SES Chicago 2013 Day 2 Recap

Seschicago X  Vizion Interactive Reading Time: 4 minutes

It was a great day in Chicago at Search Engine Strategies which was jam packed with insightful information. While there were sessions on Paid, Social and much more you can tell I am favoring the content marketing vertical this year. After listening to several speakers today the mutual vibe was to create great content and let it be the bridge between Search and Social.

Here we go…

Badass Blogging: Best Practices to Enhance your Customer Reach

Dan Cristo, Director of SEO Innovation, Catalyst Online

Create a routine:

Hold ideas and bullet points then plan a time to sit down and flush them out.
This builds a habit for when you write but trains your readers to know when you post.
Monetize through trust, use your content to build your brand. Build trust then people will want to buy from you.
When you want to build a relationship with someone you have to look them in the eye “digitally”. Talk directly to people.
Some of the best bloggers pay guest bloggers well to get great content. This helps build your business.
A lean approach to blogging can be done as well. Take ideas and post them socially and see what people engage with. Then
write a post on it.

Virginia Nussey, Content and Media Manager, Bruce Clay, Inc.

Create a persona when you write. use specific terms/keywords when you write under this persona.
Hummingbird algorithmic change means that we dont write for keywords we write for our users more so.
Reach out to influencers, look at Triberr for assistance here.
Make your blog a hub or editorial destination.
Create an editorial calendar.
Test topics in Social and see what interest it has.

Game, Set, ROI: Developing a Successful Digital Marketing Strategy in a Search and Social World

Matt Davidson, Director of Marketing, Sovo Media

An idea that is good can be contagious. If you write with an intent you will be surprised how quickly it can get passed
around.
The evolution of Search
Search 1.0 On-page (on-page SEO)
Search 2.0 Off-page (links, clicks, votes)
Search 3.0 Vertical (Local, categorical)
Search 4.0 Personal (Social, Human)
We have went from stopping for directions to searching on Google Maps to now finding locations based on their social
signals.
Search and Social go together like PB&J. Search and Social are the bread and content is what is between them. You have to
combine search and Social so they can play off of one another, ex. creating content and then promoting it.
Social is a great place to research your audience. What are they looking for?
Is your content getting exposure to new visitors? Are they coming back? Is it resonating with people?
Are you seeing pages per visit increasing, bounce rate decreasing? Most importantly, are conversions increasing?
In 2010, 7% of Google’s algorithm pertained to social signals. Now 7 out of 10 main ranking factors are related to Social.
Prepare Yourself:
Produce original content
Have social share buttons
Do Search and Social Keyword Research
Link optimized social profiles
Build social following and increase reach
Good Social Integration tools
Hootsuite
TweetDeck
Yoomo
SproutSocial
Net Vibes
Moz

Jason Yormark, Owner Studio 9

Blogging is huge: 31 million bloggers in US
25 billion pages viewed a month with 500k posts and 400k comments.
Ask yourself:
What are our organization’s goals?
Who are we trying to reach?
What message do you want to send?
Making a Search friendly post:
The title (make it enticing… 9 Steps to getting a Passport in One Day)
The first paragraph (reinforce the keyword theme)
The format (instead of narrative, chunk content into lists, etc.)
The image
Timeliness
Evergreen content will reward you for a very long time.
Influencer Identification:
Klout.com
Twellow.com
Twtrland.com
Followerwonk.com
Social and Content Tools
Scripted
Sprout Social
Wordpress Editorial Calendar Plugin

Getting the Link Love: Link Building that Drives relevant site traffic

Chuck Price, President & CEO, Measurable SEO

“Things not String” Google is putting better context to searches. This started with Knowledge Graph and now Hummingbird.
Penguin Proof Strategies
The linking website has to be of quality and relevant.
Take advantage of what you have control over.
Do competitive link analysis vs. companies owned by Google Ventures.
Noted example of Google owned site:
Flat architecture
boston.com is another example.
Use OSE to understand your strongest links and then mind these when you are internally linking.
Work on relevant editorial links. Editorial links mean that a human has to be involved for you to get the link.
Good link? Would you want that link even if it had no value? That is the sign of a good link.
Mine competitor backlinks.
301 good 404 pages from Google Webmaster Tools
PR link strategies are not dead. You have to think differently though. Don’t think about exact match terms, think about the
original intention of PR, to get the word out to the masses.
Submit to high quality niche directories.
Use your competitor’s heavy linked to pages to understand what content you should be creating too.
Turn brand citations into links on other sites.
Use co-citations in linking. The link juice flows both ways.
Find outdated content and update it to get links.

Nate Dame, CEO, SEOperks

Integrate linkbuilding into what we do. It is not a seperate silo.
Add value throughout the process of link outreach. Give them a reason/value to link to you. This will give you a much
higher success rate.
Community-based linkbuilding
If they talk about a keyword it is a link opportunity.
understand your company needs, competitors, etc. this will help you understand your “community”.
Think of linkbuilding tactics as a toolbox you use and that you shouldn’t get stuck using one tool.

How to Create Content People will “Like” and Search Engines will Love

Corey Post, Founder, Content and Contests

UGC comes in many forms, text, images, video. However the more you ask of users the less likely they will provide it. Video
was this way but short videos are providing more acceptance here.
Go to Quora Google Trends and see what content is popular that you can write about.
Look in analytics at what content has a great bounce rate because you can write similar content.
Get people to contribute. Ask questions, “what do you think?” to generate commenting in social.
Use popups tastefully to get people to provide reviews on products, etc.
Use low hanging fruit like including social sharing icons. This is often overlooked.
Use Twitter Ads to promote content.

Nathan Safran, Director of Research, Conductor, Inc.

What drove the paradigm shift towards creating quality content?
Matt Cutts said we needed it. 🙂
search engine algorithm updates
People demand it
Use mentions of your brand around pieces of content.
How are we adding general value to our readers?
Educate and inform
Be a problem solver

Tune in tomorrow for more coverage of SES Chicago 2013!