NEW EMPIRICAL DATA FOR SEO AND SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING STRATEGIES

November 9, 2009

Strategies for amicable media as good as SEO have been so… squishy.

You know what we mean. You can’t magnitude “authenticity.” You can’t magnitude “relationships.” You can magnitude “subscribers” as good as “followers” as good as “uniques” though which doesn’t discuss it we anything about change or strech or effect. You can magnitude “page rank” as good as “search engine position” though those algorithms have been changeable as good as unknowable.

Without units of dimensions it’s tough to experiment, as good as though experiments it’s tough to have interpretation to expostulate conclusions. This is the sucky incident for the scientist in me.

Recently, however, I’ve come opposite multiform sources of empirical, experimentally-sound interpretation sources which do tell us how to be overwhelming during both SEO as good as amicable media.

So upon interest of the geek in all of us: Enjoy.

Changing calm leads to aloft poke engine position

changing-content-graph

This is unequivocally the story inside of the story — the story of an businessman forced to get tough interpretation to sell his product.

I’ve referred to Gerry Cullen upon several occassions. We did ITWatchDogs together as good as the uncanny VC-funded savage prior to that. Gerry is the good coach to me as good as most of the truth upon this blog is the approach outcome of his mentorship.

Gerry’s ultimate try is Changing Content — the hosted make make make use of of of which puts the scrolling newsbox of applicable calm upon your home page. Before we sneer which “there’s programmed services which do which for free,” this is calm hand-picked as good as edited by the human for usually $99/month.

But it was tough to sell. Here’s how the standard sales call looked:

Customer: Why would we wish the newsbox?

Gerry: It creates your website some-more interesting.

Customer: Are we observant I’m not interesting?

Gerry: Our beta commercial operation inform which people call them up to speak about the stories upon there, so it generates conversations.

Customer: That’s kinda cool, though it’s not discernible sufficient to clear giving we money.

Gerry: It increases your poke engine ranking since we will have becoming different calm with applicable keywords.

Customer: OMG! R U 4 reals? Sweet, I’ll take it. we need all the SEO assistance we can get.

Gerry: Great!

Customer: So how most does it enlarge my ranking?

Gerry: we do not know, though all these bloggers contend which continually becoming different your calm improves poke rank.

Customer: Oh, you’re usually guessing. You do not know which it increases poke rank.

Gerry: Well…

Customer: No sale. Come behind when we have proof.

Every time Gerry got to “improves poke arrange upon all sides since calm is changing,” the reply was always: “If we infer it, I’ll give we money, differently get off my phone.”

So Gerry did an experiment. Two sites, matching in all probable ways: Same theme matter, keyword density, series of words, normal word length, page layout, design size, alt-tags, IP address, domain age, series of inbound links as good as from which source sites. The usually disproportion was which the single site had the newsbox as good as the single didn’t.

The result? See for yourself in this short though absolute inform (PDF).

(Bonus lesson: Reports similar to this with genuine interpretation get we credit no make the disproportion what your commercial operation is. It’s the improved selling technique than any “whitepaper.”)

doesn’t matter, as good as thirteen alternative mind-blowing contribution from SEOmoz

SEOmoz has positioned themselves as the personality in SEO tools. If you’ve hired an SEO consultant, changes have been they’ve since SEOmoz money.

SEOmoz has thick with billions of interpretation points upon web page construction, web site interrelationships, as good as the poke ranks. Periodically they break this interpretation in to reports about what unequivocally counts in poke engine optimization.

Here’s the good essay which summarizes fourteen of their brand new experimental findings. Some highlights follow (but really, go review the total article):

The
tab doesn’t make the disproportion for SEO. Use it for site make up as good as as the beam for people with disabilities or low-grade browsers, though do not make make make use of of of it to “trick” poke engines. This kills me since there’s about 5,245 articles upon the Internet observant which
tags have been super-duper important.

“Alt” tags in images unequivocally do matter.

Don’t make make make use of of of question parameters in your URLs (e.g. contend “/category/essays/great-post.html” instead of “/post-query?category=essays&title=great-post”). we suspicion poke engines were intelligent sufficient to be OK with that, though no.

Too most links in the footer is the wordless killer.

Nine Scientifically Proven Ways to Get Retweeted upon Twitter

tweet-time-of-day Once again HubSpot is heading the assign in genuine inform about inbound selling as good as amicable media. we know, I’ve thrown an bend during them in the past, though which was usually the adore tap.

The ultimate awesomeness comes from Dan Zarrella, HubSpot’s “Viral Marketing Scientist.” Dan authored the up-coming book aptly named The Social Media Marketing Book, as good as as partial of the graduation he’s combined the free, 22-page beam revelation we how to get retweeted. (The “cost” is we have to subscibe to his blog.)

But this isn’t Just Another Linkbait Report Constructed By Scraping Tips Off Other Bloggers. This is the outcome of statistical research of 40 million RTs. So what’s that, similar to 4 days worth?

For me, the single of the large eye-openers was which regulating TinyURL incurred the large chastisement upon the likihood of the retweet:

url-shorteners-and-tweets

I make make make use of of of TinyURL for my small “Retweet” symbol during the tip as good as bottom of blog posts. (Hey You! Do me the plain as good as spike which symbol during your convenience we suffer the post!) Guess I’ll have to switch to bit.ly.

Oh as good as the bit of bragging: Turns out my advice about asking for the RT was correct!

Tricks of on-line dating

My the the single preferred brand new blog is OkCupid’s. They’re an on-line dating site, though their blog isn’t crap similar to “10 fun things to do upon the initial date.” Instead, they break numbers.

Geeks! we adore it!

I mean, where else can we get the heat-map of the European countries as good as American states in which people have been peaceful to role-play rape fantasies?

But wait, this is relevant. Well, not the rape stuff. Crap, right away “rape” appears similar to 3 times in this article. This is all starting to uncanny out my keyword ranking…

Let’s take the demeanour during their research of exactly what to contend in the initial message. What gets we the response?

Go review the essay for all the fun facts. This things counts since a lot of what we do in commercial operation is try to get the reply from the stranger. Like:

Making initial hit with the blogger/twitterer who doesn’t know you.
An email following up with someone who usually downloaded the whitepaper or program installer, perplexing to get them to speak to you.
Any cold-call.
Mass promotion in any form.
A webinar where we goal not to remove half your assembly in the initial 5 minutes.

Here’s the single of their findings: Starting an email with “Hi” (like we have been — oops!) is the misfortune thing we can do, though starting with something accessible as good as non-offensive similar to “Howdy” functions well. So what does which meant about all the emails we send to strangers?

salutations-chart

And yeah, the little of this recommendation won’t request to business, cavet caveat, blah blah blah. But it’s the erotically appealing as good as surprising glance in to the tellurian essence as good as those guys have been droll too, so usually review it.

Penelope Trunk tells we how to blog

OK this is arrange of the lie since it’s not exactly empirical, though here’s my argument:

Penelope has over 41,000 RSS subscribers.
Everything she says is steady elsewhere by alternative successful bloggers.
Nothing is contradicted by the piles of recommendation during the go-to blogging believe sites similar to ProBlogger as good as Copyblogger.
I’ve left from 200 to 5,700 subscribers in twelve months by following all this advice. (More item upon which in the destiny post…)

penelope-trunk So yeah, it’s not just the tranquil experiment, though there’s sufficient justification in my eyes to suggest it as gospel.

This is her guide. Live it as good as suffer your hard-earned success as good as disunion from all your friends. Oops did we contend which out loud? Penelope would discuss it me not to reason back.

What tough interpretation do we know about? Don’t sow the knowledge: Leave the comment already!