• 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.

Stay Engaged:

Follow the #whatsnextdc hashtag conversation on Twitter
Follow the Twitter list of attendees/speakers/sponsors/etc
Follow Captico’s Twitter Account
Connect with Captico’s Facebook Page

Related Articles:

• What’s Next DC Conference 2011 – Wrap Up: Marketing Best Practices and Social Media Takeaways
• Actionable Steps to Better Inbound Marketing Success by Brian Halligan, Hubspot
• The Future Shopper, How Offline is the New Online from Bryan Eisenberg
• A Project Manager at What’s Next DC: The Good, The Bad and My Hopes for Next Year
• What’s Next DC? Tomorrow’s Conference hopes to address that.
• #DCWEEK 2011 Dates and Registration Announced

• Takeaways from the Government Video Expo 2010 in DC
• Recap of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s “Tour and Tweet”
• Nonprofit 2.0 Unconference Keynotes by Beth Kanter, Allison Fine, Wendy Harman
• Digital Capital Week 2010 – “A Slice of DCWEEK”
• Digital Capital Week 2010 – Quotes from DCWEEK Gov & Org 2.0 Day
• Digital Capital Week 2010 – Quotes from DCWEEK Media 2.0 Day
• GoPromoIt.com – Discounts for sharing with your social network.

Now, no offense to the famous, cancer-beating cyclist, but ranking number two in a search for ‘twitter’ strikes me as odd.

Lance Armstrong is a twitter heavy hitter (boasting 2,639,690 followers as of this posting) but he’s not the biggest or most well known twitter-er. Actor Ashton Kutcher, an infamous user, has more than double that at 5,669,290 but even he has been publicly knocked off his long-held-throne by pop stars Britney Spears with 5,813,523 and Lady Gaga with 5,995,300 rabid fans. Lance actually ranks 26th in the competition for Most Followers on Twitter! So what is it thats pushing him up so high?

There isn’t anything unusual about the return itself, its the same as what anyone’s profile would be if it showed up on a Google search result-

• The title: “Lance Armstrong (lancearmstong) on Twitter” — Lance uses his full name in the “name” section of his bio so that is reflected here, as well as for his twitter handle. Lance also has whats called a “Verified Account” meaning that the folks at Twitter have manually investigated and confirmed that this is indeed Lance Armstong – not some imposter- so this may help in his prominence, but I’m not sure…
• The description: “Twitter is a rich source of instantly updated information. It’s easy to stay updated on … Love the ‘stache. about 3 hours ago via Twitter for BlackBerry® …” — The description begins with text from twitter (a brief comment on what twitter is) which is located on the home page of Twitter which you see if you are not logged in (as pictured to the right). It then goes into an excerpt from the last tweet from Lance that Google has indexed, tells you he sent it from his Blackberry and that he posted it 3 hours ago (in reality it was 19 hours ago)

So I am left to believe that this ranking must be a result of popularity index and external linking. A lot of people are linking to Lance’s twitter page outside of Twitter, thus boosting it in Google’s ranking. Content on the web linking the two entities together and reliable sources sending traffic to one location is what Google looks for in determining relevance.

For example, check out this June 2010 article from CNN Entertainment - Conan starts Twitter feud with Lance Armstrong. The words “twitter” and “lance armstrong” are both in the title of a heavily trafficked blog as well as in the URL. The article links to Lance’s twitter page, and was spread across the web by readers, thus creating MORE links to Lance in MORE locations.

Also, Lance is well known for his “LIVESTRONG Foundation” and work with cancer research. Google gives more weight to .org .gov, and .edu websites so referral links from www.livestrong.ORG will boost a site more than a link from a .com site.

The team here at Captico ran the URL twitter.com/lancearmstrong through SEOMoz‘s tools and this is what I learned from their Advanced Link Intelligence Report:

• Lance’s Twitter account is linked to 31,506 times. Thats a lot of links!
• 1,938 different root domains (websites) link to his twitter account.

Moral of this story? Build links! Comment on other peoples websites and link back to your site, get yourself listed in directories around the web, post GOOD CONTENT that people want to share and will perpetuate for you, get involved in social media to make it easy for you to disseminate your information, and make sure you are optimizing the content on your website for search engines…

…or win 7 Tour de France’s and start a non-profit.

1. Go to Google Maps

2. Type in your field of industry and zip code and click “Search Maps” (For this example I have typed in HVAC and 21146 for Severna Park, MD) If I worked in HVAC in MD, I would now be looking at a list of my competitors on the left and a map of their locations on my right.

3. Click on a competitor. (In this example I clicked on “All State Plumbing Heating”) An info box appears over the location on the map where that company resides.

4. Click  “more info” located below their name and to the right of “Write a Review” in the info box. You are now taken to what amounts to a free website from Google for this company. [Be sure you have YOUR company listed like this!]

5. If you scroll down you will find a section entitled “More About This Place”. Here you see links where this company is listed on the web. The more links, the higher their ranking on Google. By clicking “More” I can view all of the relevant links that Google has found on the web about All State Plumbing Heating. This is your gold mine. You want to make sure that your company is listed on all of the sites your competitors are. Sometimes its as simple as claiming a listing on a public directory or submitting your company to one. Other times, asking your customers to review your services on certain websites will give you the boost you need. (In this example, HVAC companies who want to better compete with All State Plumbing Heating will want to get listed on:

• www.airconditioningpages.com/maryland/
• www.localconstruction.net/maryland/severna-park/
• www.constructionscope.com/maryland/severna-park/
• yellowpage.hirby.com/building-contractors_building-home-construction_maryland_severna-park,664532
• www.superpages.com/bp/Severna-Park-MD/

If this sounds like too much for you to be hassled with, don’t worry! Captico actually does all of this and more for our clients. Feel free to give us a call or stop by for a free consultation!

1. Decide if you want it.

Companies left and right are adding video to their product pages, to their “about us”. They are posting information and promotional segments on their websites. You can now walk a potential customer through a complicated process, or the steps for using a product. You can give them a better look at what they are buying and entice their senses. According to the BIA Kelsey Group, viewers engage more after watching a video, with clicks for more information increasing by 30-40% and phone inquiries by 16-20%.  Web video is a proven selling technique and is far cheaper than traditional advertising.

2. Get it done.

Whether you take a DIY approach (perhaps through a blog format) or hire someone to do it (Captico can include it in an SEO/SEM campaign), you find a way to get some videos put together that reflect your goals and brand image. Remember that this video can add to your credibility, build trust, and improve your customer experience, so whatever you do, do it right. If the goal of your video is to sell a product, make sure that it:

a) Tells the viewer why to buy the product or service;

b) Explains what they need to do or the steps involved clearly – whether that is “click the buy button” or walks them through a sign up process;

c) Motivate the viewer! Make sure you have a call to action and end the video on a strong note!

Your video does not need to be lengthy or overly flashy- in fact its better if its not, customers can see through overly scripted sales pitches- but you need to keep your end goal in mind and focus the viewer onto doing what you want them to do. [I recommend reading Creating Persuasive Interactive Video for E-Commerce.]

3. Get it out there!

Whether you host the video on your own site or embed it from a YouTube service, you need to get it in front of people. Post it on your Facebook page and add it to your Google Local Business Listing.

Don’t forget optimization in your video plan though. Search engines return what are called “blended results” meaning they find images, videos, articles and more, so you want to take advantage of this.  According to a recent experiment by Nate Elliot of Forrester Research, when analyzing search results from common queries, they found that on the keywords for which Google offers video results, any given video in the index stands about a 50 times better chance of appearing on the first page of results than any given text page in the index. That’s HUGE for any business. Elliot suggests the following tips for optimizing your online videos:

a) Insert keywords into your video filenames. [Google pays a lot of attention to the titles of videos]

b) Host your videos on YouTube, and embed those YouTube videos into your own site. Google says its algorithms consider how many times a video is viewed, and any views embedded videos receive on your own site get added to the ‘views’ tally on YouTube. (And yes, nearly every video we saw Google blend into its results came from YouTube.)

c) Optimize your YouTube videos by writing keywords into your videos’ titles, descriptions, and tags.

d) Embed videos into relevant text pages on your site. The context provided by the text on those pages (which is hopefully already optimized for search as well) will help the search engines figure out what your videos are about.

e) Also create a video library on your site, so Google knows where to find your video content. (Google Video Sitemaps can help with this too.) Write keyword-rich annotations for each video in the library.

[You may also want to read additional Video SEO Tips and Techniques.]

You may also be interested in reading: ROI: Web Video sells. Even if customers don’t watch it!

1. Get Listed in Google Local Business Center - Go to following URL and get your business listed in Google. Submission process is easy, follow Google’s steps and our steps below. Await verification code via phone or postcard and GET Listed!
2. www.google.com/local/add
3. Use Keywords in Company Description – Develop a list of 5 keywords that best describes your business and incorporate words into your company description. Do not spam it! Make content coherent and consistent.
4. Add Photos – Add as many photos you can to your listing and your company logo. When uploading files, be sure to optimize name of the file to match one of the main keywords you developed in Step 2.
5. Encourage Customer Reviews/Add Links Back – Get real customers to post reviews on your listing about products/services. Provide a link from your website for visitors to post reviews on your Google Local Business Listing page.
6. Add Coupons – Add coupons to your Google Local Business Listing and you are sure to move up in rank.
7. Add Videos- If you have videos, upload to YouTube and post a link to it in your Google Local Business Listing. Great way of increasing rank.
8. Enter as Much Detail Possible – Hours of operations, payment options, other additional details, etc. More detail equals better rank. Google’s local business center algorithm will view your listing as credible and serious.

You may also be interested in: A Tip for Better Google Local Business Optimization