Altitude’s Weekly Round-up (September 16, 2011)

Every week I spend a considerable amount of time reading industry blogs and newsletters to keep up with all of the evolutions and revolutions in online marketing and technology. The purpose: to generate new ideas and recommendations for our clients—and for you, our faithful readers. This week we take a look at Building an SEO strategy for your site, being a fearless social media marketer, and Facebook getting rid of the 25 fan requirement in order to secure a personalized link and much more.

SEO

Building of SEO Strategy for Small Business Sites

SEO is a perfect tool for small businesses promotion, but more often than not they don’t take advantage of the benefits because they think it’s more complicated than it actually is. This post logically walks through and explains the essential elements of creating a solid SEO strategy. (Search Engine Journal) September 13, 2011.

How Do I Get Google’s Bulleted Snippets?

Snippets—the few lines of text that appear under every search result—are designed to give you a sense for what’s on the page and why it’s relevant to your query. Late in August Google started rolling out snippet improvements for pages that contain lists; results for these pages will now reflect the structure of the page, rather than just showing two lines of text. This post explores a few possible ways to get the coveted bulleted list with your search results. (SEOMoz) September 12, 2011.

22 Effective SEO Tips to Optimize Your B2B Website

The fundamentals for optimizing a B2B site are essentially the same as a B2C site, though there are differences. Information needs are different for B2B buyers, so the type of content and how it’s optimized will be different for B2B.Optimizing all your online content will bring more visitors to your website and ultimately generate more leads. This post provides 22 SEO tips to optimize your online B2B presence. (Social Media Today) September 10, 2011.

Yahoo!, AOL, Microsoft partner on ad sales to compete with Google

Yahoo!, AOL and Microsoft will work together to sell ads on one another’s websites, as the companies work to reverse sliding ad sales and take back market share from online giant Google. Google’s display-ad business has grown steadily, as more advertisers move to its online-ad exchange that puts ads on thousands of sites and eliminates a need to deal directly with large publishers. (AllThingsD / Wall Street Journal) September 14, 2011.

Mastering Online Local Marketing

Today’s local shopper is armed with a numbing array of tools that make it easy to discover, explore, research, review, price, rate, share and even visit every kind of local business imaginable—right from their laptop or, increasingly, through the mobile device in their pocket or purse. Even as tools and tactics change, however, one thing hasn’t: location awareness still equals amplified intent. (American Express Open Forum) September 14, 2011.

General Interest

THE EVOLUTION OF THE WEB

The web today is a growing universe of interlinked web pages and web apps, teeming with videos, photos, and interactive content. What the average user doesn’t see is the interplay of web technologies and browsers that makes all this possible. This site takes you on a trip through time to help you understand just how far we’ve come.

Social Media

Are You Ready to Be a Social Business? 10 Tips for a Zoom Start!

There seems to be a mad rush to get on the social band wagon. Even though you and your business have been without Facebook, Twitter, a blog, LinkedIn or Google+ for your entire life and business history all of a sudden someone in your organization who has authority has decided you need to “get on social media,” by next Friday. This is the first in a series of posts written about being social versus doing social. (Social Media Today) September 16, 2011.

Show no fear for successful social media marketing

Brands need to have the confidence to be themselves if they’re going to succeed on social channels, says Pinkberry digital chief Pamela Naumes. The social media world changes so fast that authenticity and courage are a brand’s only guaranteed resources, Naumes says. “You need to be prepared to respond in a very authentic way. And you can’t be afraid,” she says. (Business Insider) September 12, 2011.

Facebook Marketing: The Four Biggest Blunders Hurting Your Brand

There is a strong and compelling business case for Facebook and plenty of evidence that the site can be used to drive traffic and sales. But CMOs and other execs are falling prey to a handful of blunders that have prevented them from capitalizing on the site’s potential. This post takes a look at the biggest four. (Ad Age Digital) September 13, 2011.

The 4-Hour Social Media Workweek

You need help with your social media usage. We all do. We generally fall into two camps. There are those of us that are either scared of, or indifferent toward, social media, and there are those of us that can’t get enough of it. Either way, we’re either not spending enough time leveraging social media for our businesses or we’re spending so much time talking about our business, we’re forgetting to run it! This post discusses a minimalist approach that maximizes efficiency while minimizing time sink (American Express Open Forum) September 15, 2011.

You No Longer Need 25 Fans To Get A Custom Page URL

Facebook used to require pages and individual users to have at least 25 friends in order to claim a customized address extension. That meant any newbie had to accept an ugly URL usually including a long number. No one can remember URLs like this and they’re too long to put on your marketing materials. Now you no longer need 25 friends for your profile or page to get an easier-to-remember address. (All Facebook) September 14, 2011.