Web Strategy

ORM is the process of following online references to a brand, company, person or service while having a plan in place to deal with any negative feedback. You can think of it as a three-step process, although they may not always occur in this order:

Start with goals for well defined outcomes

Measuring the effect of SEO for Public Relations benefits should start with well defined outcomes. To get a good handle on SEO effectiveness, it's important to match the purpose for the effort with specific metrics. For example, if improving brand visibility is a goal, then documenting brand mentions in connection with news & PR content at regular intervals can demonstrate the effect of content promotion and link building.

Great list of items you need to address when deciding on processes to manage web analytics in your company. My best advice is to find someone to dedicate an hour a day to your web analytics.

It's not that bad, I swear! 27 easy little steps that will take you from the day the boss pokes her head into your office and says "Hey, I think we need analytics" to the night you get Employee of the Year for leading a company-wide turnaround.

Search engine optimization has changed dramatically over the past few years. The shift is from one of web page optimization and link hounding to content and engagement optimization. In short, search engine optimization and social media are now undeniably intertwined. It has become extremely difficult to achieve any measure of success for important keyword phrases without the use of social media.

The first thing clients say to me when requesting SEO is invariably centered around rankings. "I want to be position so and so, for such and such a keyword." And I am certain that this is a situation familiar to many of you providing SEO services. However, search isn't always about ranking. And rankings aren't an overnight success story - they take time to achieve. In the meantime there need to be other indicators of success. There are a range of metrics possible to use to act as such indicators, many of which are key to gauging small business SEM success. Ranking high for "xyz" may deliver huge volume of visitors, but not sales. On the other hand, capturing niche rankings for "uvwxyz" and "abcdefg" may deliver less traffic, but actually better sales, not to mention may be easier to achieve in a shorter lead time.

Companies invest thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of dollars per month into improving their natural search engine visibility. At times, certain influences or perspectives occasionally evolve to work directly against the efforts of the professional SEO consultant. Here I'll describe three scenarios and hopefully help companies avoid the unfortunate expense of sabotaging their own SEO investment.

Can businesses today really create sustainable revenue and long-term profit around regularly publishing professional-quality online video, and keep their production costs well below the standards of broadcast-quality? Yes, if they're willing to be what I call "videoratis" - a video professional and publicist skilled at more than one job that relates to their business and their online community.

SEO success - traditionally measured by target keyword rankings and traffic - should be measured by ROI instead

Nitin Mangtani, Lead Product Manager at Google presented a sponsored session on converting your visitors to customers, specifically through the use of internal site searches.