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

Next 3 Boston SEO Meet Ups Scheduled for 2012!

RSVP Now for, Monday Jan 30th, Monday Feb 27th OR Monday March 19th

All hosted at the Arlington Public Library in the community room down stairs

+ Sponsored Event on Jan. 17th

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BostonSEO.org SPONSORED EVENT:

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Next 3 Meetups Booked & Marketing Open House to Win MacBook Air, iPad 2 or Kindle Fire !! 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

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

We have two great events planned for tomorrow & in November.

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ZoomInfo in Waltham Invites You to a Marketing Open House & Contest on November 2nd from 5-7pm!

Would you like to showcase your work to win $2K and possibly find your next dream marketing job? If so, we want to meet you! If you have at least 2 years of experience, are VERY tech savvy and want to take the next step in your career please Join Us. Check out the link for more info or call 781.693.7577. http://www.zoominfo.com/business/about/careers.html

Win a iPad, $1k or 2k @ ZoomInfo Marketing Open House 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

The July Boston SEO Meetup event (held on Tuesday July 12, 2011) featured guest speaker Jesse Friedman, Director of Web Development at Neal Advertising.  Jesse has been developing websites for ten years and in addition to the work that he does at Neal Advertising, he is also an adjunct professor of web development at Johnson and Wales University and has spoken about web development at conferences and contributed content to web design publications.

The purpose of Jesse’s presentation at the Boston SEO Meetup event was to give an overview of SEO from the standpoint of a web developer.  Jesse takes a “progressive enhancement” approach to web development, which means that the focus is on making content accessible to everyone.

Here are some key insights from the presentation:

• It’s important to enhance content for users and for Google and HTML needs to be created to house good content.
• Flash provides a nice user experience for those that use Flash, but it limits what Google can see.
• When developing a site, start with people that have limited access (text based) and then build the site up using CSS.
• The footer is growing in importance for websites and is no longer just a place to put copyright information; it’s like a second navigation.
• What makes Google happy is what makes users happy and sometimes it’s better to stop worrying so much about Google.
• It’s important to pay attention to your page load time.  Anything under four seconds is like an A+ in Google’s eyes.
• Always worry about the user experience first.

The last part of the Boston SEO Meetup event included a Q+A in which attendees could ask questions or explain current challenges that they are facing and get input from other members.

The first challenge came from someone that was trying to target the U.K. in Bing.  Suggestions included starting a local SEO link building campaign, submitting to local directories, and optimizing the site using U.K. locations.

The second question came from someone wondering whether a sign up page should be on the homepage or on an interior page.  The group mentioned that if getting people to sign up is a main goal of the website, the sign up page shouldn’t be hidden.

Brick Marketing was the food sponsor for the evening.

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

Last night (6/6/2011) was the June Boston SEO Meetup. Taking a different approach to the regular event structure, this month’s Meetup was a live SEO site review model, as opposed to the usual guest speaker. Members of the group were encouraged to submit their site for a group SEO review. The best advice of the night would receive a “prize” from the site owner for their suggestions.

The first site up for review was http://www.ultimatesocialfreedom.com/. Ultimatesocialfreedom.com is owned by Adam LaDolce, inspirational speaker, dating coach and author of the book “Being Alone Sucks.” Adam told the group that the two biggest challenges facing his site was that it was less than a year old, and he had built it himself with limited site design knowledge or technical skills. His long-term SEO goal is to be topped ranked for “Boston dating coach.”

Some of the SEO recommendations from the group included:

• creating a more prominent and streamlined contact form to increase conversions
• adding more content to the homepage
• leveraging his book to lend authority
• transcribing videos to create content

The second site reviewed was http://www.bigskinny.net/. Bigskinny.net is owned by Kiril Stefan Alexandrov. Kiril informed the group that his site was ranking well for long-tail keywords like “skinny wallet” and “thin wallet,” but that he would like to eventually be ranking for the “holy grail keyword” of “wallet.”

Some of the SEO recommendations from the group included:

• minimizing the amount of information/links on the homepage
• moving e-commerce trust elements to a more prominent area
• incorporating H2 tags for hierarchy
• streamlining the design and improving user-experience with fewer colors and fonts

The third site of the night to be reviewed as http://www.dermnet.com/, a skin disease image atlas. The site owner was looking for a way to better monetize his site, specifically in regards to AdSense.   While one group member called AdSense ads “the foodstamps of online ads,” another member suggested that there is a place and value in having AdSense ads on the site.

Some of the SEO recommendations from the group included:

• Creating customized image tags
• Adding content to each image describing the photo and disease
• Making the information that the images were available for purchase more prominent

The final site to be reviewed at the live SEO site review session was http://seojobs.us/. The niche site was one of a 1000 other niche job sites that were recently launched. The site owner was looking for ways to dynamically build/update all 1000 sites. He also mentioned that the site got penalized by the Panda update, but is recovering.

Some of the SEO recommendations from the group included:

• Allowing job seekers to post their resumes (and require a link to do so)
• Creating unique descriptions for the posted jobs to avoid duplicating content
• Using the “open graph” and socially enable the site

Brick Marketing was the food sponsor for the evening.

Live SEO Site Review Event Recap is a post from: Boston SEO

We will be doing live site reviews at tonight’s SEO Meetup.

Put your site to be reviewed in the comments at http://www.meetup.com/BostonSEO/events/19517211/ and we’ll get to as many as we can.

See you there!

Live Site Review Panel: Tonight! is a post from: Boston SEO

This is it, our big 5 year anniversary SEO meetup event is almost here!

From our humble beginnings around a tiny table at the Panera bread, we’ve evolved into a fantastic networking organization. It’s a great group because you make it great – we have so many smart folks always willing to share ideas and help each other out.

And we’ve got an amazing speaker lined up: Brian Carter is a highly sought-after presenter who has spoken at countless major SEO and marketing events.

He’ll be speaking about: “Viral Spammy Unicorns”: How Companies Get Real Results with SEO and Social Media.

Brian is CEO of FanReach, a company that conducts online Facebook Marketing and Advertising Training.

He is also a internet marketing consultant, speaker, and trainer with 11 years experience in search optimization, online advertising, and social media. One of his websites achieved more than 500 top ten Google rankings and earned as much as $21,000 per month in ad revenues in 2005. He has doubled and tripled the online revenue of dozens of companies. Brian and his trainees have replicated this success in a variety of verticals including travel, hospitality, medical, legal, entertainment, and retail.

Snacks will be sponsored by Gutterhelmet.com. (Thanks, Todd!)

If you haven’t RSVPed yet, do so now!

Also, keep in mind we’ve got ANOTHER fantastic guest speaker coming in from out of town, for our next event on Monday 3/7. (It was originally mis-listed as 3/15). So pencil that one in, too, it’s coming up soon.

See you there!

Dave, Brian & Peter.

Big 5th Anniversary Meetup is On! Tues 2/15. is a post from: Boston SEO