Archive for category Search Engine Optimization
The Periodic Table of SEO
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization on June 10, 2011
We found something cool today – from the folks over at SearchEngineLand, who say:
Search engine optimization — SEO — may seem like alchemy to the uninitiated. But there is a science to it. Search engines reward pages with the right combination of ranking factors, or “signals.” SEO is about ensuring your content generates the right type of signals.
They put together the Periodic Table of SEO to help readers get a visual idea of what goes into producing the right ranking factors that make your website shine. At Rory Martin, we take all the factors into consideration when we’re building a strategy for SEO, online marketing and social media management. Since we often talk about how important SEO and Keywords are to your website’s value, we figured you (our readers) would be interested in this graphic too! (Click the image for a larger view)
As a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing, RoryMartin.com is dedicated to helping you find the right tools to optimize your website, and bring you the most exposure to help your business succeed.
Social Media Marketing – The Value of Business Blogging
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing on April 29, 2011
There is a common misconception among business owners as to the value of business blogging. Many believe that they do not have time to effectively implement a Social Media Marketing campaign or that there is little return on investment. RoryMartin.com a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing can help you build a marketing strategy that reflects your unique brand and meets your business goals.
A corporate blog is a marketing asset and therefore, an asset to your business. Properly executed, a blog will continue to drive traffic and leads to your business over time and should be viewed just like Search Engine Optimization, a due diligence process that is not a short term experiment, but a long term investment.
There are many reasons to consider a business blog. By delivering fresh, compelling, keyword-rich, original content you will bring users back to your site on a regular basis, helping increase awareness for your brand and driving your site up in ranking. In addition to gaining search engine ranking and generating leads, blogs engage your current customers and place you in a position to provide thought leadership to your industry, strengthening your brand.
Optimizing a blog that engages customers and prospects while furthering your company’s mission and business objectives, is much like optimizing a website. By implementing search engine optimization, your blog can rank much higher than static website pages in the search engine results. Over time, this drives up the ranking of your company website.
In order to measure Social Media ROI you must define clear measurable goals. RoryMartin.com’s online marketing campaigns deliver both measurable revenue as well as ancillary brand building benefits for your company. It is important to understand the value of a visitor. Each visitor becomes one of three things; a browser, an influencer or a transacting customer. A transacting customer delivers immediate financial impact which can be measured as ROI. Browsers and influencers are measured as ancillary even though they directly affect your financial bottom line, just not in the immediate sense. Their value falls into the category of non-actualized potential.
Some of the most substantial benefits of a social media campaign will be difficult to measure directly. There is no concrete financial value that can be assigned to reputation management, branding and customer service. However, every business owners knows those values are indispensable.
B2B Social Media Marketing – Proven Strategies
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing on November 4, 2010
Original article featured on Mashable.
Digital marketing is gaining traction in a number of industries, and business-to-business (B2B) marketers are in on that trend, too. Increased spending on online marketing is driving companies to try new and innovative means of getting the word out about their products and services — one area that’s getting a lot of buzz with B2B marketers is social media.
As a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing, we wanted to share some of the following case studies which lend insight into how B2B marketers can use social media to generate leads, improve SEO, become knowledge sources, and strengthen marketing campaigns.
Generate Leads
There are two types of marketing departments — those that are cost centers and those that bring in leads and sales. Generally, the better positioned marketing department is the one that can prove it’s bringing in money, not spending it without results. When adding social media into the mix, marketing departments must be able to prove success, and oftentimes lead generation and ROI are two measurements that upper management wants to see.
Regus, a global provider of workplace solutions, recently experimented with using social media for lead generation. While the brand has a strong presence throughout the world, there was a lack of awareness in the NYC area about the convenient services and business solutions that the company has to offer.
They integrated campaign that combined social media, online video, an online sweepstakes and in-person events. The team focused on creating communities for NYC professionals, which resulted in a @RegusNYC Twitter feed and a Facebook Page. Along with these social accounts, the “Win an Office” sweepstakes was a great source of leads, as well. Lastly, the team put together New York-specific commercials, which were uploaded to YouTube. The one embedded above, for example, currently has more than 33,000 views.
Overall, this highly integrated campaign was a success unlike any other Regus had seen. The campaign increased leads to Regus’ Manhattan locations by 30%, directly resulting in a 114% increase in revenue compared to the same time period in the previous year. Furthermore, there was a 33% percent conversion rate on leads generated through the New York landing page, compared to a 12% conversion rate on 2008. The success of the campaign also prompted Regus to have Affect implement similar campaigns in five additional markets in Q1 of 2010.
Improve SEO
During the past year, Delivra, an e-mail marketing service provider, has invested in B2B social media marketing, including presences on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and a corporate blog, dubbed eMailChatr. Since implementing and maintaining these properties, the company has seen a 70% increase in inbound leads, as compared to the prior year, and its SEO rankings for major keywords have jumped over 20 pages in one year.
In this case, a blog full of useful and targeted content, enhanced by syndication across various social sites and subsequent interactions with its community, led to Delivra increasing SEO and growing a reputation for trusted e-mail marketing advice.
Carissa Newton, Delivra’s director of marketing, recommends that B2B marketers “Be realistic about your goals with social media and blogging — while these outlets can and will drive leads, there are other intangible benefits as well, like the SEO and brand awareness that make a tremendous difference.” She also stresses, “Make sure that whatever you do, it is not with the sole intention to push information out … [T]ake the time to respond and have meaningful conversations. That will increase your following tenfold. It’s just like e-mail marketing: Don’t be a blaster. Be a resource.”
Be a Knowledge Source
A global, mid-size market research and consulting firm, uses social media to increase its reach within the market research community, demonstrate thought leadership, and increase the likelihood of being found via the Internet .
“In the past nine months alone we have seen huge successes through the combination of blogging, Twitter, Facebook, online press releases, downloadable reports/case studies and Linkedin,” he explained. “The efforts have resulted in huge increases to traffic on our website (142%) and blog (308%) resulting in over 1,400 leads coming in to our sales team.”
Consistency in providing a source of useful resources has been key for the company. “Consistently creating relevant content to your blog, Twitter followers, [and] Facebook fans will help to grow your following,” he says, “but this takes time and commitment. Don’t go it alone. Build a team of regular contributors to contribute on a consistent basis.”
RoryMartin.com helps clients educate their markets and build brand awareness while winning and retaining customers with engaging and impactful websites and web marketing. We offer a comprehensive set of services from website design and web development to search engine optimization and search engine marketing and social media marketing.
Seattle Web Marketing Relevance meets the real-time web from Google and RoryMartin.com
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing on January 11, 2010
12/07/2009 11:31:00 AM
As a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing, I think Google real time search is great and believe it is a true answer to Twitter’s claim that Google is lacking. Here is the original link from Google. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/relevance-meets-real-time-web.html
Search is a natural starting point for discovering the world’s information, and we strive to bring you the freshest, most comprehensive and relevant search results over an ever expanding universe of content on the multitude of devices you use to access it.
That’s why today, at the Computer History Museum, we’re excited to share a few new innovations in the areas of real-time, mobile and social search that we feel are important steps in the evolution of information access.
First, we’re introducing new features that bring your search results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web. Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, we’ll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.
Try searching for your favorite TV show, sporting event or the latest development on a recent government bill. Whether it’s an eyewitness tweet, a breaking news story or a fresh blog post, you can find it on Google right after it’s published on the web.
Here’s how it looks:
Our real-time search enables you to discover breaking news the moment it’s happening, even if it’s not the popular news of the day, and even if you didn’t know about it beforehand. For example, in the screen shot, the big story was about GM’s stabilizing car sales, which shows under “News results.” Nonetheless, thanks to our powerful real-time algorithms, the “Latest results” feature surfaces another important story breaking just seconds before: GM’s CEO stepped down.
Click on “Latest results” or select “Latest” from the search options menu to view a full page of live tweets, blogs, news and other web content scrolling right on Google. You can also filter your results to see only “Updates” from micro-blogs like Twitter, FriendFeed, Jaiku and others. Latest results and the new search options are also designed for iPhone and Android devices when you need them on the go, be it a quick glance at changing information like ski conditions or opening night chatter about a new movie — right when you’re in line to buy tickets.
And, as part of our launch of real-time on Google search, we’ve added “hot topics” to Google Trends to show the most common topics people are publishing to the web in real-time. With this improvement and a series of other interface enhancements, Google Trends is graduating from Labs.
Our real-time search features are based on more than a dozen new search technologies that enable us to monitor more than a billion documents and process hundreds of millions of real-time changes each day. Of course, none of this would be possible without the support of our new partners that we’re announcing today: Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca — along with Twitter, which we announced a few weeks ago.
The new features will be rolling out in the next few days and will be available globally in English. You can try them out today by visiting Google Trends and clicking on a “hot topic,” which in most cases will bring you to a search results page with the new real-time feature.
Here’s a first look at our real-time search:
We have also made some new strides with mobile search. Today’s sensor-rich smartphones are redefining what “query” means. Beyond text, you can now search by a number of new modes including voice, location and sight — all from a mobile device. So we’ve been working to improve technology that takes advantage of these capabilities.
Starting today, we’re extending our voice search capabilities on Android devices to recognize Japanese. In addition, we’re using the location of your mobile phone to launch some helpful features, like showing you “what’s nearby.” Finally, at our event this morning, we demonstrated Google Goggles, a visual search application that lets you search for objects using images rather than words, using your camera phone. For more information on these mobile innovations, check out the Google Mobile Blog.
As we’ve written before, search is still an unsolved problem and we’re committed to making it faster and easier for people to access a greater diversity of information, delivered in real-time, from across the web. I’m tremendously excited about these significant new real-time search features.
As a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing, I really like this article…for more information please visit our site at RoryMartin.com
RoryMartin.com new site is live – Please stop by and check out the portfolio
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking on September 16, 2009
I am excited to launch the new site. We used Joomla, Yootheme, as well as a few other plugins for social media tools.
If you haven’t seen it please check it out: RoryMartin.com
Next month we launch SeattleSocialMediaMarketing.com and LegalSocialMediaMarketing.com
Seattle Social Media Marketing – Blog for a Blog, Blog for a Cause
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing on June 29, 2009
RoryMartin.com IN THE NEWS
This is from a press release from PRWEB…we are very excited…read on, then call us, so we can both make the world a better place.
Social Media Marketing Meets Social Responsibility at RoryMartin.com
Seattle-based social media marketing firm helps companies increase their brand awareness while furthering their philanthropic efforts with “Blog for a Blog, Blog for a Cause” Program.
Seattle, WA (PRWEB) June 30, 2009 — RoryMartin.com, an innovative Seattle Web design and online marketing agency, announced a new social media marketing program, “Blog for a Blog, Blog for a Cause.” The program is designed for companies, large and small, that are looking to expand their social media marketing and search engine optimization efforts, while launching or enhancing their philanthropic efforts.
“People and companies are feeling more and more empowered to give back and make an impact,” said Rory Martin, founder and CEO of RoryMartin.com. “This program was inspired by a recent experience with my mom, who proudly modeled shoes that she purchased on Tomsshoes.com. For every pair of shoes purchased, one pair of shoes goes to a child in need. ‘Blog for a Blog, Blog for a Cause’ takes a similar approach and helps companies we work with tap into the power of social media to build and grow their businesses, while contributing to the causes they believe in.”
How the “Blog for a Blog, Blog for a Cause” Program Works
For each annual Social Media Marketing or Search Engine Optimization Package contracted, RoryMartin.com will:
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“When social media marketing is combined with traditional search engine optimization tactics it can be a very powerful way to increase an organization’s brand awareness and engage their customers, prospects, and supporters in rewarding and ongoing dialogue,” says Martin. “This program helps individuals do this for their businesses and the causes they care about.” One of RoryMartin.com’s first clients to participate in this program is Bytor Security, who launched a section within their current blog to highlight their commitment to the National Cancer Institute.
To learn more about the “Blog for a Blog, Blog for a Cause Program” or the wide range of Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Optimization packages available with RoryMartin.com:
Visit: http://www.rorymartin.com/blog-for-a-cause-seattle.html
About RoryMartin.com:
RoryMartin.com is an innovative web marketing and design firm in Seattle, Washington. A team of independent, creative thinkers, RoryMartin.com helps companies better communicate with their customers and prospects by combining cutting-edge technologies and world class online marketing strategies. As a strategic business partner, they help companies of all sizes grow their businesses with the following interactive web marketing services: Custom Web Design, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, and Web Hosting. For more information, visit: rorymartin.com.
Contact:
Rory Martin
Phone: 206.355.0894
The Story Of Twitter In Picture Form – Seattle Social Media Agency
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing on June 22, 2009
We are a company that specializes in Seattle Social Media Marketing. We are always trying to post more of these great articeles..for more information please visit our site at RoryMartin.com Now check this out:
RoryMartin.com – Use PRWEB to write Press Release – Seattle Social Media Marketing
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking on June 21, 2009
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS AUDIO
As a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing, we recommend using BlogTalkRadio.com for better SEO. It’s got deep linking like LinkedIn. In this audio blog I share with you how to write your first press release using another amazing source for press online: PRWEB.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS AUDIO
This show covers how to write your first press release from PRWEB. For more info visit our website at www.rorymartin.com. Why Use PRWeb: Drives Traffic, Increase Sales, Easy to Use, Cost effective Generate Publicity, Measure Results. It Drives Traffic to your Site. PRWeb raises your visibility online where millions of people are searching for information. Be found on search engines. Your PRWeb release will be indexed by search engines like Google, sent to top news sites like Yahoo! News and placed into over 250,000 RSS feeds pulled each day by bloggers, journalists and consumers. Appear on other premium sites. PRWeb also helps you build backlinks and inbound links from other premium sites, one of the most important assets to build your website’s credibility in search engines. All of this helps more people find you online and click through to your website. It Increases Sales: PRWeb releases not only help more people find you, they help more people buy your products or services. Reach millions of potential prospects. Unlike email marketing, online news releases have the potential to reach millions of potential customers who aren’t on your mailing list. Attract potential customers with your news. A PRWeb release is like a “virtual sales brochure” that can be seen by millions and uses actual news about your company to attract potential customers. It’s Easy. You don’t need to be a PR or marketing expert to start building online visibility. No training necessary because Seattle Social Media Marketing Experts RoryMartin.com will set it all up for you. There’s no special “know-how” required — even if you’ve never written a press release before we make it so easy that all you need to do is select a visibility level, drop in your content and send your release.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS AUDIO
As a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing,we are committed to posting better and better posts that help you and your peers use great online tools..for more information please visit our site at RoryMartin.com
Now That It’s The One Millionth and First Word, “Web 3.0″ Can Be Retired To The Dictionary
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking, Web Design and Development on June 10, 2009
I kid I kid but…seriously?
As a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing, I think TechCrunch is sweet and reference it as much as possible. The following are some examples of how we’ll work with you even if you’re not a big corporate company but have monthly marketing budget.
For the original post click here
What do you do if you are an obscure language group in Austin, Texas looking for attention? You declare “Web 2.0″ the one millionth word
in the English language. So says the Global Language Monitor, which looks at usage of words on the Web and adds them to its online dictionaries. “Web 2.0″ has been in common usage for a long time, even though Merriam-Webster does not yet recognize it. But interest in the term peaked long ago, and everyone is pretty much ready to move on now. Even John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly, who popularized the term with their Web 2.0 conferences, realize the term is stale. They are looking to extend their brand by calling their next conference “Web Squared.” I guess Web 3.0 was taken.
Kudos to the Language Monitor for picking the one word guaranteed to get them coverage. I just don’t think that “Hai Joi” (Word No. 999,999) or “Noob” (No. 999,998) would have elicited the same response. However, their definition is not so great:
Web 3.0 – The next generation of web products and services, coming soon to a browser near you.
As a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing,we are committed to posting more of these posts..for more information please visit our site at RoryMartin.com
Examples of Social Media that RoryMartin.com will do for your company
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking on June 8, 2009
As a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing, I think Mashable is sweet and reference it as much as possible. The following are some examples of how we’ll work with you even if you’re not a big corporate company but have monthly marketing budget.
For the original post click here
We’ve discussed some tactics to get your company better engaged with social media. Lest you think there’s a limit to how you can connect with business and customer facing audiences, we’ve assembled this list of more than 35 companies who are experimenting with social media in a host of different ways.
This list is by no means exhaustive, and it represents a wide variety of businesses, industries and social media tools. As you can see, engagement takes many forms. Some are likely to generate more discussions with the company while others might result better connections between customers. Some will fade away over the next 6-12 months while others will continue to grow and evolve.
There are no rules to what form your engagement has to take. Look at your company, identify its strengths, what types of conversations energize employees and determine how you can best grow/shape/build/join your own community.
If you have other examples of corporate social media engagement, please share them in the comments.
Blendtec is famous for its bevy of inexpensive “Will It Blend” videos posted on YouTube and shared by millions.
Adobe maintains a list of interesting company related websites and conversations on the social bookmarking site Delicious.
Best Western sponsors a blog,“On the Go with Amy,” where the author travels the country writing about her experiences.
Cadence recently relaunched its website that now prominently promotes the company’s community.
Cisco hosts 12 blogs addressing a variety of audiences for their global business.
Coca-Cola Conversations is a blog written by company historian Phil Mooney that focuses on Coke collectibles.
Dell leverages a variety of social media platforms for customer engagement, including an island in the virtual world of Second Life.
Ford publishes news releases with lots of multimedia content and employs a social media news release format to display them in their newsroom.
Fujifilm recently launched a social network to build a community of photo enthusiasts around its newest camera.
GM uses blogs to communicate directly with its customers around topics ranging from design to green tech.
H&R Block created a Facebook fan site to aggregate its social media activities, engage customers and offer tax advice/resources.
HP used Twitter to power a scavenger hunt at a recent conference (BlogHer).
HSBC built the HSBC Business Network to connect entrepreneurs using blogs, videos and forums.
IBM was the first large enterprise to embrace employee blogging and now boasts thousands of blogs related to every facet of its business.
Intel has also developed many social media touch points with its software communities, which includes blogs, Twitter (
) and virtual worlds.
Intuit sponsors the Tax Almanac wiki, where anyone can find and contribute to this resource for tax information.
Jeep connects with customers via a community page with links to photos on Flickr (
), the company’s MySpace (
) and Facebook pages and a list enthusiast groups.
JetBlue employs social media as part of its training for JetBlue University.
Johnson & Johnson uses this blog to show another side of the company, with frequent video posts and interviews.
Lenovo launched “Voices of the Olympics Games” to aggregate posts from the athletes competing in Beijing.
Marriott CEO Bill Marriott posts regular updates and stories from his travels to Marriott properties around the world to fuel the content for this entertaining blog.
McDonalds maintains a blog to highlight the company’s corporate social responsibility efforts.
National Geographic uses Google’s new virtual world, Lively, to bring people together around its new show, LA Hard Hats.
New York Times is beta testing a Firefox () add-on that allows users to share and comment on stories through a decentralized social network.
Nike started a social community on Loopd to connect athletes interested in surfing, BMX bike racing and similar activities with the brand.
SAP sponsored a global survey of social media professionals to learn more about social media worldwide.
Sears partnered with MTV to create a social network around Back to School shopping.
Southwest Airlines employees share their stories and communicate directly with customers through the “Nuts About Southwest” blog.
Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s blog is the example most often cited for what the CEO blog can be.
Starbucks started MyStarbucksIdea so that customers can submit ideas for the company which are then voted on by other users, the best of which will be implemented by the company.
Toyota started its own virtual world to promote its products in Japan (site is in Japanese).
Visa launched The Visa Business Network application on Facebook to connect small business users and to help them promote their businesses to a larger community.
Wells-Fargo blogs target two audiences; one examines the company’s history and the other is for students interested in getting their finances in order.
WWE has a Facebook application, among other social networking tools and widgets, to bring fans closer to the action.
Xerox blogs address several of the company’s core B2B constituencies.
Zappos uses Twitter for employees to communicate with Zappos customers about their shared love of footwear.
As a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing, I really like this article…for more information please visit our site at RoryMartin.com
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