The Obvious Social Network Route

As the movie The Social Network hit screens, the time came to reflect on the phenomenal success of Facebook and other social media sites. Facebook has an estimated 500 million users and this is likely to increase even further. Twitter now has well over 100 million users and is attracting an average of 300,000 new users a day. This makes it plainly obvious as to your main 2011 social media strategy. Facebook seems to attract users in the ‘right’ age group for marketing purposes, so dedicate a considerable amount of your budget towards setting up campaigns both on Twitter and Facebook.

Video Kills The Behind The Times Company

Yet it is important to push yourself to the front of the queue when it comes to jumping on the video marketing bandwagon. A recent whitepaper by Cisco suggested that more than half of all web traffic will be video-related by 2014. The days of the 30 second advert are dying out with more and more consumers skipping these dull and unimaginative productions. Sites like YouTube need to used more frequently with thought provoking and lengthier adverts the key to success. If you want someone to buy your cereal, don’t depict a happy family with 2.4 children eating the product by the kitchen. Edgy, new and deep will sell in future where fast, predictable and cheesy once ruled.

Email And Mobiles

As one might expect, email marketing is moving with the times. An extraordinary 97% of American households use email so a well constructed email campaign will reap dividends. It is a fact that social networks such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are being integrated with email. The smartphone, Android and iPhone are linking even more users to their mail. The challenge facing digital marketers is to find a way to tailor their campaign for customers who view their email on a mobile device. The best strategy is to use a tool such as Litmus to find out more about your audience and tailor your campaign to them. This is necessary because it is difficult to find a current strategy that will work well for all mobile users.

SEO Is Still King

Believe it or not however, despite the huge budgets set aside for the all of the above, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is still top of the list when it comes to 2011 digital marketing tactics according to a poll carried out by Top Rank. Yet in order to get your content to the top of the search engine ladder, you still have to know your targets and audience. If you know your audience but not their triggers, start surveying. If you know what you want to market but have no idea to who, check out sites like eMarketer for market statistics. It should be remembered that no amount of marketing will work if your content is poor, sort it out. Oh, and avoid those nasty “please stay on my page and click on cancel for something special” pop-ups, these REALLY annoy consumers!

So where will this leave your marketing strategy for 2011?  All four of these pieces will make your marketing plan come together and keep up with the ever-changing trends for digital marketing.

But what if your client can't give you access to create a sitemap (we've seen this happen when a company website is part of a corporate system or franchise structure). What you can do, is try this new theory on how to index pages using Twitter to post your URLs.

Now, you don't want to spam your followers with a whole bunch of links, but if it is relevant to what your posting, don't miss out on the opportunity!

Here is a very intelligent article that walks you through an experiment with indexing pages through Twitter.

Using Twitter for Increased Indexation

One thing we consider when optimizing your website is the loading speed of your page. For a long time, the SEO industry theorized that page speed was one of the factors that SERPs considered.  Now, especially since Google released it's Google Instant, we are certain that speed does matter!

Google has now introduced WebP ("weppy") images. This allows search spiders to see the size adjustments to your images in the coding so that they will know you aren't making searchers wait to load your full size image. It allows you to download the WebP install and convert your JPEG image codes to be WebP friendly.

Read more about how it helps your page speed here:

Google's New "Weppy" Image Standard

Link building is a whole other world. You can spend hours and hours building links every day for years, and there will still be opportunities to build. The internet is such a vast breeding ground for brands, that every blog, every blog network, every business listing, and every article directory in the World Wide Web, has probably been scoped out for a business opportunity at some point. This is why it is so important, especially with Google’s eyes on you, to focus on how VALUABLE a link will be to YOUR business.

THE GOOD.

You want link juice. You want to show up on those Search Engine Results Pages as the number one for your carefully chosen keywords. Several forums and blogs in SEO will preach that DoFollow links are the only worthwhile kind of link for your website. They believe that if a link doesn’t help you climb the Google ladder, it isn’t worth your time.

We can’t deny that these types of links are the best. Especially if you can get a DoFollow link on a website with great page rank, great domain authority, and a reasonably low amount of other outbound links (wish we came by those every day).  Also, Google rewards the amount of relevance the page or blog linking to you has with your site, which makes DoFollow links on NICHE sites so very valuable. While we do agree that these links are the best for search results, we can’t say that NoFollow links don’t hold their own value.

THE NOT SO BAD.

I think it is about time we address this little thing called Traffic. Some people seem to think that the ONLY valuable links are the ones with link juice, and that’s because they are the ones that can climb your company up on Google. Today's Valuable Lesson: Search Engines are NOT the only channels for Traffic.

How many times have you clicked on a link from a website you were on. Did you go to Google first to examine what that link would maybe lead you to before clicking on it? How many times have you read news from your favorite news site or a new story from your favorite blogger and clicked on a link they suggested? It's because you trust their expert opinion! It happens! People don’t always find what they need through search engines! The more opportunities you have out there to increase TRAFFIC to your website, the more TRAFFIC you will GET to your website. That’s why I have to defend the poor, shunned NoFollow links. They do their job. They just do it differently.

THE UGLY.

Link farms. This is why you really want to trust the company who is doing your SEO. Someone can promise you links, physically show you the links exist, and never tell you that they are actually hurting your website. This can be anything from an article directory that accepts all content without reviewing it, to a website that allows you to submit whatever links you want in as many different forms so that you can for purposes of getting higher on the search engines. That’s not natural, and Google isn’t dumb. They have the USER of the search engines in mind. They want their searchers to find the most valuable information they need when they search for a specific keyword. That’s why Google respects ORGANIC and NATURAL links. They want the people who link to you, to really be endorsing your company or brand.

Besides, if you get to a domain page, and it has NO page rank, and no authority domains linking to it, what SEO value are you going to get from that? The theory is that Google divides the total link juice of the domain website by how many outbound links it refers, and then passes that fraction of link juice onto them equally. If there is not juice to start with, how can you pour the rest a glass? An even BIGGER mistake is if you put a link to one of those Link Farms on your website. Google will punish you for that. Don’t be a partner in crime.

The good news is, at Digital Street Inc., you can trust we only practice White Hat SEO. We will make your links matter. They will be valuable, they will be respected by Google, and they will bring you the right kind of traffic. We know you have a great product/service, it is all a matter of making it available to the right people, in the right place- right where they would be searching for it. An optimized website and strategic links will open the doors.

“I predict big things happening today at Google.  We’re already fast… fast is about to get faster.”

Now that tweet and all the fun logo changes are coming together!  Google has just release real-time live results that change as the user types their query!  It’s called Google Instant.  Just what is Google Instant?

Videos are always more fun than reading, right?  Check out the video from Google

Google Instant is rolling out over several days to users signed in to a Google Account.  We have been testing it out and have been amazed!  Here is a quick shot of the screen:

This is a major change.  It should help users find what they want faster—heck, you don’t even need to click the “search” button anymore if you don’t want too.  And like Schmidt’s Tweet from this morning suggests… it’s all about the speed with Google Instant (and I can’t stress enough how remarkably fast it is).  Remember, Google only broke through in the search industry and rose to prominence because their results were so much faster (and more accurate) than the competition—speed has always been important to Google. It seems they’re bound and determined to do whatever they can to ensure that they’re results are quicker and more accurate, so that we have less reason to look elsewhere.

(hat tip ReelSEO)