It’s a big week in Utah for social media and the outdoor industry. There are 2 social media events and 2 social media conferences on Wed., January 18th. The Outdoor Retailer show is also going on.

I’m going to Shift Summit and going to try to also make it to the tail end of the SLC Social Media Club meeting.  (Gabrielle Blair of the amazing Design Mom blog is coming over from ALT to speak at Shift).

Here are the events taking place this week:

1. ALT  runs Jan. 18-21. It’s huge for design/mom/craft bloggers.
2. Then there’s Social Commerce on January 18th from 6:30 to 8:30.
3. The Social Media Club (SLCSEM) is meeting at the Leanardo on January 18th 6-9pm.

For the SLCSEM event Bing, Sundance, SEO.com, and SLCSEM.org are speaking about video search. It features speakers from Bing and Sundance.

Topics:

• Video search engine optimization

• Why search engines are changing to videos and images

When: Wed. Jan. 18 from 6 to 9 p.m.
Where: The Leonardo, 209 E. 500 South in Salt Lake City, Utah (the old Salt Lake City library building that has been turned into a museum of sorts)

I didn’t know this but Bing, (owned by Microsoft) controls about 30% of the search engine market and a major sponsor of Sundance.

More info and register for the Salt Lake City Social Media Club event here. Unfortunately it says to get on the waiting list. When I tried signing up last week the site wasn’t working and I finally gave up). Too bad because I just got the press release a few moments ago.

Hope to see you at both events!

I recently heard Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz talk about how social influences search. He also recently wrote about how Twitter influences rankings.

Here are 7 Social SEO Tips from SEOMoz:

1. Infographics are still effective for SEO (look at this score for a web site called “Medical Coding and Billing” on Mashable). Develop your own powerful network for sharing them (or let an influencers put it on their blog. They get the social and you get the link juice). Use the tineye plugin to see who has published your infographic. Make a list. Grease the wheels by thanking those people, connecting with them, letting them know about new content they might be interested in/share with others. I also recommend that you check out the Social Buzz Club.
2. Google draws from Quora, Facebook (indirectly), LinkedIn, Yahoo 360, Twitter and other social networks to rank your influence. So being active on these sites could benefit you.
3. Find influencers in your industry by using FollwerWonk (Twitter) which sorts by # of followers, search Google profiles (sorted by author authority), LinkedIn (search by region or topic and look at # of connections). These are the people you should build relationships with and hope will share your content.
4. Develop a user-generated content strategy. Here’s a great example – Sugarrae interviews experts in link building. She asks everyone in her network for the questions and then poses those questions for experts to answer. Could you find and interview experts in your niche? Start by asking what people really want to know, then provide the answers.
5. Use bit.ly and WhentoTweet to fine see what content works for your audience and when to tweet it. You can find the best content in your niche, re-write the headlines and add a link.
6. For Facebook, send a photographer to your events and tag everyone who was there on Facebook. They have to “like” your page to comment on the photo.
7. What about videos influence on SEO? After all, Google owns YouTube. Rand asserts that video doesn’t influence rankings but it’s a good idea to embed video on your site and use the video sitemap for Google indexing. Videos can be great for traffic. They often get more clicks than regular search results, even if they are further down on the list.

Have you tried any of these tactics and found them to have an impact on your rankings?

When it comes to SEO, there are hundreds of elements that come into play when search engine algorithms determine rankings. From Title tags to anchor text rich links, the tactics are many and varied.

However, one element of the ranking algorithm that is often overlooked is the server on which your site is hosted.

Believe it or not, the type of server you host your website on can have an impact on your rankings. While it isn’t the most important element, when you are targeting a competitive niche every little bit helps.

When it comes to servers, you have 3 main options:

1. Shared Hosting – Your site is on one server with dozens or hundreds of other sites, usually on the same IP address. This is the least favorable option from an SEO standpoint.
2. VPS, or Virtual Private Server – Your site is hosted on a server with other sites, but your IP address is unique. A much better option than shared hosting, but still not the best.
3. Dedicated Servers – Your site is on its very own server, with a unique IP address. The best way to go, for many reasons.

Out of the 3 main set-ups, Dedicated Servers are the best from an SEO point of view. Why?

For one, it essentially guarantees that your website won’t suffer from any “bad neighborhood” penalties from being on the same IP address as potentially low quality or spammy sites. A dedicated server also tends to provide better up-time and much faster page load speeds, all of which are known elements of Google’s ranking algorithm.

A dedicated server is also much more secure, since you have complete control over what sites, programs and code go on your server. If your company deals with sensitive data such as customer credit card information or social security numbers collected through your website, you can’t afford to not be on a dedicated hosting account.

Though dedicated servers aren’t the least expensive web hosting option, they are absolutely worth every penny…consider it an investment in your business’s future.

This is a guest post from Sam McRoberts is the CEO of VUDU Marketing, a Utah SEO company. He has been involved with online marketing since 1999 and has worked with hundreds of clients, from small local businesses to Fortune 500 companies. Sam was compensated for this post, but the views and opinions on the topic are his own.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Inflation and cost cutting measures cause company to urge employees to save money through a variety of initiatives.

Silicon Valley (NOT) April 1, 2011 –Due to rising inflation and the desire to economize, SEO startup SEOCause has introduced toilet paper rationing.

The company notes that their work force is made up of hundreds of college-age males who eat a lot of food. They have noticed the number of rolls of toilet paper used per day has dramatically increased as the company has grown. Combined with the rising cost of commodities such as cotton, it was time to make some changes.

“I made a trip to Walmart last week and the supplies that were purchased were gone in about 3 days (the supplies should have lasted at least one to two weeks). For both productivity and cost savings, effective immediately, I’m only buying toilet paper every two weeks,” said the company purchaser.

Walmart CEO Bill Simon recently stated that American consumers could face “serious” inflation in the coming months for clothing, food and other products, including cotton.

“I’ll restock supplies tomorrow. They need to last two weeks this time or you’ll be stuck bringing your own toilet paper or going to nearby businesses to use the facilities,” she noted. “Let’s all work together to make the supplies last.” As a guide employees were told to count the number of squares used and to use no more than 5 squares per visit. To increase productivity, she also suggested employees wait until their lunch break to use the restroom.

Employees were encouraged to “be green” and watch the resources used, including water usage. They were urged to keep flushing to a minimum and not to let the faucet run while washing their hands. There will be a drawing with prizes such as candy bars from the Dollar Store  to reward those who comply.

“While we try to provide free pizza on occasion (limit of 2 slices each) and a work casual environment, we are not Silicon Valley,” noted Brent Seed. “Companies there go overboard. Besides department lunches, Cisco has a cafeteria, massages and yoga classes! Startups have cupboards full of pop-tarts! They take their employees go-kart racing and bowling.” It’s ridiculous, he notes. “On their dual-income salaries they could save a lot of money and offset those costs better. It’s not our job to feed and clothe you, your wife, or your 4 kids trying to live on $30k per year.”

In individual department meetings, managers will review the policy and demonstrate the proper amount allowable. Employees will be required to record and report the number of squares used per day on a shared spreadsheet. If supplies run out too early, employees will be asked to bring rolls from home.

As for employee morale? It’s in the toilet.

———————–

Thanks to my friend Jason at Jibberjobber and Dilbert for the inspiration. If you got laid off from a job at any point, you’ll appreciate his new service for job seekers (be sure to read his brilliant press release). Oh, and HAPPY APRIL FOOLS to economizers and SEO companies everywhere!

The theme of day 2 at Affiliate Summit was SEO. All sessions all day. And despite dancing the night away and getting 3 hours of sleep, I never got bored.

Meeting My SEO Heroes

When I went to the bloggers lounge I saw a laptop in front of me with a screensaver that said, “Bruce Clay, Inc” Ah, an SEO legend. So I asked the obvious, “are you Bruce Clay?” And he was. So I got to interview him about local search (blog post coming later). I’m trying not to show my braces, despite comments that they make me look younger and sexier (I have tweeted how I paid for them by doing blogger outreach for my orthodontist).

I also got to meet Wil Reynolds who’s been a favorite from past Affiliate Summits. He looked at my name tag and recognized my name because I blogged about his presentation in 2006. I thanked him for sharing his expertise by giving him some killer anchor text (search engine optimization). Four years later he thanked me back. Apparently, he remembers and appreciated the link. He told me it really helped him out. Despite the earned reputation that SEOs don’t shave (the men or the women!), have poor social skills, and love to work in the dark, it’s not all true. SEOs can be classy!

DO NOT Stick Out

Besides the growing prominence of local search results, the other theme was how when it comes to SEO, you want to be like the crowd. You do not want to be unique. You do not want to stand out. Instead, you want to blend in with everyone else who’s ranking well in your industry. Otherwise you could be flagged for having an unnatural link profile.

How do you know if you have an unnatural link profile? Wil says Google Webmaster Tools can help. They have a new alert that will tell you if Google thinks your links profile look suspect.

It’s normal for your brand name and domain name to rank highest. It’s NOT natural if most of your links have the exact same anchor text. So your links are for you or your company name that’s normal (for me “Newspapergrl”) But if most of my links say “online pr” it looks like you gamed the system (and you probably did). It’s unnatural and you’ll lose ranking. I better check mine!

Quality Over Quantity (Sorry SEO Companies!)

Rather than building a large quantity of low quality links, focus on getting a link from an authority site. This can be a problem for SEO companies who focus on building directory links and low quality article marketing that will never get shared or published elsewhere. I could argue that for local business SEO it may work only because you’re so niched that there isn’t as much competition. Or, less local businesses do SEO.

What I’m saying is if you get on the home page of USAToday or a huge blog in your industry, that can be better than hundreds of junk links. And it won’t matter what the anchor text they use to link to you. You’ll get trust. And once you have trust everything you write will have more value. Then you can add keyword (aka anchor text) links.

Next I’ll write about SEO content creation to help you land some quality links.

I’ve had some strong results with Business Wire recently that highlight how capitalizing on trends is so effective. In both examples (next one coming soon) it was taking something that was already being talked about and piggybacked on it by sending out a press release while the issue is still hot.

Here is one of the press release case studies from OrangeSoda

Here’s the background story. A competitor in the local search space ReachLocal had just gone public. This is big news in the industry. OrangeSoda wrote a series of blog posts about ReachLocal’s IPO. It’s also a hot topic because Google had also shown interest in the industry. As the post states Google  reportedly offered “over $500 million for Yelp” and “a decent volume of smaller acquisitions and investments by consolidators like Deluxe, AOL, IAC, and YPG/Canpages.”

Right during all of this OrangeSoda sent out a press release on Business Wire about a new product release. It mentioned another fact that was big news – that OrangeSoda is now partnering to bring SEO services to local newspaper advertisers. That alone was a big story and got coverage in some blogs like Search Engine Strategies.

Now for the results (incredible)

Used with permission, here are the results:

• Over 200 sites and publications picked up the release so far
• Over 20,911 headline views and 1,533 full views.
• There have also been 84 links.

• 125 Tweets mentioning OrangeSoda and the press release (from both the Business Wire web site and bit.ly). This is how I found out about the story even though I work there.
• 40%  increased traffic to orangesoda.com (as of Thursday after the release).
• 166%  increased traffic to our blog (as of Thursday).

They continue to see increased traffic because of the press release.

Lessons Learned:

For maximum exposure time your news around what’s happening in your industry right now.

Write your press release in conversational or easy-to-understand terms. I didn’t write it but that’s the way I like press releases to read – like a story – not full of PR jargon.

You can get incredible results in terms of traffic, social mentions and links to your web site with a well-timed press release.

Online PR Book and Next Case Study

I spend an entire chapter talking about the importance of capitalizing on trends in my book, I Need a Killer Press Release, Now What??? and show you what tools I use to find trends in my Online PR Book. I also go over promoting your news online through social networks.

OrangeSoda really demonstrated how this works. In my next post I’ll talk about one of my clients who got some great print media and TV exposure for her book with a single press release. She had never sent a press release before but when the topic of adoption hit the news, she knew she needed to.

When I coach clients at OrangeSoda one of the things I tell them is to be specific. A part of that advice is to use a descriptive title for your blog post. Many times people use either clever or generic titles. General titles are boring. Clever titles often lose people. Read the title of your blog post to yourself. If it could apply to almost any topic or any business, then you need to re-write it.

Search engines don’t take people to the home page of your blog every time. They deliver information out of context. This is good because if someone is searching for a hotel in Connecticut to spend Valentine’s Day then your blog post might pop up. They type in “city, Connecticut hotel” and hopefully your blog post shows up high on the list, they find you and give you a call. I’ve seen blog posts about a business come up higher than the official web site for the business.

Each blog post is its own entry into search engines — its own web page. Some people write as if we know who they are and what they do. Chances are we don’t. And that we don’t care enough to find out (unless we have or you give us a reason to).

Why is it important to use descriptive blog post titles?

• A descriptive blog post title is good for SEO.
  Search engines try to categorize information for searchers who are looking for information. If your title is too vague then a search engine may not know what it’s about. They might index it incorrectly (or not at all). The title of your blog post is one of THE MOST IMPORTANT aspects of blogging when it comes to SEO. Don’t ruin the chance to get more targeted information into search engines by writing a descriptive title to your blog posts.
• A descriptive blog post title tells the reader what they are going to learn about.
  Readers want to know what they’re getting and make split second decisions on what to read. If you make them think too hard then you’ve probably lost them. Don’t just tell us what it’s about – sell it a little. Your goal is to make people want to keep reading. The more they read the higher the chances are that they will care or trust you enough to call you, comment, or participate in some way. And if they do that, chances are higher that they’ll become a customer, regular reader, etc.
• A descriptive blog post title helps people.
  When you write descriptive blog post titles it helps people get what they are looking for. They appreciate that. Most likely they are not reading your blog post, they are skimming over it to see if there’s any reason for them to read more. If you tell them what they’re going to get up front, they can judge if they found what they were looking for. Don’t make us hunt for it. Cut down on frustration and time people must spend to figure out what your blog post is about by saying it up front in the title.

Example of a Vague Blog Post Title:

This blog post is titled: It’s Not Too Late!

If you read that you’re first question is – not too late for what? To learn to play the violin? To tell that special someone we love them? To lose 20 lbs. before the next class reunion?

After reading further I found out that the blog is a local business – a hotel. It’s based in Connecticut and it’s called Interlaken – at least that’s what I think. Nothing on the blog really tells me who they are – I’m unsure if the blog is about things you can do in a certain city or the name of the hotel. But I’ll assume it’s the name of the hotel.

The first paragraph is vague too: Valentine’s weekend is here, and we do have a few rooms still available, so no worries – just give us a call and we can still take care of you!  (1-800-222-2909).

New Version of the Blog Post

Here’s the new title: It’s Not Too Late to Plan a Romantic Valentine’s Day Getaway in __ Connecticut

Valentine’s weekend is almost here. If you live near by or are visiting (city name) Connecticut we invite you to stop by the Interlaken hotel. Not only do we still have some rooms available, we have many Valentine’s Day packages for a last minute getaway. Surprise the person you love, celebrate and spend time together. Just give us a call — and we will take care of you!  (1-800-222-2909).

P.S. My next tip would be – use paragraphs in your blog posts! and Links! But that’s another blogging tip. This one is just about the title.

Have any examples of great blog post titles? Please put them in the comments (along with a link).

Lee Odden did a poll on the best SEO books and there were almost 200 votes. Here’s the top 14 in order of the votes as of 1/09/10.

Lee also has a helpful list of 100 Search Marketing Resources

1. Art of SEO – Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin, Jessie C. Stricchiola
2. Search Engine Optimization: Your Visual Blueprint for Effective Internet Marketing – Kristopher B. Jones
3. Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day – Jennifer Grappone & Gradiva Couzin
4. Landing Page Optimization – Tim Ash
5. Search Engine Marketing Inc, 2nd Edition – Mike Moran & Bill Hunt
6. The Truth about Search Engine Optimization – Rebecca Lieb
7. Inbound Marketing - Brian Halligan & Dharmesh Shah
8. Search Engine Visibility, 2nd Edition – Shari Thurow
9. Building Findable Websites: Web Standards SEO and Beyond – Aarron Walter
10. The Findability Formula: Easy, Non-Technical Approach to SEM – Heather F. Lutze
11. Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets – Andrew King
12. SEO Warrior – John I. Jerkovic
13. SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible – Jerri L. Ledford
14. SEO Made Simple - Michael H. Fleischner

Want to cast your vote for the best SEO Book? Or, if you’d like, leave a comment about your favorite SEO book.

2010 is here and it’s the year of the TIGER. According to Chinese astrology: The Tiger is said to be lucky vivid, lively and engaging. Another attribute of the Tiger is his incredible bravery, evidenced in his willingness to engage in battle or his undying courage.

So I will keep these 2 things in mind: courage and good luck. I will be courageous and lucky this year!

For my online business this year I want to accomplish the following (maybe you can help with some of them!):

• Sell out of my first run of online PR training DVDs and start streaming them online.
• Get an article about online PR in Entrepreneur Magazine (I noticed two people I know were in the last issue, so I should be able to swing this).
• Set up my affiliate program. Then find at least 10 joint venture/affiliates  to sell my DVD and make a commission of $75 a sale on each.
• Finish my SEO press releases ebook and start producing one per quarter.
• Start an online store for my online PR products at www.OnlinePRBook.com. Challenge: what platform to use? Cost? I want it to be like an ecommerce store rather than spread in random places throughout my site.
• Get my email list up & going!!! This sounds so easy but it’s been stopping me for a while now. It’s almost embarrassing that I’ve never done it.
• Find newsletters to put content in in exchange for a mention of my DVD (this is the biggest investment I’ve ever made in my business, besides my book and of course I want it to be very successful. It’s 3 hours of content.
• Become a better speaker – join Toastmasters and look for new opportunities to do both in-person and webinars. (Is there a list of webinar hosts??)
• Write press releases about the DVD, important webinars, etc.
• Update my blog with a real photo of me, widen the main section, underlined links (I’ve tried), remove ads except for my own (since they mysteriously stopped making money when I redesigned my blog), font color = black, fix background colors on sidebar to white, add Facebook & Twitter Connect, remove dates & make comments link larger, any other suggestions for me?
• Get banner ads made for the DVD.

What about you? What are you looking for in 2010?

Yesterday I spoke to a group of Utah event and meeting professionals. I used this graph to show that meeting pros were using social media to promote their events.

I also learned that if you’re an event pro, this is the Twitter hashtag to use to share information on Twitter: #eventprofs

Meetings & Conventions Magazine did a survey to find out how meeting pros use social media. They are using what I call the big 3: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Ways meeting pros are using social media include:

post event information
post postevent photographs & materials
researching suppliers
researching speakers
reseraching potential employees
seeking jobs

I propose that more meeting professionals seek to have bloggers attend and participate in their events. Why? Because of the links, traffic to your web site and buzz it can create for your events.

Make your events “blogger friendly” – meaning

1. Invite bloggers and treat them like VIPs.
2. Have a special section for bloggers (we like hanging out with each other).
3. Make sure there are enough plugs (for their computers, etc).
4. Make wifi easy and accessible.
5. If you have a blog be sure to link to their posts about the event.
6. Create a hashtag about the event so people can label their tweets and everyone can see them by using the same label.

Case in point (a rather dramatic one):

I recently attended an event at a local bookstore with famous blogger The Pioneer Woman. She’s a publishing sensation because her first cookbook made the NY Times bestseller list (here’s the NY Times article about Ree Drummond)Thank to her blog she had thousands of people willing to stand in line to meet her at bookstores all over the country. Some people waited over 5 hours to see her.

I blogged about the event. So did a lot of other bloggers (Like Carina and Allison. She linked to our posts). We linked to each other’s posts. I continue to get thousands of readers to my blog as a result of those new links.

Why did we get all of this traffic and attention (and is it deserved)? Because we blogged about an event that had a lot of uzz. I think the fact that we did it quickly (right after the event) and our posts got linked to. We’d all be linking to their book store too.

I’m not trying to beat up this store – I actually want independent bookstores to survive. Blogging is part of that because getting written up on a respected blog will introduce readers to new authors, get more people to your store, bring new people to your events, etc.

What if the event planner of this event (the bookstore) had done what we did? Every time they bring in a big name they could let bloggers know and invite them to a reception with the author. You get a famous librarian, you invite the librarian bloggers to attend. They write about the event and probably buy books and their audience buys books. You could even grease the wheels and have a copy for them and a few signed copies for them to give away on their blog.

Even if you’re not drawing social media extroverts like this group is, a blog is often well-respected by search engines and even one link can introduce you to new networks and higher rankings.

Think of how you might engage with bloggers with your events. Don’t leave it up to chance. Invite them. Think of it as media coverage that’s much easier to get than the traditional outlets.