• Making your site “search engine friendly”
• “Pay-per-click” search advertising
• Benchmarking, competitive intelligence and ROI analysis
• Trends in contextual, behavioral and local advertising

Creating a buzz — viral marketing

• Blogs, RSS feeds, forums, wikis and more
• Harness “word of mouse” to enhance your brand
• Identifying the “sneezers” who will spread your viral message

Web analytics

Speakers:
Jeff Muendel, Online Marketing Analyst, Netconcepts

• Making your site “search engine friendly”
• “Pay-per-click” search advertising
• Benchmarking, competitive intelligence and ROI analysis
• Trends in contextual, behavioral and local advertising

Creating a buzz — viral marketing

• Blogs, RSS feeds, forums, wikis and more
• Harness “word of mouse” to enhance your brand
• Identifying the “sneezers” who will spread your viral message

Web analytics

Speakers:
Jeff Muendel, Online Marketing Analyst, Netconcepts

• Making your site “search engine friendly”
• “Pay-per-click” search advertising
• Benchmarking, competitive intelligence and ROI analysis
• Trends in contextual, behavioral and local advertising

Creating a buzz — viral marketing

• Blogs, RSS feeds, forums, wikis and more
• Harness “word of mouse” to enhance your brand
• Identifying the “sneezers” who will spread your viral message

Web analytics

Speakers:
Stephan Spencer, Founder and President, Netconcepts

Keyword suggestion tools help you understand what words are used in search queries and what phrases are associated with those words. Keyword analytical tools provide some measure of keyword suggestion functionality, as well as the ability to understand the competition levels for specific search terms. More importantly, keyword analytics tools help you determine the relative size of the search referral market associated with specific keywords and phrases.

Read more about keyword analytics tools and how effective they might be for your site in this article at ClickZ here.

From Google Trends to Quintura, get an inside look at these free keyword suggestion tools that can help you with content optimization for your site. Read the full review of these tools at ClickZ here.

A focused, well-written blog can get readers hooked on the blog and promote repeat visits to the website or garner subscriptions via RSS feeds and email newsletters. These recurring communications will help to tie potential customers to your site, encourage natural link building and increase repeat visits. Journalists are also more likely to follow a blog or subscribe via RSS than to visit the corporate site repeatedly. So, several avenues of search optimization and online marketing can be addressed with a single blog entity.

From the SEO benefits of business blogging to how it can help your customers, Jeff covers the basics of “who, what and when” of blogging. Read the full article at Practical eCommerce here.

A tag, according to Wikipedia, is “a (relevant) keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (e.g. a picture, article, or video clip), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification of information.” More simply put (with due credit to Flickr.com): tags are like keyword or category labels, and they can help visitors find items which have something in common.

With tagging, items are cataloged and organized by keyword. Those keywords can then be displayed as navigation using what’s called a “tag cloud.” In a tag cloud, the font size of each keyword is proportionate to the number of times that keyword has been used as a tag. In other words, the more items a tag has been associated with, the larger the font size. Tag clouds were first popularized on Flickr, the photo sharing website. The social bookmarking site del.icio.us further popularized tag clouds (see example below). A tag cloud provides web visitors with a quick visual indication of what tags are most popular on a site. It’s a new, more intuitive way to navigate an extensive collection of content and find information. A tag cloud makes your website look very Web 2.0ish (if that’s a word?).

Clicking on a tag in a tag cloud leads the visitor to a “tag page.” A tag page contains a collection of the most recent items that have been tagged with the particular keyword (see example below). Tag clouds aren’t the only way to navigate to a tag page. Typically, an item’s tags will be displayed adjacent to the item, with each tag linking to its tag page. Also, once on a tag page, you can often find links to other tag pages through a list of “Related tags.” A tag is related to another tag if there are items that that have the tag in common.

Tagging isn’t just a tool for usability (even though it’s typically mostly thought of in those terms), it’s also a powerful weapon for search engine optimization. That’s because tagging allows you to rejig your internal hierarchical linking structure, flowing the link juice more strategically throughout your site. And because those links are textual and keyword-rich, a tag cloud is far superior in terms of SEO to the traditional graphical navigation bar.

When tagging is applied to a website, such as a blog, it can significantly increase the site’s traffic by achieving visibility for a much larger array of search terms. Consider, for example, the case of my own personal blog, StephanSpencer.com: simply by tagging one of my posts with the keyword “blog optimization,” I received a top 10 ranking in Google for the query “blog optimization” — within only a few weeks and without any additional effort. It was a tag page that achieved the high ranking for me, and it was created automatically the first time I used the tag. (Note: I use WordPress, which now, as of version 2.3, has tagging built in.) A tag page, by its very nature, is designed to have its tag as its keyword focus. So, simply select a relevant keyword to rank for when coming up with tags for your content, and presto! — instant rankings.

Tagging is particularly effective at delivering Long Tail search traffic when the site offers “tag conjunction pages.” Although the various obscure Long Tail search terms may be searched on by only a few people, in aggregate, they can really add up to a sizable amount of traffic. Tag conjunction pages are created automatically by the fact that there are multiple posts with two tags in common. On my blog, the links to tag conjunction pages are displayed in the right column of my tag pages underneath the section “Related Tags” (see my “blog optimization” tag page for an example). You will see that each “Related tag” is preceded with an “AND” and an “OR” link pointing to a tag conjunction page. By displaying links not just to the related tag pages but also to conjunctions between related tags, multitudes more pages are made available to the search engine spiders.

It should be noted that tagging is applicable not just to blogs, but all types of sites — ecommerce sites, content sites, even corporate sites. Probably the most well-known ecommerce site is Amazon.com, and it supports tagging. In fact it supports consumer-generated tagging.

Some sites allow tags to be defined by the community of visitors, not just the content author. Allowing your visitors to create the taxonomy of content items on your site by tagging your content (this is known as a “folksonomy”) may or may not be a good thing. It depends on how good of a job your visitors will do and how good your quality control systems are at stamping out spam and minimizing noise. Amazon.com’s tagging system has been plagued with useless tags like “betty’s birthday,” which really only has value for the tagger and no one else. Nonetheless, tagging seems to be working for Amazon; if it wasn’t, they would cease expanding upon their tagging functionality and probably discontinue offering it altogether. Another issue with letting visitors do the tagging is lack of consistency. Sometimes visitors will misspell words, sometimes they will add hyphenation, sometimes they will use obscure synonyms. Which brings me to another point: your visitors don’t know how to (and don’t care to) conduct keyword research — identifying popularity of various keywords by search engine users. They may, for instance, tag a product with “hard disk” when “hard drive” is the much more popular keyword with searchers. But what do you expect? After all, you’re getting free labor!

One corporate site where tagging has been utilized, to great effect, is my company’s website, — Netconcepts.com. Tagging was largely responsible for a more than doubling of pageviews — within two months. First, every testimonial, every portfolio entry, every press mention, as well as each bio, article, and case study, was broken out into a separate blog post. Then, each post was tagged with appropriate keywords. For example, all the testimonials were tagged with the word “Testimonials.” So instead of having a single testimonials page as we used to, we have a testimonials tag page that spans three web pages (at 10 posts per page) and each of the 30 testimonials is a separate web page now too. In other words, we went from 1 page to 33 pages; that’s a lot more search engine fodder, all with different keyword foci!

Spiders can find and index these tag pages through the text links contained within the tag cloud on the home page, through text links underneath each post, and through links to “Related Tags” on each tag page. Remember, Related Tags are determined from posts that have the tag (from the tag page in question) in common. So, for example, because we have posts that are tagged with both “Web Marketing” and “Testimonials,” “Web Marketing” then appears as a related tag on the Testimonials tag page and “Testimonials” appears as a related tag on the Web Marketing tag page. Let’s restate that a little bit differently just to clarify… All our web marketing related items (testimonials, case studies, etc.) were tagged with “Web Marketing.” Consequently, there is a tag page that relates to “Web Marketing” and a tag page that relates to “Testimonials.” Additionally, there’s a tag page that relates to “Web marketing testimonials” — the intersection of those two tags. That makes for a plethora of tag pages, considering how many different permutations there are for various combinations of tags being “ANDed” or “ORed” together. The result? Thousands of tag pages and tag conjunction pages indexed by Google, many of which are bringing in traffic, albeit individually in small amounts. For example, a tag conjunction page ranks well in Google for “web marketing testimonials,” though few search for that term. In all, the traffic increase from this initiative was substantial, as illustrated in the traffic graphs in the case study at www.netconcepts.com/netconcepts-case-study/.

Over time, look for tagging to become much more widespread across the Web. Until then, tagging presents a distinct competitive advantage, both in terms of search engine visibility and user experience.

• Making your site “search engine friendly”
• “Pay-per-click” search advertising
• Benchmarking, competitive intelligence and ROI analysis
• Trends in contextual, behavioral and local advertising

Creating a buzz — viral marketing

• Blogs, RSS feeds, forums, wikis and more
• Harness “word of mouse” to enhance your brand
• Identifying the “sneezers” who will spread your viral message

Web analytics

Speakers:
Stephan Spencer, Founder and President, Netconcepts

Solution: Use buzzworthy anecdotes, video and catchy titles

Results: A 14-percent increase in blog-driven sales and spikes of 1,000 sessions per day after each post that contribute to repeat traffic

Steve Spangler, famous for creating a 30-foot geyser of Diet Coke by dropping Mentos into a soda bottle, not only has mastered the art of science, but also the art of blogging to optimize natural search results and increase Web sales. Founder and CEO of Steve Spangler Science, a multichannel firm that sells educational toys, Spangler says the overall goal of his blog is to convey information in a fun, thought-provoking way. From a simple site with science toys and experiments, Steve Spangler Science has grown exponentially by using fun stories, catchy titles and newsworthy blog topics to catch the eyes of reporters, search engines and, ultimately, parents and teachers.

When he sat down to write his first blog, Spangler didn’t think he had anything interesting enough to discuss. However, after hearing that Insta-Snow, a product his company sells, was featured as a popular “stupid product” on a “Good Morning America” review of e-tailer Stupid.com, Spangler found what looked like a promising topic. According to Stephan Spencer, president and founder of Netconcepts, the SEM firm that works with Steve Spangler Science, leveraging a hot news story is one way to help drive Web site traffic. Spangler’s Insta-Snow blog piggybacked on the interest generated by the current media coverage by describing the story of a woman who got out of a speeding ticket after using the science toy. Spangler says she told the officer she had just left a science training seminar and convinced him she could make it snow. The officer told her that if she could, he would let her go without a ticket. Spangler says, “Lo and behold, she made snow by the side of the road. Not only did the officer excuse her ticket, he [also] asked for the Web site so he could buy Insta-Snow for his kids. We knew when we heard this story, it was like gold falling into our laps.”

What was it about this story that worked for Spangler’s blog? The anecdote surprised readers while showcasing the product’s usefulness or wow factor. “Myself and my customer service team are trained to know that when we hear a great story, we could be very successful by sharing it with everyone through our blog,” he says.

Another solution for increasing Web traffic via a blog is to use catchy titles to attract the attention of news outlets for additional exposure. For example, when blogging about one of his latest group trainings in Florida, Spangler planned to title the post, “Teachers perform hands-on science experiments as inquiry-based learning progresses in Bravard County.” Spencer said that to be effective, Spangler needed to find a great picture and develop a powerful title. Together, they came up with, “Parents Beware: Teachers Gone Wild.” Spangler says, “This was great Google juice! The search engines picked up on it, and we got links back to it from all over.” The flashy titles are fed through RSS and XML feeds to drive clickthroughs, which very quickly becomes viral marketing. Spangler also participates in media activities that drive traffic to find him through search engines. For example, each week his relationship with NBC/Channel 9 in Denver provides video clips placed both on his Web site and on YouTube. According to Netconcepts, these have trememdous viral reach, as well as support both link building and search placement.

In addition to using his own blog to fuel SEO results, Spangler also leverages blog interaction to drive clicks and links via social networking. He helps teachers develop their own science blogs for interaction with students, which often leads them to link to his blog in their postings. Again, this link activity and the blog visits that are a natural part of the blog development process for teachers and students all lead to better SEO results for Spangler’s site.

For small-business owners trying to increase Web traffic and generate more sales, Spangler says, “Two things are of utmost importance: 1.) Make sure you have something to say and [that] someone wants to hear it. Find some niche area on the Web where people are talking about what you are merchandising, or thinking about merchandising, and talk to them directly; 2.) Always ensure your blog features your own distinct voice. When starting a blog, a lot of business owners will see it as almost a diet pill. To stay with the same metaphor, a diet requires exercise, eating right and hard work—not simply a pill.”

Adding a blog isn’t a quick fix if there are holes in your business or marketing strategy, he points out, “but if hard work is put into it, and it is given a chance to develop and find its place in the online community, the results can be breathtaking.”

—Kate DeBevois