4 Google trends to watch in 2012

For your reading pleasure…

Interesting article on things to come from Google this year. 4 standout trends to look for include…

1) Better ways to use meta data to gain “sitelink” visibility in organic search

2) Google begins to cut the marketer out of the user experience as it enters the business of answering questions directly
(example >> https://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=how+old+is+bill+clinton)

5) Google competes directly in more industries. Bought Zagat. Also entered travel. I’m curious about how and when they’ll enter real estate.
(example >> https://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=BOS+to+SFO)

4) Restricted insight through Google Analytics as Google sees it’s data more as a competitive advantage and less as a resource for marketers. (We’re seeing 80k+ searches per month tagged as keyword “not provided”). This is only going to increase…

Interesting read.

Best guide yet to managing duplicate content in a post-Panda world

Hats off to Dr. Pete and the SEOmoz team for their hard work researching and writing this concise guide to managing duplicate content in a 2011, post-Panda world. Great stuff!

Use this resource to guide your thinking on how to handle the many dup-content issues inherent with large, enterprise websites.

Enjoy!

Enterprise Content Syndication

Fun stuff! We’ve been busy at ZipRealty.com. Among other search & social -related projects, we’ve got a shiny new hyper-local blog rolling out that will play a large role in our plan. Related to that, I’m thinking more and more about how to syndicate all this great content – both for enhanced engagement, as well as for links.

With so much content rolling out, I’m thinking about strategy, infrastructure, and how to partner to really make this great! To help me along, I found a very nice PPT on the subject of developing an enterprise content syndication strategy. I think it is good enough to share – so here it is! Enjoy!

Note: this ppt is old, but the basics are pretty much the same. Note also: This is not our content syndication strategy. Rather, this is a framework anyone can use to begin thinking through how to leverage grade-A content to accomplish social / SEO / content marketing goals.

I’ve got a plan for SEO – and it rocks.

I’m 3 weeks into my new role at ZipRealty.com, and I’ve got a great plan. In fact, today I presented that plan to the executive team for the first time.

This was a big deal presentation for me – my first public statement about the state of SEO at ZipRealty and where it needs to go. Today determines whether they love me or hate me here – based on the merits of what I bring to the table. The presentation, which outlines key goals and metrics along with a series of 5 major SEO projects, went very well! I am excited about that. I’m “feeling the love” and we are ready to make some serious progress on our projects now that they are defined and endorsed from the top on down.

I cannot share the plan with you here, although I might be able to do that later if I strip out the salient details…

Anyway, we’re off to a great start! Stay tuned as the story unfolds.

SEO Director at ZipRealty.com

I am happy to announce that I am now full-time SEO Director at ZipRealty.com! Really excited about the new role.

I am one week into the role and have lots to learn about the site. But plans are shaping up quickly, and we’ll be ready to roll soon with a great plan.

I do have consulting projects that I plan to keep – I’ll be busy, but I am really excited about this new development! Stay tuned – I plan to use this blog to report on our progress at ZipRealty as well as at Bluewolf.com.

Best article yet on Google’s Panda 2.2 Release

This video really drives home the importance of user experience and content quality in addition to the traditional SEO factors that affect SERP results in Google. Did you know that Google can detect humor? Crazy!

Original post and video: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-googles-panda-update-changed-seo-best-practices-forever-whiteboard-friday

Increased Organic Search Traffic 135%!

It has been a while since I’ve reported on this. Since starting with BW in July 2010, I am happy to report that we have more than doubled organic search traffic to the site! This is the result of highly focused work. We launched a new site, launched a blog, produced the best content we could, and then we engaged customers through social media.

The result? Doubled organic search traffic in 8 months!

Search Goals in Brief

Here is a quick look at what we set out to do:

• Increase long-tail traffic for search queries containing specific, targeted head terms.
• Increase overall organic search traffic site-wide.
• Increase traffic to specific entry/landing-pages.

How We Did (this is the fun part)

• Increased overall traffic 135% from 3875 to 9124 visitors per month
• Increased long-tail traffic 126% for BW brand name
• Increased long-tail traffic 100% for “salesforce”
• Increased long-tail traffic 647% for ”sales” (excludes “salesforce” – we were going for Sales Effectiveness and Sales Cloud)
• Increased long-tail traffic 1170% for “cloud” (huge gain for a cloud computing company!!)
• Increased long-tail traffic for “service” 69% (this is a new one for us. We’re going for Customer Service Effectiveness and all things Service Cloud related).

Really excited about these results – here is look at how we did it.

How We Did It (Plan Elements In Brief)

Search and social really do go hand-in-hand. Site architecture also plays an important role. Here is a brief look at what we did to get these results:

• Launched new search optimized website (the new site structure is better for SEO)
• Launched a blog
• Used blog and press releases to build targeted back-links to specific optimized landing/entry-pages on the site
• Used social media to deliver a clear message and engage customers
• Used social media to syndicate blog content and build high quality back-links.
• Focused intensely on this plan.  Produced quality content and engaging social media to deliver a message and build targeted back-links

It Worked!

If you would like to know how Laughlin Search and Social can help your business, contact me through my LinkedIn account.