The first Boston SEO Meetup of 2012 was held January 30th. The event featured a case study about how to attract attention to your brand and build awareness and links. It also featured guest speaker Vitaly Bulgakov, senior software engineer, Ph.D. Bulgakov has created a keyword recommendation tool.

Assistant organizer Brian Hawkins began the evening by briefly sharing his case study on breaking a world record for the longest phone call. Brian explained that an innovative way to get legitimate inbound links to your website is to be fun and do something to make your brand stick out and get noticed. Featuring Harvard students, the event successfully broke the record for the longest phone call. This resulted in hundreds of links and getting featured on the HubSpot podcast. Thinking of something creative to do with your brand and leveraging relationships can open the door to new opportunities and build a link portfolio.

Next, Vitaly Bulgakov demonstrated his keyword recommendation tool, http://KeywordsRetrieval.com. This tool can generate keywords semantically related to a topic of interest for any kind of business. It is based on the algorithms created as part of “Semantic Technologies for Web Solutions” research initiative. It’s a way to find new keywords based on the keywords being used by the competition.

The night ended with challenge questions. One person asked if it was a good strategy to include an anchor text link on a page that linked to the same page. The general consensus was that it may have worked in the past for internal linking purposes but that it wasn’t a good strategy to use now. Another person asked what the best recommendations were for recovering from the Google Panda update. Suggestions included cleaning up your content, adding better content, changing titles, increasing backlinks, and cleaning up the anchor text.

Brick Marketing was the food sponsor for the evening.

January Boston SEO Meetup Event Recap is a post from: Boston SEO

As a Boston SEO consultant, I talk to a lot of clients about how important search engine trust is. The older and more established your website is (along with a variety of other factors), the more likely your site is to rank well in the SERP. In my opinion, the search engines want B2B website owners to succeed with their SEO because it cleans up the search results for them. Think about it—the better written and optimized your site, the more likely it is to have relevant information for a searcher. Your white hat B2B SEO campaign gives Google and Bing a better final product!

However, search engine trust is not the only thing that B2B website owners need to be worrying about. You also have to work to gain consumer trust. Searchers are smart; they know that just because a website is ranked first that doesn’t automatically mean it’s the best website for them. In fact, recent studies have shown a decreasing click-through-rate for the top positioned websites. Searchers are willing to dig deeper and deeper into the search results to find exactly what they are looking for. Ranking well is no longer enough to win the SEO race!

Also, it’s rather unlikely that a B2B decision maker will instantly convert once they arrive on your website. Most B2B sales cycles are incredibly long (and deal with much more complicated and expensive purchases) so decision makers are going to take their time choosing the right vendor. You need to convince them that your company is the one they should do business with!

How do you build B2B consumer trust?

First and foremost, you need to get your website in order. Is it easy to navigate? Can visitors find the information they are looking for quickly? Does the content explain not only what services/products your company offers but how those services/products make a difference to your clients? Do you have call-to-actions and lead forms prompting visitors to take the next step in the buying cycle? All of these factors and more can make or break your website in the eyes of a potential customer. Remember, no matter what kind of off-site link building your company does, it’s your website that is ultimately going to convince a visitors to convert.

Secondly, you need to build up your overall online presence. The more touch points you can create with your audience the more times you can interact with and engage them, creating more opportunities to build trust. B2B marketers shouldn’t be afraid to engage in social media and content marketing, as these are both great ways to create more and more touch points. Every social profile is one more place to engage in a dialogue with your customers and every blog post, article and whitepaper is one more resource for your audience to keep on hand. Also remember that content marketing goes a long way in building your industry authority and establishing credibility with your target market.

B2B websites should strive to be as transparent as possible when it comes to their SEO. People want to do business with other people, not faceless corporations. If your customers feel like they are dealing with an actual person that truly wants to help them, not just sell them, that will go a long way in building consumer trust.

About the Author

Nick Stamoulis is the President and Founder of Brick Marketing (http://www.brickmarketing.com), a full-service SEO and social SEO solutions firm in Boston, MA. With nearly 13 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his B2B SEO knowledge by contributing regularly to the Brick Marketing Blog and by publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, read by over 150,000 opt-in subscribers.

Contact Nick Stamoulis at 781-999-1222 or nick@brickmarketing.com

Search Engine Trust Isn’t Enough for B2B Websites is a post from: Boston SEO

Blogging is arguably the great equalizer of the Internet. Anyone with a keyboard and Internet connection can sign up for a free blog and become a publisher—something that used to be a “members only” community. There are some really great things about anyone and everyone being able to start a blog, and there are some really bad things about giving everyone the chance to publish their opinions/ideas and call them facts. In my opinion, I have never come across a business in any industry that couldn’t benefit in some way from launching and writing a business blog.

However, when you are managing a business blog, as opposed to a personal blog, there are some very important things you need to keep in mind.

1. If you can’t afford to own your blog, don’t even bother.

Personally, I think maintaining a business blog on a free domain is only going to hurt your business and brand in the long run. For one thing, it looks bad to potential customers. If you can’t afford to host your own blog, why should they trust you with their business? Secondly, if you don’t own your blog’s domain you don’t really own your blog. Essentially, you are renting the space from the blogging platform. This means you have limited opportunities for customization and they have the ability to shut you blog down whenever they want. It puts your blog in a very vulnerable place.

2. Remember you are writing as the company.

It’s very easy to inject your own opinions and personality into a blog post. If you are writing for your own personal blog it’s essential to sound like yourself! But if you are writing on the behalf of your company or one of your Boston SEO clients, you have to write from the point of view of the brand. You have to take stands that accurately reflect the beliefs and attitudes of the company, even if they don’t align with your own.

3. Only start when you are ready to commit.

If you are just blogging on a personal blog for fun, there is no real time frame that you have to produce content within—you can just write whenever the mood strikes. But if you are blogging for your livelihood as a professional blogger or for the long term success of your company you better be prepared to strap in for the long haul. I tell my Boston SEO clients that I rather they not have a blog than launch one and leave it to collect online cobwebs. Before you launch a business/professional blog, make sure you are ready to put in the time and effort that will help is succeed.

About the Author

Nick Stamoulis is the President and Founder of Brick Marketing (http://www.brickmarketing.com) a Boston social SEO and white hat link building firm. With over 12 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his knowledge by posting daily SEO tips to his blog, the Search Engine Optimization Journal, and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, read by over 150,000 opt-in subscribers.

Contact Nick Stamoulis at 781-999-1222 or nick@brickmarketing.com

Are You Blogging for Your Livelihood? is a post from: Boston SEO

On Monday, November 14^th, the Boston SEO Meetup event was held at the Arlington Library. Due to a last minute cancellation by the evening’s scheduled speaker, the event switched into SEO roundtable mode, with SEO veterans answering the questions of several new attendees, swapping SEO success stories and discussing the state of SEO in general.

Before the roundtable discussions began, Boston SEO Meetup founder Dave Matson took a few minutes to share with the group some of the interesting things he learned at PubCon Las Vegas. A few of the key findings he shared were:

• In an effort to provide better search results for users, the search engines are now looking at sites as a whole, not just at the individual pages. Site owners should take a serious look at their site, as a few bad or spammy pages can drag the rest of your site down with them.
• Social sharing signals are massively important. Site owners should strive to create content that is shareable and encourage social connections on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ to share/post content.

Dave talked about his own attempts to make content more shareable, by capitalizing on a hot topic that could be tied back to his brand. Dave operates the site getlawyerleads.com, which focuses on generating leads for criminal defense attorneys nationwide. He freely admitted that he doesn’t work in the most “shareable” industry, but that doesn’t mean he can’t produce creative content that people will be interested in. He wrote a post about what Occupy Wall Street protestors should do if they were arrested and the post eventually found its way onto several Occupy Facebook pages and earned over 1,000 Likes in the process! As Dave said, “it’s basic information that is repackaged in the right way for the right audience. Whether you’re onboard [with the movement] or not, these people are passionate.”

The roundtable section of the evening focused on a few main topics including: geolocation, mobile SEO, QR codes and link building. Some of the main points to come out of those discussions included:

• Drill the mobile user experience down to two buttons, click-to-call or fill out a lead form. The less work a mobile user has to do to connect with your site and your brand the better.
• QR codes aren’t being as quickly adopted by US consumers as they are overseas, but there are very unique branding opportunities available for larger brands willing to pay.
• You don’t have to focus your link building on just companies within your niche. It’s worth taking one step out of the box and building a network of related links. For instance, one attendee (bostonlimos.com) got advice to build relationships with complimentary services such as hotels, salons, restaurants and so forth to expand their link building capabilities.
• It’s hard to trip the search engine “filter” when you are being legitimate with your SEO. One or two mistakes shouldn’t negatively impact your site. Just don’t make it a habit!

It was announced that there will be no Boston SEO event for December 2011.

Brick Marketing was the event’s food sponsor.

November Boston SEO Meetup Event Recap is a post from: Boston SEO

Keyword research is undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of developing a Boston SEO campaign. What keywords you select will ultimately determine what kind of searches your website will rank for and what kind of traffic will find its way to your site. Choosing the wrong keywords means your site will be lost in the depths of the SERP or will target the wrong audience. Choosing the right keywords means the right audience will find your site when they need it, increasing your chance of conversion. Here are 5 tips for discovering new, potential keywords that your SEO can benefit from.

Leverage Google’s autocomplete feature

Some Boston SEOs might think that Google’s autocomplete feature is harmful to their analytics. Potential visitors aren’t choosing what keywords they use to find your site, Google is doing to for them! But why not use that autocomplete feature to your SEO advantage?

Let’s say you’re a small business owner that runs a doggie day care and grooming facility. As a customer, when I type dog grooming into the Google search bar (without hitting enter) Google autocompletes my search with “dog grooming schools in ma,” “dog grooming Boston,” and “dog grooming supplies.” I don’t want to do the grooming myself, so “dog grooming” supplies isn’t relevant to my search, neither is “dog grooming schools in ma.” However, “dog grooming Boston” is exactly what I’m looking for. I live in the Boston area and need a local dog groomer.

As a local business, you should always focus on targeting local keywords, but the Google autocomplete feature can help you find related search phrases you might also need to target.

Check your analytics

The easiest way to uncover new keywords is to look at your analytics! What keywords are visitors using to find your site that you aren’t actively targeting? Let’s go back to our doggie daycare business. You might be focusing your optimization on keywords such as “doggie daycare” and “pet daycare,” but it’s entirely possible that a good portion of your traffic is finding your site when they search for “pet hotels” in your area. If your site is seeing a good amount of traffic from a keyword you aren’t intentionally targeting, imagine the potential for your site if you actively incorporate it into your content!

Think like a thesaurus

I run an SEO company. But it could also be called an SEO firm, SEO agency, SEO business or SEO services provider. I can’t just target “SEO company” on my site because I risk alienating all the potential clients that would search for my business using various synonyms. To come up with new keywords for your SEO, start with variations of the keywords you are already targeting! User intent is such an important component of keyword research and people are going to search differently for the same thing. You want to make sure your website appeals to as many searches as possible.

Check out the competition

If you really aren’t sure what keywords you should be targeting, take a look at your competitors. Since they are targeting the same online audience as you, some of their keywords should be a good fit for your own site. What industry jargon are they incorporating into their content? What broad and niche keywords are they targeting? Keep in mind that every website is different, so you don’t want to automatically assume that their keywords will work for your website. Just use your competition as a springboard for your own keyword research.

About the Author

Nick Stamoulis is the President and Founder of Brick Marketing (http://www.brickmarketing.com/), a Boston search engine marketing firm. With over 12 years of B2B SEO experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his knowledge by posting daily SEO tips to his blog, the Search Engine Optimization Journal, and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, read by over 150,000 opt-in subscribers.

Contact Nick Stamoulis at 781-999-1222 or nick@brickmarketing.com

5 Tips for Discovering New Keywords is a post from: Boston SEO

The October Boston SEO Meetup event (held on Monday October 24, 2011) featured guest speaker Andreas Goeldi, CTO at Pixability. Andreas’ presentation, “The Art (and Science) of Video SEO”, provided attendees with key insights regarding integration of video marketing efforts and SEO efforts.

People spend approximately 16-17 hours every month watching videos online on sites like YouTube, Hulu, and others and YouTube is currently the second largest search engine. Since it’s where the people are, marketers should want to be there too. According to Pixability, video isn’t yet an overused medium for SEO, so there’s lots of opportunity and a good chance that your efforts can really make an impact.

Here are some key insights from the presentation:

• It’s hard to achieve viral video success. 2/3 of all online videos get fewer than 1,000 views. Only 1.7% get more than 100,000 views. Online marketing videos serve a broader purpose and you shouldn’t concentrate so much on the number of views.
• When it comes to video creation, “just do it”. Hollywood quality video isn’t needed. There are many free and cheap editing programs and it’s easy to get started.
• A broad range of video lengths in your video collection is best. They don’t need to always be short. Include some quick promotions along with long form educational videos.
• There are two ways to publish videos. They can either be posted (to sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, etc.) or hosted (dedicated player on your website). For SEO purposes, it’s best to incorporate both types into your strategy.
• There is no silver bullet to get YouTube views, but it pays to be involved in social media and share videos there.
• It’s important to include a crisp title, good thumbnails, and a keyword rich description tag on YouTube videos for search purposes.
• Including tags on YouTube videos improves chances of being included in the “related videos” feature.
• YouTube favors playlists in search. There is evidence that it helps to include videos created by others in your playlist.
• The best YouTube marketers are active in social media and regularly engage in the community, are generous with “liking” and “favoriting”, and subscribe to other channels.
• In order to get a hosted video to show in a Google search, include only one video per page and include a video sitemap.
• Video provides a great opportunity to go after niche keywords.

To view “The Art (and Science) of Video SEO” presentation, please visit http://www.pixability.com/seomeetup.

Brick Marketing was the food sponsor for the evening.

October Boston SEO Meetup Event Recap is a post from: Boston SEO

One of the biggest complaints I hear as a Boston SEO consultant is that my clients don’t have anything to write about for their blog or for guest articles. They think their industry is too boring (which makes me wonder why they are in that industry in the first place!) and they have nothing new to say. To those SEO clients and website owners I say, “You’re just over thinking it!” Coming up with new topics for your content marketing campaign is only as complicated as you make it out to be.

Here are 4 places to look for blog topics:

Sales and customer service departments

Who knows your target audience better than your employees on the front line? Your sales and customer service departments spend their days fielding questions from current and prospective clients. They are in the perfect position to tell you what kind of information your target market is looking for. Find out what questions they get asked a lot of write a blog post about it! The next time a customer calls with that specific question, your customer service rep can send them to that post and quickly move on to the next issue!

Competitor’s company newsletter and business blogs

Your direct competitors are targeting the same audience as you. If they’re writing about something going on in your industry and you’re not, you’re two steps behind in your content marketing. You don’t always have to be ahead of the pack but you need to be keeping pace. You shouldn’t copy successful competitor’s blog posts, but you can pull nuggets from a few posts and create new pieces of content around them.

Checking out blogs and newsletters are not only a good way to see what the competition is doing, but also what they aren’t doing! What niche has your competition left uncontested? Is there an opportunity for you to fill the content gap and become a go-to resource?

Social networking comments

Are you really listening to your social networks? They could be supplying with you topics and you might not even realize it! What kind of questions are people posting on your Facebook wall? What do they love about your products? What do they hate about your company? How has your company impacted their life?

If you are really desperate for content, why not just ask! Post an update to your Facebook wall or send a Tweet and get it directly from your target audience, “What do you want to know about X?” It’s not only a great way to come up with new content topics, but also a fun way to engage your social network and give them a reason to check back in with your brand.

Q&A sessions

Have you ever hosted a webinar (a favorite content marketing tactic of B2B companies everywhere)? The next time you do keep a notepad handy for the Q&A session. Chances are that one person isn’t the only customer out there who had that question. Each question can be answered in a blog post. You can also use those questions to update your webinar for the next session. You’ll be able to fine tune your content so you are giving participants exactly what they were looking for!

About the Author

Nick Stamoulis is the President of Boston SEO agency Brick Marketing, a Boston link building and Social SEO solutions firm. With over 12 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his knowledge by posting daily SEO tips in his blog, the Search Engine Optimization Journal (or SEO Journal) and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, ready by 150,000 subscribers.

Contact Nick Stamoulis at 781-999-1222 or nick@brickmarketing.com

Have Nothing to Write About? Yes, You Do! is a post from: Boston SEO

Any Boston SEO consultant or SEO firm could tell you that content marketing is one of the key lynchpins in your ongoing SEO campaign. SEO thrives on new, relevant and user-friendly content. “Content” can be defined as anything that is public and shareable, which includes blog posts, articles, webpage content, videos, infographics and so forth. One great way to get your content published, while simultaneously building your brand and online presence, is through guest blog posts on popular industry sites.

However, I would argue that it is much for valuable to your SEO to focus on landing a reoccurring guest author gig (even if it is on a smaller site), than spending all your time chasing down the chance to publish a one-off post on a larger industry site.

Why is being a reoccurring guest author more valuable?

1. Saturates the audience

The more frequently your name shows up on a particular the blog, the more readers start to recognize and remember you. Your guest post might be competing with 2 or 3 new posts that went live at the same time—you’re just a drop in the bucket that day. But, if you can become a regular contributor (say once every other week), your name stays fresh in everyone’s mind and readers start to link your content together.

2. Target different anchor text

A white hat link building company should explain why it’s important to target various anchor text in your articles and author bios. First and foremost, not everyone searches for the same things the same way, so by focusing all your efforts on one key phrase (SEO company, for instance) means you’re effectively ignoring the sections of your target audience that search for your product/services in different ways (SEO firm, SEO agency, SEO consulting company, etc).

The more times your write for the same site, the more chances you have to target different anchor text in your guest posts and author bylines. This will help you build link juice to some of your more internal pages, enhance your ranking for other keywords and keep it from looking like you are trying to game the search engines by focusing too heavily on one keyword or phrase.

3. Develop multiple touch points

In today’s marketplace, especially in B2B industries, the sales cycle is growing longer and longer. In order to maintain a positive presence in your industry and connect with potential customers, you need to develop more and more touch points. You can never be certain when, where or how someone will find your brand, but you want to make sure they see it in the best possible light. Becoming a regular contributor to various industry related blogs increases your chances of someone in your target audience reading your content more than once and remembering your name when the time comes to act.

Don’t expect to be invited to be a regular guest blogger on a site just like that! Start by becoming an active commenter on that blog (try to leave a comment on at least 3 posts a week) so you can start to build a relationship with the blog owner. Find out if they accept guest blog posts and what kind of content they are looking for. Some blogs may have you pitch a story idea first; others will accept the full article. Once your first guest post goes live, promote it through all of your social networks. You want to show the blog owner the value of having you as a guest writer!

About the Author

Nick Stamoulis is the President of Brick Marketing (http://www.brickmarketing.com), a full-service SEO services company. With over 12 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his B2B SEO knowledge by posting daily updates in his blog, the Search Engine Optimization Journal.

Contact Nick Stamoulis at 781-999-1222 or nick@brickmarketing.com

Why Should You Strive For Reoccurring Guest Posts? is a post from: Boston SEO

I’ve noticed a growing trend in the marketing industry that I’m not sure I agree with—the idea of the one-stop-marketing-shop. I can understand the appeal of a one-stop-shop to potential clients; they don’t have to manage multiple accounts or contracts with different agencies, they can work with the same person for everything and it should streamline the process. For a large marketing company that can afford to bring in a creative team, PR professionals, an SEO expert and so forth, expanding their services seems like a reasonable idea.

But the rest of us, the smaller marketing agencies, offering too many services might actually dilute our value.

What kind of marketing company do you run? What do you specialize in? Why would a potential client pick you out of the hundreds of other agencies they could work with? That is your selling point, and my fear is that companies are willing to generalize and whitewash their selling point in order to appeal to a broader audience. Without your unique selling point, the thing that makes your company stand out, then you’re just like everyone else.

If you are a smaller company that wants to offer more marketing services, do you have the in-house expertise to do so? I was recently contacted by a marketing company that was trying to get more SEO clients. The only problem was that none of them had any SEO experience! They wanted to hire Brick Marketing to be a kind of ghost-SEO provider. I can appreciate the company wanting to increase their client base, but what good are you going to really do for a client when you have to outsource their work? Now their work is out of your hands, but you still have to deal with the repercussions if things don’t turn out the way your client wanted. You’ve essentially become the middle man, not a marketer.

Another problem stemming from too many marketing generalist companies is that we all end up competing with each other. Instead of identifying our own niches and building a unique brand, our companies become interchangeable. Suddenly my Boston SEO firm is competing with a web design company for the same client! The web design might actually win that client (for an SEO project) because they can come in at a lower price for an SEO contract. I would never try to earn a web design client, because that is not the direction I have taken my company. To do so would actually counteract all the branding I’ve done to this point.

Marketing companies, in whatever field they work in, have to remember the importance and value of being good at a few things, as opposed to being ok at a lot of things. It is our responsibility to do great work for our clients, to help set them apart from their competition. But we also have to do that for ourselves! We get too focused on how many accounts we have running at once, that we lose the forest for the trees. You don’t have to be everything to everyone in order to operate a business!

About the Author

Nick Stamoulis is a Boston SEO expert and President of Brick Marketing (http://www.brickmarketing.com), a full-service SEO services company. With over 12 years of industry experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his B2B SEO knowledge by posting daily updates in his blog, the Search Engine Optimization Journal.

Contact Nick Stamoulis as 781-999-1222 or nick@brickmarketing.com

Business 101- There is Nothing Unique about Generalists is a post from: Boston SEO

Since the August Boston SEO Meetup event (held August 2^nd, 2011) lacked a guest speaker, the night’s event turned into an open, roundtable discussion on SEO. Attendees took the time to introduce themselves and offered some of their best advice, recent success stories and recent insights into the world of SEO and online marketing.

Although the bad weather might have kept several members of the Boston SEO Meetup group from attending, there was a good mix of site owners, marketing and SEO experts, copywriters and more. Several first time attendees were also present.

One attendee remarked that at the Chicago WordCamp, WordPress speakers recommended that site owners remove the All In One SEO pack from their sites, as it had led to several sites being de-indexed. He mentioned the WordPress speakers recommended installing yoast in its place.

After everyone had a chance to introduce themselves and their companies, as well as pose any challenges they were facing or share recent success and developments, moderator Brian Hawkins turned the roundtable into an advice-for-advice share.

The dominating topic for the night was outsourcing content.

One new site owner asked what she could expect to pay for outsourcing her content writing and responses varied. Most SEO attendees agreed that “you get what you pay for” and that pay could range vary greatly depending on the expertise of the author.  Some had found great success in outsourcing content to the Philippines, where they had better luck finding English speakers with higher education degrees and good writing skills. One attendee explained how he had progressed from paying $5 per article to around $100 per article as the quality of the articles improved.

One piece of advice given to attract better writers was to pay based on performance. Besides offering a flat rate, writers would receive additional pay based on how many comments a piece of content got, how many social share and so forth. This would encourage writers to spend more time writing a great piece of content that was more likely to go viral.

One site owner asked whether he should link from the outsourced article back to the author’s blog or site. Several attendees said that if he was using a ghostwriter to write the content, then he had to make it very clear that his site owned that content and he didn’t have to link out. However, if his site brought in a respected industry expert to write a guest post, then he would need to link to their site.

Brick Marketing was the food sponsor for the evening.

August Boston SEO Roundtable Event Recap is a post from: Boston SEO