I’m a big fan of finding people. It comes from my rather transient, military childhood. I lived all over Canada, in Europe for four years, and then in Asia for a year. The Asian stay was of my own making, but the rest was part of my childhood. It gave me a global view, before “going global” was the catchphrase of the day. And it means that I like to make friends and meet new people. Essentially, tools like message boards, Facebook, and Twitter are a boon for people like me.

The downside to meeting new people and seeing new places all the time is that inevitably you lose some of them along the way. So I have been thinking about how I can now find people easily online (gone are the days of calling 411 and hoping you have the right city to get a phone number), access pictures and mapping of things I have seen and done, and search for businesses. You can bet that although I love to support a local business, I won’t decide to forgo the pleasure of purchasing the latest gadget if I can get it online or contact the business that carries it through online methods. Sometimes I will find a store online from sheer nostalgia of times gone by.

Lately, I have been investigating Twitter and Twitter related applications. The one to catch my eye is Twellow. Twellow is essentially the yellow pages of Twitter. As they put it:

Twellow is a directory of public Twitter accounts, with hundreds of categories and search features to help you find people who matter to you….[we] allow you to update your Twellow profile and categories, add links to your other social media profiles, create an extended bio with whatever information and links you would like to add, and easily follow other Twitter users right from Twellow!

Twellow is available in the USA, Canada, and Australia. I was poking around online this morning and discovered that Twellow has been released to the UK now too, which follows their trend of increased availability. As Chris Crum said in his article “Twitterers in the UK Can Now Easily Find Locals”: TwellowHood is an incredibly useful tool for Twitter users, because it brings Twitter closer to home. It makes it easier to find people you know or local businesses/organizations you wish to follow.

I’ve talked about mapping and having your business show up on local search factors for Google. The fact that Google and a Twitter offshoot are both promoting this aspect of online marketing is no coincidence, because sometimes location matters. No matter how you look at it, increasing the ways in which your customers can find you – be that by location, keyword, or business type – can only be good for business.

Just like updating your haircut and wardrobe, your website is another good place to do some regular updates. We all know of businesses that never do any updates, some that rarely do them, and then the small percentage who update on a regular basis. Since your website is essentially the first impression many people will have of your business, do you want them to arrive and think that it is still 2001 on your site? Or worse, find broken links and incomplete work? It’s not a great impression, and even worse, it could drive traffic away from your site.

Erica Charney was talking about just this issue in her article “5 Website Tips To Keep Your Brand Image Fresh”. Her main five tips boil down to the following:

1. Fix broken links.
2. Do regular traffic analysis.
3. Do your own site crawl.
4. Keep your keyword list up to date.
5. Continually freshen your web copy.
Some of these tips seem fairly obvious to me, like making sure to fix links, but I know that I find broken links on my own daily run through the internet, so it is not obvious enough to everyone. But a frustrated customer is not a returning customer, so it bears repeating.

Doing regular traffic analysis is another tip that seems obvious to me, but some businesses may need the reminder. The more you know about where your traffic is coming from, the better you can understand what is and is not working in your online approach.

A site crawl can prevent issues from cropping up. Pulling old pages and getting visibility for the newer pages is important. Visibility on the internet is key, so updating your sitemap file and submitting the XML version are important too.

Keeping your keyword list current and freshening your web copy are pivotal activities in SEO. These are the haircuts and new clothes of the web world. Fresh copy gives your clients something new to look at (think about that haircut), but also a good way to get search engines to recognize your site, if done properly. While the keyword list is a bit like your clothing pile: it’s okay to keep some of your favourites, if they still work for you, but new content on your site will need new keywords. Plus, there are tools that show which keywords are being used frequently, so you can align your site’s keywords with popular thinking, allowing better access by the average person using search tools.

Really, search engine optimization boils down to maintaining your image on the internet. You wouldn’t go to an interview in ratty old jeans and a ripped t-shirt, so letting your website’s “clothing” wear out won’t help your business either.

Recently I was talking with a group of friends about hiring professionals and trusting their services. We were talking specifically about medicine. All of us have young children and medicine is high on our list of concerns when it comes to our children. Some parents choose to by-pass traditional medicine entirely, choosing instead to use alternatives like homeopathy. There are others who have researched every issue they can and then make decisions and dictate them to their health care providers. Others take care to choose a doctor who has similar views and practices and then trust them to provide quality care.

Personally, I am somewhere between researching and making my own decisions and letting my doctor decide, because it is her job to do that research. Luckily, I have a doctor who I trust and who I know does do research. Plus, she has young children too, so these issues concern her family as well.

There is nothing wrong with deciding to go with alternative medicine or to do all your own research, other than that this approach is time consuming and may not get you the same results. You may not want the same results.

I was thinking about SEO in the same way. A person or business can choose to do something else. There are other ways to build your website. Will they get you to the same place? Unlikely, but those who choose to go this route aren’t likely to be aiming for the same effect either. It’s not less valid, just a different path.

There are the do-it-yourselfers in the crowd too. This group is a vast one and they vary from people who just program simple HTML websites with little care for their rankings to those who want to save a little money to those who don’t even know that professionals exist in this field. The majority of this crowd does care though, and there are now a pile of books devoted to SEO strategies. Chris Sherman has a great overview of the most recent releases in his article “A Roundup of 2009’s Best SEO Books”. Chris lists 5 books on the subject, with 3 others as his old standby group, but undoubtedly if you browse Amazon or go to a large bookstore there will be several dozen to choose from. With time and effort, you can get to the point where you can implement an effective SEO strategy for your own website.

I am not one to back away from education in any form, but I still ask myself one question when I think about doing this: why? Why invest this time and effort into doing all of this yourself? SEO experts spend their days and weeks keeping up with the trends and educating themselves in everything from social media to SEO to new internet developments that may or may not change the landscape of rankings. If you hire a professional to get the job done, you will get a professional job.

A lot of people and businesses assume that the internet is a place where youth and business professionals work, promote themselves, and play. I have a hard time myself envisioning my 86 year old grandmother exploring the vast expanses of the internet, so if your business hasn’t taken seniors into account, then know you are not alone.

Interesting studies and conversations are cropping up all the time proving that seniors are not only using computers, but are a significant portion of the online presence. Mike Sachoff discusses the presence of seniors online and breaks down where they are going online and what they are doing. In his article, he presents a detailed table breaking down the activities of seniors online:

Even better, he has a list of the top websites they use:

Two of the biggest contributors to SEO and social media rank in the top 3 of this list: Facebook and Google. Ah…now there’s the connection we were looking for in the SEO field! Since seniors have increased their web presence to 17.5 million people over the last five years, according to Nielson, and are now spending 58 hours a month online in 2009 (increased from 52 hours a month in 2004), then they are indeed a demographic to be reckoned with when mapping out your online marketing strategies.

More importantly, it seems that seniors are doing the same things online as other demographics: getting information, visiting blogs, planning travel, and socializing. Only they have more free time available to them than those of us who are in the middle of our careers and raising kids. What will make you think even more are statistics that indicate 8.2% of all social networking and blog visitors fall into the seniors category, which is only 0.1 percent lower than the number of teenagers visiting the same kinds of sites. We know that marketing is aimed heavily at teenagers, so considering that seniors make up almost the same numbers for social networking sites, perhaps our businesses need to consider them too.

Although seniors will likely find most businesses through their general SEO strategies, it is worth noting that a different age group may search under different key words and key word phrases than their younger counterparts, so planning your SEO key words and phrases to reflect a wider audience is important. After all, while my 86 year old grandmother may have more time to spend online, I’d bet that if she doesn’t find your company at the top of her Google search, then she is unlikely to dig any further and your business may lose out to others who have tailored their SEO strategy to include this demographic.

Have you ever had those days where everything lines up just right? Or you get the same message over and over again through different channels? I love those days! They fascinate me. Not long ago I had one about running. All of my old running friends seemed to be coming out of the woodwork, there was talk of lots of different races, the newest clinic was starting, and it all built up to a level of excitement that just made me think long and hard about my own running.

Sadly, I’d been off my own training for a couple of months (sometimes life gets in the way of running), but instead of taking this influx of running information and hanging my head because I wasn’t running, it catapulted me into thinking about what I needed to do to get out there again. And trust me, starting training up at the beginning of December, right before the crunch of the holiday season, is not the easiest plan to implement. Did I get back into running? Yes, but not just running: I am running, spinning and doing a core class. I do better with extremes, as it turns out, than with gently easing myself into my exercise regime. It makes for a rough and tired couple of weeks, but I know the results will be fantastic and my motivation will continue to expand from approaching it this way.

Turns out that Google and I have a lot in common: they like to take on big projects and through all they have at it too!

Have you done a Google search over the last few days? I did on this morning. Actually, I searched for this website, so I could see what we’d blogged about lately (no need to repeat myself), in order to get a bit of inspiration. And this is what I found:

Turns out that as soon as I did a bit of poking about online (I love that part of my job!) it became apparent that Google has finally launched their Real Time search. What’s interesting about Real Time search is that it gives you results for your search that are new or current. As Google themselves put it, they wanted a “dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web”. It’s really a result of the influence of tools like Twitter and Facebook, where we’ve become used to getting real-time content.

A little more searching uncovered that Google is working on a few projects for their mobility users too. They’ve added more languages to their voice search, with concrete plans to add even more languages in the future. What’s Nearby is being introduced to Google, a feature that allows mobile devices to “launch a the menu whereby users can find businesses and attractions immediately around them” based on a single mapping point. And Googles, a visual search tool that “uses the camera to search on objects/image…take a picture and get information back”, is also on the table.

All of these new Google products are expansions to the success of the original search tool, but Google is taking into account the development of tools, needs, and desires of its users. Google doesn’t work in a vacuum, and their business is smart enough to look at other developments, like Twitter’s real-time content or the need for search features via voice or picture, and apply them to grow their business. It’s smart development work and it keeps internet marketing companies on their toes.

Plus, like my running, they seem to have the resources to tackle many large projects at once and still look like they are having a good time. It’s a model to live up to.

When was the last time you used your phone book, either white or yellow pages™, to find information? What about Google or another search engine? If we are living parallel lives, you may have used the yellow or white pages™ of your phone book once or twice in the last year, but you use online search features either several times a week or as much as several times a day.

Lately, I have been searching for certain local businesses and activities related to my family. I’ve never looked in the phonebook for them, but my online searches don’t always yield what I thought I would find either. It’s frustrating to know or suspect that a service is out there, but be unable to find it online.

Local search factors and what Chris Crum calls competing for visibility in his article on local search factors should drive a portion of your SEO strategy. While we know that the marketplace is now global and we all want our businesses to apply to that global marketplace, keep in mind that you want local business to be able to find your business too. After all, if they can’t find you, then your potential clients are more likely to go with a competitor or give up the idea of using your business entirely rather than go digging around online for hours.

Here are a few of Crum’s suggestions for your local search marketing:

- Ensure that Google knows that your business is listed at your correct address.
- Confirm that Google knows what your business does.
- Consider the mapping variables used, such as the size of the map and the definition of the region’s center, and combine them with trust, a citation, and other factors when planning out your marketing strategy.

When developing SEO tactics for your local search, remember that there is more than one way to develop a strong local presence on the internet.

- Have your address listed with major data providers.
- Claim your listing at the local business center.
- Reviews on Google or in other locations are helpful.
- Be sure that your business is listed in the proper categories once it has been claim.
- Get local people and businesses to link to your website and content.
- Develop localized content.

When developing your SEO marketing plan, be sure that your SEO professionals consider your local search as an important factor in your marketing agenda. Effective SEO includes plans for anyone who wants to find your business, near and far, so be sure that the statistically applicable keywords, links to social networking, and relevancy of your online presence all work in your favor for SEO purposes.

The truth of the matter for businesses is that the only thing worse than not being accessible online is being there and no one finding you anyway

What did you think you would be when you grew up? I don’t know about you, but my dream job wasn’t centered around a pizza place when I was growing up. Then again, I never imagined a pizza job would involve spending your day on Twitter either.

Pizza Hut surprised a few people out there when they announced that they wanted to try a “Twintern” over last summer, but the company has been so impressed with the contribution this job has made to their business, that they’ve now hired Alexa Robinson in a full-time position as their “Tweetologist”. It’s probably not the job her mother thought she would have either, but I bet that Alexa is having fun at work.

The whole concept of using Twitter as a full-time job had me curious, so I went and took a look at the Pizza Hut presence on Twitter. There are the random comments about weather and basic social commentary in these Tweets, as you would expect, but there are also promotion of new products, promotions of other pizza hut online locations, and even vast amounts of customer service being done.

Before I looked it up, I predicted the promotions, both of products and services, but apparently I overlooked the ability to use this tool as a customer service engine. And I felt a little silly for doing so. It just goes to prove that we already have notions on how these social networking tools can work, just a few years into having them.

So, if we ditch the conventional ideas, where can we go with social networking and with SEO practices? Sometimes it takes special people to think outside the box, but I tend to believe that we can all tap into that ability now and again. Someone at Pizza Hut sure did it.

There are other times where the idea you have for increasing traffic to your business may seem mundane. Amazon announced a textbook trade in program, which seems like a no-brainer for me. Then again, I come from a world where learning and trading books seems like an everyday occurrence. Who knew that Amazon didn’t do this before? But it is brilliant, because this will drive more traffic to their site and their business overall. Twitter decided to improve their mobile site. Again, this isn’t a something that makes us stop and wonder about it, it seems like an obvious choice for Twitter, but the better their mobile site is, the more they drive traffic away from third party sites.

Effective SEO and social media marketing doesn’t have to be ideas that seem like they are in left field to be effective, but sometimes in business we forget to follow the dots.

The importance of  social networking just exploded overnight with Google’s announcement that they are extending Personalized Search to signed-out users worldwide. In the past, you had to be logged in to Google before they would give you search results tailored to your search history and personal preferences.

Using the -,+ and x icons, you could move a listing higher in your personalized results and even delete the result completely.

As of today, you no longer have to be signed in to Google to get personalized search results. Your results will be rendered based on your search history and clicks over up to 180 days of passed search information. If you don’t want personalized search results, you can disable customization by clicking on web history and then disable customizations based on search query.

So What Does This Have to Do with Social Media Marketing?

Think about it for a second. The average user is not going to read Google’s latest news on the personalization of search. They will continue to go about their daily business unaware of the changes.
If they are aware, many will consider the new policy as another step in Google’s quest to refine relevant results to the end user. Why should they do anything? Let’s put aside privacy issues for the moment while we consider the effect this will have on the keyword phrases your company is optimizing for.

Personalized search results will dilute your search engine optimization efforts

How Can You Optimize for Personal Search?

The effectiveness of using Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is a strategy that has been debated for years. According to Aaron Wall, “Latent semantic indexing allows a search engine to determine what a page is about outside of specifically matching search query text.”  Basically, you are using language in your web content to match Google’s algorithm with a given search term. Like anything else in search engine optimization,  your best course of action is to try it and see if it works for you.

Danny Sullivan’s Tips on Taking Advantage of Personalized Search

Titles & Descriptions are crucial: You need the clickthrough more than ever. Clickthroughs get your site as seen as possibly important to a particular person’s profile.

Get on the Google personalized homepages of searchers. That means offering them a feed or a gadget and encouraging take-up with an Add To Google buttons.

Put Google Bookmark buttons on your site, such as the one offered by AddThis. Getting bookmarked also helps you be seen as important.

Why is Social Media So Important?

Now, not only do you want use online and offline social networking to become an influence in your industry, you want to influence the search queries your target audience is using to find your products and brand.

Reading this post, a few of you probably noticed the Google result I posted.

Some will search Google for the complete term, Social Media Marketing Toronto Wolf21.   We just influenced your search query.  Eventually, you will search without the brand name, but we will still come on your search results page because of your search history.

Marty Weintraub’s Tips on How Can you Influence Search Queries in Your Target Market?

1. During phone calls say “search for THIS and click on It.”
2. Tell potential customers at meetings & pitches.
3. Email links to unpersonalized SERPs with instructions to click on the results.
4. Put SERPs link in blog Posts.
5. Never miss a chance to direct folks to content by way of  SERPs/click.
6. Making up words usually works, I.E. tell people “Go to Google and search for something like,  “The Mighty Rankinstanker.”  Say, “Click on the first result.” In this case the user has demonstrated to the engine he/she ‘likes” SearchEngineLand.
7. Go mass market. Make the call to action. Advertise:  Put “Go to Google.com, keyword ________ in your radio ad.

Some great ideas on influencing search queries associated with your business in 20110.

Link building is an important part of your SEO strategy if you want your website to rank in the search engine results for one or one thousand keyword terms. Since Google holds 80% (yes, you read that right) of the search market in Canada we tend to focus our link building efforts on quality inbound links from authoritative web sites.  Basically, we are doing what Google tells webmasters to do.

In the past, MSN was all about volume of links and they were never able to put a consistent strategy together in order to serve search engine results that could compete with Google. The results were simply spammy and inadequate.

With the launch of Bing, however, things have changed. The new search engine is very similar to Google and Microsoft is even communicating with webmasters more effectively in an effort weed out as much spam as they can.

Here are a few of link building tactics Bing suggests webmasters should avoid:

• The number of inbound links suddenly increases by orders of magnitude in a short period of time
• Many inbound links coming from irrelevant blog comments and/or from unrelated sites
• Using hidden links in your pages
• Receiving inbound links from paid link farms, link exchanges, or known “bad neighborhoods” on the Web
• Linking out to known web spam sites

Here are a few strategies that should be part of your link building campaign courtesy of Bing.

• Write and publish concise, informative press releases online as developments warrant
• Publish expert articles to online article directories
• Use social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to connect to industry influencers to establish contacts, some of whom may connect back to you (be sure you have your profiles set up with links back to your website first)
• Launch a blog or interactive user forum on your site*

Head on over to the Bing community blog for more tips on link building if you want to rank well on Bing.

Yesterday, paidContent.org discussed how government intervention may be part of the strategy to save news reporting. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) takes on that question today in their workshop From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age? . You can follow the workshop on Twitter (#ftcnews).

While journalism may or may not survive the next 5 years, journalists will flourish. For years now Google has been telling us that when it comes to internet marketing, content is king. Of course, as an SEO company, we have always known that unique, newsworthy content will drive traffic and links. So we work with clients to produce a consistent content strategy in order to produce larger websites based on our keyword research and content written by an army of North American writers.

But a shift is developing that will change the shape of the content industry and increase the value of  talented journalists. Large companies are hiring journalists by the thousands in order to produce content sites that will dwarf the little guys and provide themselves with massive platforms to sell their display ads. In an interview with John Battelle at the Web 2.0 Summit 2009, Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL discusses how he recently hired up to 3,000 journalists and expects that number to grow rapidly as they scale up a content based platform.

2010 will be a year of massive change at maximum velocity.