The Growing Overlap of Search and Social Media

There's always been a relationship between social media and search engine optimization (SEO). For as long as there have been people gathering to create and share content, there have been search engines organizing and helping us find it all. And new evidence points to a growing overlap between search and social media, signalling the importance of a strategic relationship between the two online marketing channels. Are your search and social media efforts as coordinated as they could be?

Search and Social Media Successes

Success in search often looks different than success in social media. Social media blogging success can mean someone influential re-tweeting or liking links to your content, which creates brief, yet pronounced inflows of new visitors to your blog. Blog posts that succeed in the search engines build a semi-permanent trickle of visitors over time for certain keywords. While these successes can be exciting enough on their own, it's been often wondered if the two were related as well.

Search and Social Media Synergies

It's been much rumored over the last year that Google and Bing are using social signals from places like Twitter to better inform their search engine results. Recently Danny Sullivan over at Search Engine Land posted the most detailed explanation of how Google and Bing use data from Twitter and Facebook to adjust their search results. And it turns out that being popular in social media can help you in Google too.

Sullivan's interview revealed that search engines are now paying even more attention to how we share content on our social networks. Search engines originally used only links between websites as proxies for what we think is relevant and popular on the web. Now Google and Bing have all the links in our tweets as well, meaning that going viral on Twitter, Facebook and Digg will directly help your SEO efforts. And popularity of links is only one of many potential implications of Facebook and Twitter's influence on search.

Search and Social Media Reviews

Story number two that illustrates the growing overlap between search and social media comes from the fallout of the New York Times story, "A Bully Finds a Pulpit on the Web." It was reported that an online retailer selling designer eyewear actually improved in search engine rankings when its customers left negative reviews on the customer feedback site, Get Satisfaction. 

Google responded stating that it was actually all the "link juice" from publicity like the New York Times story that was helping the retailer to rank, not the negative reviews. They went on to explain that they'd gone the extra mile and tweaked their algorithm to look at the negative reviews for a vendor and factor them into how that retailer ranks in the search engine rankings moving forward. At this point I believe the retailer in the story is suffering from a serious lack of search engine traffic. The message is clear: there is no long-term business model that supports being a jerk on the web.

Baking in Search and Social Media

How have you been using search and social media together? What benefits have you seen from coordinating your efforts together when it comes to SEO and social media? What new tactics will you be testing as a result of the recent evidence showing the growing overlap of search and social media? I'd love to hear your thoughts on search and social media in the comments below.

4 Visual SEO Tools for Quick and Easy Keyword Research

A picture is worth a thousand words, right? The same is true in SEO. In a discipline with so many words and numbers, sometimes being able to visualize SEO concepts can help you find insights and make decisions more quickly. Today we'll take a look at four visual SEO tools that will speed up your keyword research process.

I typically blog about things like Squarespace, SEO and Google Analytics, but lately I've felt the urge to add another topic I'm sure is near and dear to all of our hearts, Justin Bieber.

But is this a smart move? Will it be a good fit for my current audience? Is there any potential for search engine traffic? What does the competition look like? I should probably do a little SEO homework first before plowing forward.

I could use a bunch of hardcore keyword research tools and do a full analysis, which I'd do for my main target keywords. Or I could us a few simple SEO visual tools to get a good idea of what I'm up against before I commit. The four visual SEO tools listed here are a quick and easy way to make well-informed content strategy decisions without spending a lot of time or effort.

1. Baseline Your Content: Wordle

If my goal is to start ranking for Justin Bieber, I better have a solid idea of where I stand currently. I have a better chance of ranking for Justin Bieber-related searches as I build up the related content on my site. I could dive into my Google Analytics Keyword Report and do some exhaustive research to see where I stand, or I could use a simple tool like Wordle.

Wordle is a great visual SEO tool because it provides you with a beautiful word cloud of the content on your site. Just enter your blog's RSS feed URL into Wordle and watch the main themes of your blog pop out as clear as day. I can quickly baseline my ability to rank for Justin Bieber.

How much Justin Bieber content does Big Picture Web have?

Big Picture Web's content, presented by Wordle.

Ouch. Looks like I might be in trouble.

2. Assess Your Ability to Create Content: Google Wonder Wheel

If I want to become the place on the web for Justin Bieber content, I better be able to deliver what people want. 

Wonder Wheel is one of my favorite Google secrets. Hiding innocently within the More search tools option on the left navigation of any Google search results page (Note: Instant Search must be turned off), Wonder Wheel is a tool that shows you the terms most closely related to a specific target term.

Wonder Wheel shows semantic relationship between search terms.It makes sense that a blog dedicated to Justin Bieber would feature information on his history, pictures and of course, his love life. Unfortunately I'm afraid I don't know the first thing about any of that.

3. Assess Your Potential SEO Traffic and Competition: Keyword Eye

At this point you could pull up the Google Keyword Research tool and start looking at columns stuffed with words and numbers to get an idea for potential traffic and competition. Or you could use a visual tool like Keyword Eye.  

Keyword Eye provides pretty much the same information as does the Google Keyword tool but lists all keywords across the main interface instead of a grid format. Keyword Eye renders the size of a search term according to its search volume. High-volume terms are huge. Long tail terms are tiny. A search terms competitiveness is indicated by color: red, yellow or green.

Keyword Eye has a pie chart and 3D function to help visualize SEO too.As you can see, there is a ton of potential and relatively little competition in the Justin Bieber world. Things are looking up! If only I were a fan, I'd be set.

4. Pay Attention to Trends: Google Insights for Search

I'm just about ready to pull the trigger on this whole blogging about Justin Bieber thing. The last thing I should do is to make sure that what I'm blogging about will have a little staying power. I'd hate to jump on the bandwagon after his popularity peaked. How embarrassing would that be?

Enter Google Insights for Search. See a search term's popularity over time and see if things are trending up or down. 

Google Insights is a powerful SEO research tool.On second thought, it looks like our Justin Bieber fever may have broken in April. Is this a dip until a new album comes out or has Google Insights predicted the slow and gradual decline of yet another pop star on the way out?

Four Tools. Four Minutes.

After taking a look at these four visual SEO tools - which took about four minutes - we were able to:

• Form a baseline
• Assess competition
• Gauge traffic potential
• Gauge competition
• See trends in popularity

Keep these tools in mind as you're thinking about your blog and content strategy. SEO can be daunting, but some smart research and helpful visual SEO tools can go a long way without a lot of effort.

How might you use these tools in your own blogging efforts? Is there a visual SEO tool that you recommend above all others? Did you find one not on this list? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Squarespace SEO Secrets You Should Know

I've been getting a lot of questions lately about Squarespace and SEO. Is Squarespace search engine friendly? Is Squarespace good for SEO? Can I rank my Squarespace website in the search engines? In a nutshell, yes, yes and yes. For a more detailed look into Squarespace SEO secrets for your site, read on.

As a professional SEO, I'll be the first to admit that search engine optimization is like digging a never-ending hole. You're simply never done optimizing because nothing is perfect. At some point, it takes more and more work to produce smaller and smaller results.

It's important to know when you've hit the proverbial 80/20 with any particular tactic, goal or content. It can be tricky finding that balance between producing content, and simply producing and fiddling with a much smaller quantity of said content. 

You want a web publishing platform that is SEO-friendly. But you also need to be able to publish quickly without jumping through extra hoops. 

Keep in mind this balance between creation and optimization as we continue looking into Squarespace's SEO.

Basic SEO Fundamentals

SEO primarily comes down to three things:

1. Accessibility - Can search engines find and properly crawl your website?
2. Content - Are your key search phrases effectively positioned in your content?
3. Links  - How many and what kind of websites are linking to your content?

There are countless SEO tactics on the books, but these are the three main buckets. Knowing how to make a few changes here and there to your Squarespace controls in these areas can have a dramatic positive effect on your SEO traffic.

Squarespace and Search Engine Accessibility

Having an accessible website is critical for good SEO. If search engines can't crawl, interpret and index your site, how are they supposed to know what to display in the search results? Squarespace's careful attention to the design of its web publishing platform is evident in several accessibility aspects:

• HTML and CSS. Unlike some platforms that heavily utilize iframes or Flash, Squarespace is built on a solid HTML and CSS platform. Search engines have little trouble reading the main content on your site because it's on a lightweight XHTML structure.
• (Click to see an article that was indexed in less than a minute.)Super fast indexing. Maybe it's Google's Caffeine update. Maybe it's Squarespace. But articles on this site are often in Google's index within 15 minutes of posting. What's not to love about lightning-fast indexing?
• XML sitemaps. XML sitemaps help Google find all the content on your site. It's easy to create an XML sitemap and upload it to your Squarespace site.
• Code minimalists. You want a site that is put together simply by a thoughtful minimalist combination of HTML and CSS. Squarespace does this for you, giving search engines more content and less code to read while they're crawling your site. Also, this allows your pages to load quickly, which is important to both search engines and your visitors.
• Robots.txt. Squarespace does a pretty good job of populating your Robots.txt file, which determines which pages on your site search engines shouldn't crawl (Tip: See your robots.txt file by visiting http://YOURACCOUNT.squarespace.com/robots.txt). While I wish Squarespace would let me edit my own Robots.txt file, I think they took a decent stab at creating one for me.

Creating SEO Content With Squarespace

It's my humble opinion that optimizing the on-page factors of your content is the easiest part of SEO because it's the part over which you have the most direct control.

• Page-level titles and descriptions. With Squarespace, you can change the page titles and descriptions on each page of your website (with a few minor exceptions like tags and categories pages). Having unique titles and compelling descriptions are important for SEO.
• Optimize Title Ordering. If you do one thing after reading this post, please optimize your Squarespace page title ordering. Doing this puts your site title after your page title within your page's title tag. To do this, go to Website Management -> Website Settings -> Search/Indexing within your admin controls. You'll find the Optimize Title Ordering option here. In fact, you might as well check everything under the Search Engine Parameters section, just to be safe.Adjust search engine settings in your Website Settings.
• A few page title exceptions. A few page types like folders and a galleries will automatically use your page header as your page title. Personally, I wish I could decouple this to tweak my headline and my page title independently on all page types. A little more forethought to create a page title that doubles as an effective headline can easily overcome this small Squarespace design nuance.
• Keyword-rich content. You're pretty much free to use keywords everywhere you typically are told to put them for positive SEO results: the title, throughout your page content, within anchor text of links, alt tags for images, you name it. Squarespace promotes great on-page SEO.
• A reminder for images. Squarespace  has a great image importer within its WYSIWYG controls but the one thing it lacks is a place to edit your image alt tags. It's a good idea to switch to HTML mode before publishing your content to manually add your alt tags as a work-around.

Getting Links to Your Squarespace Site

Link building is the elusive third aspect of SEO. Creating high quality links to your site is the only way to rank well for a search terms with any sort of competition. The thing about link building is that it almost never involves your website platform. Link building relies on a carefully planned internal and external linking strategy.

The only exception to this rule that I can think of is when it comes to 301 redirects, which allow you to signal to search engines when content has moved on your site. Squarespace has a nice SEO 301 redirect utility that does what is necessary to support changes to your site's architecture.Setting up SEO-friendly 301 redirects is a cinch on Squarespace.

Squarespace SEO: Your Thoughts

Overall, Squarespace has been excellent for Big Picture Web's SEO. What do you think of Squarespace's SEO capabilities? Does your site rank well or is your search engine traffic coming in at a trickle? Is there a tactic that works for you that I haven't listed here? By all means, share your perspective in the comments below.

A MN Blogger Conference Recap: Coffee, Directions and 20 Other Lessons

This past weekend I was among the 130+ extremely lucky people to be a part of the MN Blogger Conference. I initially didn't get a ticket because they sold out almost immediately. Then I missed another shot when I didn't win Top Rank's contest for a free pass. Finally, conference co-founder Arik Hanson took pity on me and let me volunteer my labor in exchange for a seat at the event. And after all that effort to get in, you bet I'm going to blog about my experience at the first-ever MN Blogger Conference.

If you were there Saturday, you probably saw me either directing foot traffic towards the CoCo entrance before the event or in the kitchen brewing coffee for the caffeine-craving blogging crowd.

If you think about it, I couldn't have asked for a better assignment from the impeccably well-organized Arik and his conference coordinating partner in crime, Missy Berggren.

Between the complete havoc that was the road construction on 4th St. in downtown Saint Paul and the fact that most bloggers love a good cup of fair-trade organic coffee in the morning (courtesy of Don Ball), I ended up thanking Arik and Missy  for the one-way street to a bunch of new friends and a chance to be a part of the MN Blogger Conference!

The Big List of Lessons Learned from the MN Blogger Conference

My head is still spinning from Saturday's event. I'm not sure there was a definitive theme, but there were countless perspectives, tactics and points of view that no doubt left everyone with a lot to think about. Let's come up with a list of all the lessons we learned. I'll start with this list of 20!

(I was only in 1/4 of the sessions so I'm going to need your help with this list. Make sure to leave any blogging tidbits of knowledge that you gained down in the comments.)

1. Blogging is about "unbridled narcissism," according to James Lileks. This joke got a huge laugh from the crowd in the opening keynote panel featuring popular Minnesota bloggers. What's that old saying about there being some truth in the best humor?
2. Clockwork President Nancy Lyons suggested that bloggers must think carefully about how much personal information they want to share because "the Internet is forever." Just exactly how much information is that? See #10.
3. Nancy also highlighted your blog's ability to help you establish credibility, regardless of how saturated your market may be.
4. It's practically a given that people will blog on Wordpress, which I think is a crying shame. Wordpress is a great for some, but there are many excellent blogging platforms out there. For example, I'm a user of and evangelist for Squarespace. I was particularly encouraged by Julio Ojeda-Zapata's breakout session, which featured a live Skype session with Leo Laporte (tech pundit/legend and advocate of Squarespace). If you're sick of Wordpress or still haven't picked your platform, make sure you consider Squarespace (You can hit me up with questions if you have them.).Julio Ojeda-Zapata talking about Squarespace!
5. Julio also pointed out the importance of being consistent with your personal brand. Use the same avatar/image and username across platforms/channels.
6. There are incredible deals on hand bags on the internet. James Lileks, you crack me up.
7. Bloggers are writers. There is no way around it. And writing isn't an ability, but rather a journey towards finding your voice and creating something that makes you proud. This point is thanks to my new friend and prolific blogger, Patrick Rhone. (I ordered On Writing by Stephen King this morning. Thanks for the tip and inspiration!).
8. And on that note, anyone can write. Teresa Boardman said it and she has a serious learning disability. Matt Logelin said it and he is a single dad, widower and self-admittedly types like a third grader. Anyone can write. Especially you.
9. Tony Saucier gave us this great quote to think about: "The next big thing in social media is journalism."
10. Affiliate marketing can be a great way to make extra money as a blogger, but it's important to consider moral and legal responsibilities when doing so. Each blogger is probably a little different in how they choose to participate and disclaim their involvement. For example, I chose not to embed an affiliate link to the book reference above because I haven't read it yet and can't recommend it. That's my stance on linking to products on Big Picture Web.
11. Jen Emmert added that she always asks for a giveaway for her readership if she's offered a product to review. I thought that was a great way to give back to your audience while still making a little extra on the side.
    A packed room at CoCo as the panel discusses compensation for blogging.
12. Heather King of The Extraordinary Ordinary suggested that you should share as much as you would tell your sister on your blog. 
13. Heather also suggested to listen to your heart's gut to know what to share and to how find your voice as a blogger.
14. The best blogging is a balance between niche and personality.
15. Bloggers are craving information on Google Analytics. Aaron Landry's session on the free web analytics platform attracted a ton of the conference attendees, all of whom were taking notes furiously as Landry spoke. (As it just so happens, friends, I also write about Google Analytics. Hit me with your questions and I'd be glad to help you out.)
16. 20% of conference attendees are building on rented land. According to the list of conference attendees put together by Ian Schwartz, 15 of the 72 unique blogs on the list are on a sub-domain instead of their own domain (e.g., <name>.blogspot.com instead of <name>.com). I can't think of a good reason not to be on  your own domain. Just saying.
17. Diane Kulseth will probably never need a resume or Careerbuilder.com. Diane's still in college and yet has a social media internship, blogs and attends industry events like the MN Blogger Conference. I wish I would have had the sense to do all these things ten years ago. If you're not engaged with your professional community, you're missing out... big time
18. Conferences are a great place to meet your online friends. After months of trading tweets and blog comments with the likes of David Erickson, Rick Mahn, Adam Singer, Joel Carlson, etc., etc., etc., I finally got a chance to meet these fine folks. Social media is great, but nothing beats a handshake, a good laugh and a great,synchronous conversation.
19. The human struggle is universal and you are never alone on the Internet. Thanks to Heather King and Matt Logelin for that point.
20. Volunteering is an underrated. Being a volunteer for the MN Blogger Conference felt like having a back-stage pass for the simple price of moving some chairs around and helping folks out throughout the day. Consider me signed up to volunteer at the next one too. Dibs on brewing the coffee. The coffee setup at CoCo on 4th St. in Saint Paul.

I could probably keep rattling off takeaways, but I'd like to hear your thoughts too. What was your favorite moment of the conference? What are you most happy to have learned/experienced? Also, how can Big Picture Web help you with future blog posts about Squarespace, Google Analytics or SEO? Leave a comment below and keep the excitement alive from the MN Blogger Conference.

10 Advanced Twitter Search Tips to Cut Through the Noise

Have you ever tried to use Twitter's search engine to find new followers, monitor a brand or just plain find news/information? Have you been overwhelmed by the number of irrelevant results you get? With over 65 million tweets per day and now over 20 billion total tweets, the noise on Twitter is growing every day. As someone who works with search engines, I'm always looking for ways to use advanced search options to find what I'm looking for. Today we'll take a look at advanced twitter search tips to cut through the Twitter search results noise.

Advanced Twitter Search Tips

Using advanced Twitter search is easy and can be a great way to find the right kind of people to follow in your market. You can also hone in news and information in your niche.

The search screen is made up of a number of different search options, grouped into categories (e.g., finding tweets by content, from certain people, from certain locations, etc.). To cut through the noise, simply use a strategic combination of search terms and the advanced Twitter search fields to hone in on the tweets that matter to you. Let's take a look. Each bolded link opens a screenshot of the search in a new window.

1. Find people with questions that you can answer. This tip is courtesy of one of my favorite sources for Internet marketing insights, Christopher S. Penn. To perform this search, enter a key term of interest to you (e.g., "Internet marketing") in the This exact phrase field. Then enter words that signal intent such as "anyone, suggest, help" into the Any of these words field. Finally, check the Asking a question? checkbox. This is an extremely effective way to find quality new people to follow.
2. Find new jobs in your area. This one is easy. Put specific job titles in the All of these words field. (You could also use Any of these words if you wanted to shotgun it). Put "job posting" in the This exact phrase field.
3. Find folks near you with similar interests. Take advantage of the Places options in the advanced Twitter search interface to filter tweets to a certain area.
4. See photos of bad weather rolling into your area as it happens. Use "twitpic.com" within the The exact phrase field. Add storm-related terms to the Any of these words field. Use Places and Dates to further narrow your search (Pro tip: add additional Twitter photo services to your search net by using the OR Twitter search operator.).
5. Avoid bad traffic on the drive to and from work. Combine commute-related terms with your normal travel routes in the Any of these words field. This is a good example to point out the benefit of negative filters. Including the word "traffic" in my search will typically bring a lot of SEO-related results. Since I want to know about vehicle traffic, I can filter out web-related terms using the None of these words field. Once again, using Places and Dates will you help with this advanced twitter search as well.
6. See when those who inspire you create new work. Create a search to show you when there's something new in a topic that interests you. In this example, I've created a search to filter only tweets from specific people who create new Squarespace websites (If you're looking for a great blogging platform, be sure to check out my review of Squarespace).
7. Play around with hashtags. Create a mixture of your favorite hashtags to consolidate the number of columns in your Tweetdeck or streams in your Hootsuite dashboard.
8. Find the best photos on the web. Combine the Twitpic.com trick with words like "beautiful, gorgeous and amazing" in the Any of these words field.
9. Find new local friends. Combine the Places filters with hashtags in your key interest area to find new people that are close to you both in interest and proximity.
10. See the web's funniest videos. The last advanced Twitter search tip locates uses humor-related terms in the Any of these words field and "video" in the This exact phrase field. 

Share your Advanced Twitter Search Tips

One last tip: once you've found a killer search, make sure you bring it over to Google Reader in the form of an RSS feed. Now it's your turn. What tips do you have for using Twitter's advanced search options? Is there one in particular from the list you're eager to try? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts.