overstock.com had 90% bounce rate on movie page. Changing one graphic on a website resulted in $25 million in sales. You must test your websites. Eye tracking. Search terms.
Macy’s introduced the “Magic Mirror” allowing you to try on clothes virtually in their stores.
Adidas has a virtual footwear wall, allowing shoppers to browse and get info on all of Adidas’ products – whether they are in-stock or not.
See: Kinect.
It’s not your competitors that you have to keep up with – its your customers. You have to understand where your customers are going. (2 yr olds can interact with an iPad.)
Your Goal: Figure out how to be cross-channel, to be nimble. You have to look overseas – look at the trends in Japan, in China.
Its a lot of hard work. Its a lot of steps. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
To be a successful marketer you must be: Customer intimate. Remarkable. Authentic. Nimble. Continuously improving (Always be testing!).
Marketing today is real time.

You can follow Bryan on Twitter at @thegrok

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Actionable Steps to Better Inbound Marketing Success by Brian Halligan, Hubspot

Corrie Davidson — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 21:08:56 +0000

Brian Halligan, CEO and Founder of Hubspot, was the first presenter at yesterday’s inaugural “What’s Next DC – Your Marketing Communications Roadmap” Conference. Brian opened in one of the two long time slots of the day (45 minutes) but gave a fantastic presentation on actionable steps businesses can use to take advantage of modern inbound marketing techniques by optimizing their websites to get found by more prospects and convert a higher percentage of those prospects into paying customers. (Photo by Nakeva Corothers) View Brian’s Slidedeck. Takeaways included:

The current playbook is fundamentally busted. Everything we’ve learned as PR Marketers over the last 10 years (renting email lists, hiring sales people to make cold calls, google ad words, etc) is broken. Traditional marketing is dead and doesn’t work anymore. We are sick and tired of being sold to. We are sick and tired of being marketed to. We have trained ourselves to block it out, to ignore ads and spam. Example: When did you last read the spam email you get? Do you answer the phone when you see its a marketer or someone you don’t know? Do you read your physical junk mail?
People are no longer subscribing to the paper they are subscribing to their fav blog. They are consuming info in a radically new way. (People are getting their news in real time, wherever they are, from a variety of sources.)
Instead of spamming your way into peoples lives through email blasts and cold calls and advertisements, pull them in through the natural way people are shopping and living now. Instead of outbound interruption-based marketing, do inbound modern marketing.
With Modern Marketing, your success is a function of the width of your brain, not the width of your wallet. You don’t need a lot of money to be a successful marketer today. But you have to be interesting.
Marketers rent email lists, or adwords, or space on websites – temporary keywords that go to the highest bidder. Modern marketing is more about an ownership model than a rental model. Modern Marketers are really asset managers: Twitter followers, Facebook fans, back-links. You want to grow these assets.
Google Adwords was genius 3 or 4 years ago, but now too many people are buying compared to those who are searching.
Create lots of content!! Blogs, videos, slide presentations, anything! Content is the magnet that draws customers in, that boosts you in search rankings. And content lasts forever!
Social Media Optimization: People are scanning- content must be catchy, and have a brilliant title optimized for social media to get their attention and have a shot at being re-shared by them.
6 Steps to Marketing Success: 1. Create good content. 2. Optimize it. 3. Pimp it out everywhere. 4. Have strong call to action on website. 5. Nurture your leads. 6. Analytics.
Contribute unique, interesting content, and share it with everyone.
99% of websites don’t have a strong call to action. Its not a beauty contest, its about the quality of the content.
Websites have 2 purposes: to draw people in and to convert them in an efficient way.
Nurture your leads!
Measure! Conduct simple analytics, look at your funnel by channel to best optimize it.
Hubspot has the brochure site sure, but they really focus on landing pages/properties that they pull people in to. Transforming the top of the funnel will grow all other parts of it.
“Get found and convert.”
Video Content: You can’t create a viral video. You can create a video, and hope it goes viral. Maybe 1 of 10 videos you create will go viral and work – but that’s worth it for the people they attract.
Modern marketing is publishing, creating content, and pulling people in.
Social media policy at @hubspot – use common sense. Get everyone involved blogging & tweeting! It brings people in!
“Let 1000 flowers bloom.” Having more bloggers on your site, means you will have more reach! Make it competitive & get everyone involved in content creation!
Eliminate comment approval/moderation on your blogs! People want to/need to be able to comment in real time. If they post a mean comment, leave it! Respond to it publicly and professionally.
In the ’90s the sales rep had all the power, customers had to go through them to get info. Today, all that leverage is gone, the customer can find all that info online. No marketing is all powerful!
Don’t measure quarterly – you should be measuring daily. Measure often, so that you can evolve fast. No more annual planning. You should have monthly or weekly meetings to plot out new ideas and initiatives. Look at whats working and whats not. Have monthly sprint meeting and daily standup meeting to keep everyone up to date.
Experimentation is key in marketing! Marketing is non-linear and you need to take risks and try new things. Monthly cycle, fast iterations.
Are you still putting out press releases? Generation Y says “F*%$ That!” to press releases. They want to read a CEOs twitter or blog. They want to talk to you directly, no more barriers. Be more transparent! Be more authentic! Speak like a human, don’t use “marketing speak”.
If you want to be successful, commit. You have to jump in, not just dip your toe.

You can follow Brian on Twitter at @bhalligan

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Using Twitter and Blogs As a Business Tool: Presentation

Todd Fisher — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 04:36:53 +0000

In this seminar, Captico presents strategies for leveraging Twitter and blogging for your business. We will cover the basics to get you started communicating your brand to a large and growing audience.

Some of the topics include:

The benefits of blogging and Twitter
What is social media?
Blogging 101, Twitter 101
What to blog/Tweet about and how to engage your audience

Feel Free To Download the Presentation Materials.