1. Being Optimally Social Earning Buzz, Links & (Ultimately) SEO Value Stephan Spencer VP of SEO Strategies, Covario

2. 2 © 2009 Stephan M Spencer Netconcepts www.netconcepts.com sspencer@netconcepts.com First Off... Who Am I? VP of SEO Strategies at Covario Founded Netconcepts LLC in Madison WI in 1995. Sold it to Covario in 2010. Founded Netconcepts Ltd in Auckland in 1999. Lived in New Zealand for 8 yrs, returned to US in 2007. Inventor of GravityStream, a pay-for- performance SEO technology (rebranded as Organic Search Optimizer) Co-author of The Art of SEO

3. Social Media Optimization Every social site has its own unique opportunities, quirks and anomalies. You can think of these as “hacks” O’Reilly definition of “hacks”: – tools, tips, and tricks that help users solve problems – aimed at intermediate-level power users 3

4. Social Media Powers Your SEO Write link bait articles Seed your link bait articles into social media. A “power user” should submit it, as it will get more traction. Examples: 19 Things You Didn’t Know About Death, Craziest Urinals from Around the World, 100 Best Beers from Around the World19 Things You Didn’t Know About Death Craziest Urinals from Around the World More on this: Social Media Underground article on Search Engine Land, podcast on StephanSpencer.comSocial Media Underground 4

5. Digg Strip away all commercial links during the initial Digg swarm Friend popular Diggers. Better yet, get a popular Digger to submit your story. – Consult the Top 100 list of Diggers (http://socialblade.com/digg/topusers.html) Time your presence on the Digg front page for daylight hours Craft a killer title using this formula from Muhammad Saleem: number + adjective + key phrase – E.g. “13 Most Chilling Haunted Hotels” or “16 Incredibly Unconventional Hotel Rooms” 5

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7. StumbleUpon Force your friends to stumble your stuff using the “Send to” function in the StumbleUpon toolbar – They have to view your URL before they can continue with their random channel surfing 7

8. YouTube YouTube = the #2 search engine With most popular YouTube promotions, YouTube gets the links and the original site usually does not. Stack the odds more in your favor by adding a URL to your description (becomes clickable) and/or by creating a microsite and making the microsite URL your username. – E.g. “willitblend.com” is BlendTec’s username Use as many tags as possible while still being accurate Have a custom background on your channel page Cross-post your video to other video sharing sites simultaneously w/ Tubemogul Run a contest and recruit popular YouTube users to enter. Their video submission will get pushed out to all their subscribers – E.g. Intuit’s “Tax Rap” contest 8

9. YouTube Be creative but unpolished – Eepybird’s Bellagio Fountain of Diet Coke + Mentos – BlendTec’s “Will It Blend?” – Heroes spoof commercial (“Zeroes”) – an NBC creation – John Cleese Backup Trauma webisode – Intuit’s “Tax Rap” content – SolarDave’s SMX spoof with cut-out figures as the actors – “Hat Swap” spoof of “Wife Swap” reality show w/ SEOs 9

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13. MySpace You need an impressive number of friends. Establish critical mass by friending bands, models (male and female), fiction authors, actors, go-go dancers, DJs, etc. They’ll take anybody! – Find them using the “Search Profiles for People with Similar Career Interests” as part of MySpace’s Search function. – Then remove them later on when you no longer need them. Long page load time will drive your profile visitors away. Disable HTML in your comments so users can’t fill your page with slow- loading pictures of LOLcats etc. 13

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15. Facebook Facebook gets more time on site than Google Create Facebook Pages for your company, brand Microblog via status updates. Use ping.fm to cross-post your tweets to Facebook etc. Define a username. It will give you a vanity URL for Facebook Pages or profiles – http://www.facebook.com/username/ http://www.facebook.com/username/ Create Facebook Groups for your events Develop a fan base (Facebook Fan Pages) Add the “Like” widget to your site’s sidebar Create a Facebook app. Doesn’t need to be sophisticated, just “remarkable”. – Dare your friends, bite your friends, farm, gift registry, etc.

16. LinkedIn Add links to your website, blog, and one other URL (no SEO value though, links are nofollowed). Select “Other” to customize the anchor text. Add a LION (LinkedIn Open Networker) or two to your network. – i.e. a “promiscuous sneezer” (in Seth Godin-speak) – Use the TopLinked.com list. e.g. Flip Filipowski Add your email address to your “professional headline” so folks 4+ degrees away don’t have to waste an InMail to contact you Post a “question” to LinkedIn Answers that serves your own purposes – e.g. “We’re looking to hire an SEO analyst and are willing to pay whatever it takes to get a top-notch person. What job boards do you recommend?” 16

17. Flickr Always use tags – as many as possible while still being accurate. Put multiple word tags in surrounded by quotation marks “” Make descriptive titles for your photos Create thematic Sets for your photos Links on profile, set and collection pages are not nofollowed If the photo is location specific, go into Flickr’s tools and geotag the picture – Go into the Flickr set tools, and locate the location on the Yahoo! Map, then drag the picture onto the map to pinpoint its location Creative Commons license your photo and put how you want the user to credit you in your photo’s description 17

18. Wikipedia Build up your street cred (long & virtuous contribution history, user profile page with Barnstar awards) before doing anything at all self-serving. A link on a high-profile article is worth gold, as it builds your credibility & visibility with journalists and bloggers. Negotiate with an article’s “owner” to get this. Monitor your articles with a tool that emails you (e.g. trackengine, changenotes, urlywarning, changedetect). Don’t just rely on Wikipedia’s “Watch” function Flow PageRank internally with Disambiguation pages, Redirects, Categories Make friends. They will back you up in AfDs Don’t edit anonymously from work. (Have you heard of WikiScanner??) 18

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20. Social Sites that Pass PageRank There are still some social sites with profile pages that pass link juice – Propeller – MyBlogLog – Technorati – etc. Somewhat outdated list (still mentions Flickr, LinkedIn, Kirtsy, AssociatedContent – which no longer pass PR): – http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/22-dofollow-social-media-sites- offering-profile-links.html 20

21. Blogs First, get involved via comments and build rapport Careful about making the commenter name keyword-rich Comment on blogs that “dofollow” comment links – e.g. Mark Cuban’s Blogmaverick.com, Rimm-Kaufman Group’s www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog Submit to blog carnivals. Host one (requires that you have a blog). Start a new one. – http://www.businessblogconsulting.com/2008/02/blog-carnivals-a-link- building-secret-weapon 21

22. Blogs Be a contributor to a group blog (e.g. BusinessBlogConsulting.com, Shop.org Blog) Be a guest blogger on someone else’s blog (e.g. TechGazing.com*, Problogger.net)* A Tip Jar indicates the blogger is desperate for cash When blogging, pay attention to your keyword focus – Scribe plugin for WordPress & Compendium Blogware both give real-time feedback on how search engine optimal your blog post is as you’re writing it Consider “compending” your blogs 22

23. Compendium Blogware: analyzes the blog post’s keyword strength on-the-fly

24. http://www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/22-dofollow-social-media-sites-offering-profile- links.html 24 The Scribe plugin for WordPress also analyzes the blog post’s SEO

25. Administrative interface for creating “compended” blogs (i.e. auto-tagging) 25

26. Real-World Networking Build relationships with bloggers by networking with them at blogger conferences, unconferences and meetups Register and attend conferences that link to their attendees (e.g. WordCamp, Gnomedex) Contribute to conference wikis (where you’ve attended!) Give free talks at libraries, campuses (e.g. Stanford TechBriefings) Get involved with local Meetups and get your meetup.com member profile page linked from the meetup’s page, which will pass juice to your profile then on to your site Invite W3C to speak. Get a link to your event on www.w3.org/WAI/ 26

27. Twitter Create a microsite dedicated to Twitter – E.g. twitter.zappos.com Circumvent spam filters and inbox clutter using direct messages. Can’t DM them if they aren’t following you. Set a custom background Encourage retweets (tweetmeme.com) Retweet count is a more meaningful metric than followers Influence the top influencers in your Twitter network by influencing those in common with you – Identify the common “friends” with tweetwheel.com – Send your request as a direct message 27

28. Widgets & Badges For folks’ blog sidebars, MySpace profiles, etc. Most effective if married up with a meme – (a meme is a “copy me” instruction backed up with threats and/or promises) Examples: – How Many Five Year Olds Could You Take on in a Fight? – Which Superhero Are You? – Swicki – SeenOn.com Grey’s Anatomy Many can be turned into Facebook apps too

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