State Of The Art Internet Marketing

Internet marketing as executed by the best of the best from the trenches.

Off-Site SEO

0. Sign up for and set up Google's Webmaster Tools
1. Submit a XML Sitemap
2. Submit your content
3. sign up for and set up Google Analytics
4. Set up Places for Business with Rich Snippets for Local Search
5. Set up Google+
6. Set up Facebook
7. Set up Twitter

On-Site SEO

0. Write high quality text that is easy to read and free from grammatical/spelling mistakes.
1. Anchor texts should accuratly and concisely describe the content of the page that is being linked to.
2. Optimize title tags by (1) accurately describing the page's content; (2) making them unique; (3) having brief, but descriptive titles
3. Improve page loading speed as Googlebot penalizes slow sites.
4. Optimize the description meta tag by (1) accurately summarize the page's content; (2) making them unique
5. Optimize URLs by (1) creating a simple structure that goes from the genral to the specific; (2) where the path uses descriptive words that reflect the page's content; (3) a page is accessed through a single URL (use canonical URLs); (4) showing useful pages when the user removes the right-most part of the URL
6. Create a site map for visitors, a XML Site Map for search engines, and an Image Sitemap for images
7. Use heading tags to provide users with an descriptive page outline
8. Use descriptive and brief file names for images. Use the "alt" attribute to describe images
9. Use robots.txt to prevent unnecessary pages from being crawled
10. Prevent comment spam by using rel="nofollow" on links
11. Use rich snippets
12. Add mobile URL information to a Sitemap
13. Set up RSS feeds so that users can easily read your content
14. use Google Analytics Content Experiments to implement and measure site changes
15. Follow best practices for video. Submit video sitemaps for major video sites.
16. Add share buttons

Essential SEO Resources

Tools

Google Webmaster Tools

Google Adwords’ Keyword Tool

Google Insights for Search

Google Trends Keyword Demand Prediction

Microsoft Advertising Intelligence

Wordtracker’s Free Basic Keyword Demand

Open Site Explorer

Majestic SEO

Generate Link Building Queries

Nylor Keyword Density Tool

GTmetrix Site Speed Tool

PageSpeed Insights

News and information

Google: Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (PDF)

Google: Search Quality Rating Guidelines (PDF)

Google Webmaster Central

Google Webmaster Tools: YouTube Channel

Google Webmaster Tools: Twitter

Google Webmaster Help Forum

Inside Search

Think With Google

Inbound (Hacker News for Marketers)

Internet Marketing Strategies

If SEO forms the basis of the marketing pyramid, these strategies takes your marketing to the next level.

Identify and participate in the community

• standard: twitter, facebook, google+
• what community channels are specific for your site? forums, newsletters

Push content to your blog network

• create or use highly targeted blogs, push relevant content to the right blog
• use different blogging services and domains for improved link juice
• use major services/domains when possible (G+, blogger, tumblr, etc)
• relevant promotions in the community
• avoid article databases and other generic content dumps (google sees everything)

Use RSS feeds

• rss makes it easy to get your latest content
• site owners can display them on their sites

Get your own newsletter

• key medium properties: +summarizing, +medium bandwidth, -less user agency
• be specialized, focus on high quality
• create GREAT AND FRESH content for readers. summarize the news flow, provide new insights and perspectives
• useful, actionable, entertaining, educational?

Start your own podcast

• key medium properties: +only requires hearing, -low bandwidth
• keep a low volume, high quality schedule
• keep it short and segmented
• make it trivial to download (not just on itunes), provide rss
• provide good metadata

Capture your audience with YouTube videos

• key medium properties: +high bandwidth, involves many senses, very visual
• illustrate, demonstrate abstract/difficult concepts

Write THE e-book on your topic

• key medium properties: +high bandwith, +expected to be more substantial, +knowledge and insights before news, -more demanding
• highly specialized topic, not many pages required
• gather and present state-of-the-art, provide long-term knowledge (instead of news)

Be the communal problem solver

• help people in the community
• how? answer questions, guide the beginners, relieve the established
• goodwill -> reputation -> trust, referrals

Google Places for business

• shows up in local google search results. big visual splash
• add map details, photos, contact info
• aggregated customer ratings
• http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=92319

Implement, measure and follow up on everything

• The only way to know if a certain content, method or technique works in by measuring it
• use analytics tools: google analytics, webmaster tools, ab testing tools
• on what? ideas for content, content implementation, keyword research, naming, changes in processes

E-commerce

• submit to price comparison engines and shopping engine feeds. Google Shopping, Bing Shopping, TheFind.com, ShopWiki.com
• simplify the purchasing experience. don't require accounts (auto-create them on order submit)
• display shipping and other fees as early as possible. look into flat shipping rates
• write and re-write your product descriptions. sell the experience - not the product spec.
• use high fidelity pictures and videos for every product no matter how insignificant it seems
• have a curated selection of your products and other corporate visuals (office hijinks, events, product launches) on pinterest
• work on your trust strategy. use badges, certificates, social proof, testimonials, reviews (especially 3rd party reviews like Google places reviews, yelp, etc).
• use Google Merchant to expose your product details to various Google services
• make sure search engines have deep knowledge about your business using rich snippets for e-commerce