|  |  |  | | | | | SEO.com » Blog | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | If content can be searched, it can be optimized. What are your customers’ content preferences? How do they discover? Consume? Share? Create a profile of your audience(s). Use tools to create personas of data - Demographic info from Quantcast, Compete
- Keyword info from SEMRush, Google
- Engagement info from PostRank
- Social network info from Flowtown, Rapleaf
Create an editorial spreadsheet to plan all content that includes: - Topic
- Keywords
- Media Type
- Places Repost/Repurpose Content (Newsletter, Slideshare)
- Places to Promote (Facebook, Twitter, etc)
The SEO Content Cycle - Create & promote optimized content
- Content is noticed, shared, & visibility grows
- Exposure attracts more subscribers, fans, friends, links
- Increase links and exposure grows search & referral traffic
- Traffic & community provides data that you can research, develop to further grow social networks for content & SEO
Repurposing Content Example - Upload video to YouTube
- Embed in a blog post with show notes
- Post screen shots from video to Flickr
- Upload images and text as a story in a PowerPoint or PDF, upload to .docstoc, Scribd, etc.
Takeaways - Develop & optimize content with customers personas in mind
- Think like a publisher and create an editorial plan
- Develop channels of distribution & social links
- Leverage both web & social media analytics
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | A quick recap of content from a competitive analysis session of PubCon 2010 with Matt Siltala, Michael Streko, Michael Gray, and Andy Beal. Matt Siltala Things to identify about the competition: Hubs. Check PRWeb search, Digg, or article site search to see what’s being said about your competition, what they’re doing, and even which keywords they’re going after. You can make a spreadsheet of keywords that are being targeted by your competitors. Check local review sites to see which specials are being offered. Tools. Use AuthorityLabs to put competitors side by side with keywords and identify areas to attack. Social Media. You can use Social Media For Firefox plugin, Knowem, Who’s Talkin, Twitter Search/Lists, Image Search, SEO For Firefox plugin to identify. Do “link:www.competitor.com” together with the Social Media For Firefox plugin to identify the best content. Identify competitor keywords. What your competitors may be using may be converting better than your keywords. Test with Adsense. Make sure you’ve got enough good content on your site around your competitors’ keywords. Michael Streko Ways to find the “Next Move” of the company you’re looking at: - Search their code.
- Check out their Robots.txt. You could find a test site, pictures, a new product or domain, etc.
- Google search for possible partners.
- Check http://dotheyfolloweachother.com to see who people in your competitors’ organization are close to.
- Follow their company on LinkedIn.com Fan the Facebook page. If someone leaves, call them right away and find out why.
- Know Who Links To Them
- Read their content, don’t be afraid to email a site linking to a page that has out-of-date content and request a new link to your better version of content. Use incompetence to your advantage.
- Become an affiliate of your competitors’ sites, find out “earnings per click” to get a good idea of traffic.
- Non-Internet Bonus Tactic: call your competitor and walk through the process.
Michael Gray - Using Blekk0.com – use “/adsense=XXXXXXXX” with the Adsense code or analytics code and get a list of competitor sites.
- Use Tineye.com to see where an individual has other profiles and whether they are legitimate.
- Quarkbase will show popularity of content.
- Use a Google search for “submitted on” OR “submitted by” OR “discovered by” OR “posted by” to determine which content is being submitted and by whom.
- Identify the pattern of content “sneezers” when new content is being promoted/submitted. Try to get into the circle. TwitterCircles.com will help you identify who competitors are connecting with.
Andy Beal - Look for customer rants. Poach clients, promote your alternative, improve your own products and services to avoid these same issues.
- Look for any negativity coming from competitor employees or clients. Blow on the spark that lights the fuse.
- Use Twitter. Use custom parameters at search.twitter.com and set up competitive searches. If X employee talks to Y employee about Z keyword, track it. Export as RSS. Take advantage of private Twitter lists.
- DomainTools.com/Registrant-Alert/ and /Mark-Alert will let you spy on competitors to find out when they’re registering new domains.
- Oodle.com/job helps spy on job listings. Look up competitors’ name and create an RSS feed then aggregate multiple competitors.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Ted Ulle Information architecture is often ignored or just set on default. If there’s anything in search that IS rocket science, it’s information architecture and building a taxonomy that’s actually useful for people. A lot of glorified hover menus are like hosting a dinner party, then letting people raid the fridge. Hovers mean visitors cannot see and compare all the options at once. Categories are often from some company mindset, not a user mindset. Avoid organizing content: - Like the company hierarchy
- Like a print catalog
- By content owner
- By someone’s pet ideas
Forget the “3-Click Rule.” In terms of the user, the number of clicks isn’t important. What’s important is the “information scent.” They should feel like they’re on the right track, not having unnecessary barriers, and not becoming more unhappy as they progress. When you’re creating information architecture, you should keep menu items to 6 or 7 items, max. You can be creative with “off-main” nav tools instead of just hover menus. Consider putting contact info and other info in a small drop-down outside People in the company want the website to be in hover menus, but that’s because they use it every day. Visitors need something different. One test removed the hover menu and page views doubled overnight, with time on site, conversion rates, etc. also increasing. In another case, the number of menu items was reduced from 9 to 6. Revenues went up 58% in the 1st week and were up 46% over 6 months.  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Tim Mayer is the former head of search product and business at Yahoo. The Future of Search - Traditional Search – You enter a query and get back a result.
- Predictive Search – Search engines are able to connect your check-in history, personal profiles, and that of your friends to make recommendations for other plausible actions and transactions.
5 Key Trends That Will Influence Search - Growth of mobile queries. By 2012, mobile queries will make up 1 in 5 searches. The largest categories of mobile search right now are informational, local, and product lookup.
- Growth in apps, not browsers. The majority of the time people spend on the phone, browser accounts for 50% of face time. Just a couple of years ago, browsers were taking 70-80% of the face time. We’re seeing a strong migration to apps.
- Input is difficult. We’re going to have to find more ways to integrate our personal data “inputs” from the past to impact current searches.
- More context. With the increase in local, more results will be returned in the context of location.
- “Verticalizing” SERPs. People are starting to go directly to brand sites, i.e. Amazon, etc. to search, and less to search engines. Look to search engines to start integrating more of these results.
Opportunities for service providers App discovery is the key to customer satisfaction in the smart phone era. Right now, it’s difficult for people to identify which apps are really the best and most effective for accomplishing their goals. There’s a huge opportunity for technology to bridge the gap between apps and search boxes. In the future, we may see aggregators that determine which is truly the best search tool to use when you perform a search, be it app or HTML site, and automatically use those to return results, depending on the query and context. Opportunities for publishers Mobile advertising demand is not increasing at a very fast rate, so prices are still fairly slow. There’s an opportunity for First mover app in a new category on new platform. Epicurious became the default recipe app for the iPad. There are other opportunities to capitalize on existing trends in new platforms.  | | | | | | | | | |  | |  | |  |
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