Pimp My Keywords

Jingle Bells: SEO Style

For those of you who love Christmas carols; check out our version of Jingle Bells:

Dashing through the web

In an SEO kinda way

Up in the rankings we go

Laughing all the way

HA HA HA

Hear the twitter sing

Make the writers write

What fun it is to meta-tag

Late into the night

 

Purple Trout, Purple Trout

Keywords all the way

Oh what fun it is to see

Your links go up and stay HEY!

Purple Trout, Purple Trout

Keywords all the way

Casting a wider Internet

Ups your rankings every day

 

Since Christmas time is here

And website hits are low

Don’t worry, have no fear

Local splash makes rankings glow

PPC will help you too

And social media bonds

Your comp-e-tition won’t have a clue

When your clientele responds!

 

OHHH Purple Trout, Purple Trout

Keywords all the way

Oh what fun it is to see

Your links go up and stay

Purple Trout, Purple Trout

Keywords all the way

Casting a wider Internet

Ups your rankings every day!

(Photo by: anneh632)

 

The No-No's of Social Media Content

By Sarah Groneck

SEO/SMO Writer

A big part of having a social media strategy is how you portray your company’s persona. Your followers and fans won’t listen to you if the company’s voice does not match up with the company’s purpose statement. So, as you decide on a company persona, remember that how you write is equally as important as what you write.

When it comes to writing voice, keep these no-no's in mind:

Don’t be casual. Remember all those rules you memorized in high school grammar class, such as capitalize at the beginning of a sentence? Implement them, and stay consistent. Your viewers have enough friends who use ten exclamation marks to emphasize a point; they don’t want to see a company doing the same. Stay away from texting jargon such as “lol” or “ttyl.” If you respect grammar rules, you will appear to be a serious, more professional company. That way, when you do implement sarcastic or humorous content, your readers will still take you seriously.

Don’t be corporate. Cut out long-winded, confusing language. Viewers’ attention spans are short in social media; they won’t spend time reading your wordy words. They also do not want to spend time deciphering meaning, especially if content lacks substance to start. Put a little soul into your content. Be straight-forward, be humorous, be human.

Above all, don’t conspire publically. It may seem obvious, but do not rant against your competition on Twitter and Facebook. In fact, it might be better to not mention them at all. Pretend your competition does not exist (while keeping track of them on the sly), and don't create content bragging about your company’s latest gains or making low-blow jabs at your competition. Your readers want to see your company as professional in content and in conveyance.  

Remember, your company is what it says (or writes). Make sure that when you speak through social media, you speak well and with class.

{Picture by Horia Varlan}

The Dynamic Duo Debut at Purple Trout

Hey everyone! We're Kristin Bednarski and Sarah Groneck, the new SEO/SMO writers at Purple Trout, LLC. From here on out, we'll be blogging every Friday about all things social media, including things we've learned, tips we've come up with, and facts and information regarding your favorite social media venues.

Feel free to ask us any questions or make any suggestions, and we'll try to speedily respond on this blog.

Our first post will debut next Friday, and we're looking forward to exploring the wonderful world that is social media.

Tools To Evaluate & Measure Website Traffic

Whether it's search engine optimization, pay per click, social media or other marketing efforts bringing visitors to your website, you'll definitely need the right tools to measure and analyze traffic.

Of course, nearly all web hosting tools include a website statistical package (which is a good start). Soon, however, you'll want to gather more in-depth information such as:

• How are visitors finding your website?
• Where are they coming from?
• What other web pages do visitors view?
• How long do visitors stay on your website?
• Are your visitors converting into customers, newsletter subscribers, etc.?
• What is the primary exit page of your website?
• What is your website's "bounce" rate?
• And more...

If you're not quite an expert in the area of website statistical analysis, I would highly recommend starting out with Google Analytics. Not only is it free, but Google's traffic tools offer a ton of traffic analyzing tools allowing you to track your visitors in time trends; by pages; by keywords; by conversion and so on.

In addition, Google's reporting tools and charts can be customized and set to automatically e-mail reports to you daily, weekly or monthly. Naturally, Google Analytics works well with Google Adwords, allowing one to view both organic and paid search together or separately.

Of course, there are many alternatives to Google Analytics. A few include:

Piwik is an open source software program, which offers analytics reports in real time. PHP 5.1 and a Mysql database is required, but installation just takes five minutes. Piwik's dashboard has earned high marks.

Omniture is big among the search engine optimization crowd. The service, which charges a fee, leans towards improving your marketing ROI and helping its customers increase their bottom line. Unfortunately, you'll need to complete a detailed form in order to view the Omniture tours and demos. Still, this service is extremely reliable and well-received.

Lyris HQ Web Analytics (formerly ClickTracks) has also earned high marks, although it carries a monthly fee. Free trial versions are available if you'd like to try it out.

Webtrends monitors your website, mobile applications, and social media efforts. The service also integrates their analytics into your e-mail program for timely report delivery.

So, which one do you pick? The one that's easiest for you to use and offers accurate information regarding the statistics you want to see!

Image by kayintveen

A Different Look at Web 2.0: The Circuit

Doug Ross (Western Southern Life) and Tom Marrs (CYBER) spoke recently about Web 2.0 technologies during an event hosted by The Circuit.

Ross explained Web 2.0 is the use of the Internet as a platform, instead of purchasing and installing an application. For example, Google Maps uses the browser as the application.

A blog is an easy-to-use news publishing platform. You can write about anything in a blog. Currently, blogs are huge as Technorati is tracking 112 million blogs. Wow...

Ross added corporations first viewed blogs as a threat (as in "what if someone writes something back about our company, products, etc."). Now, however, corporations are using blogs as a marketing tool.

At Western & Southern, an internal blog (called "iSpace") has 1,500 posts and over 60 authors. W&S rolled out a blog factory in 2007 allowing its users to create a blog in approximately five minutes. Some examples include a Microsoft Excel blog and a call center blog.

Ross went on to talk a bit about wikis (Wikipedia was founded in 2001 and is now 15 times larger than Britannica) and Digg (founded in 2004). These types of sites are "crowd-sourcing" as readers are also contributors.

Ross and Marrs went a little deeper into the technologies that drive 2.0, including AJAX, XML, RSS and RIA.

In all, we have yet to scratch the surface. Corporations still create expensive websites with bells and whistles and believe the traffic will come. Participation is a key whether its with a blog, new articles, case studies, wikis, social media, etc