In the meantime, here’s a mini-guide for building buzz and traffic to a website to help out those who have found themselves thrust into the online marketing world.

1. Move your press releases online: Chances are you’re doing this already (if you aren’t you should be!). Today’s press releases need to be focused on keywords so that the search engines can find and index them easily. Many of the distribution sites allow clickable links and anchor text – Voila!, instant quality links back to your website of choice. PRWeb is the biggest name (and priciest!), the team here at Stone really loves OnlinePRNews.com! You get the ability to add up to three anchor text links, not to mention video etc., for a fraction of the price.
2. Twitter: Get a profile or, if you have one already, start updating it. Nielson has said that 60% of people who sign up for twitter post once and then never return. What’s the point? For Twitter to be a valuable strategy you have to commit to becoming a resource in your industry. This means that is it is important to ‘tweet’ information that people will actually find useful (they don’t necessarily care what you had for lunch today). Twitter pays off when you take the time to build up a group of followers who value your opinions and look to you for information, in short they trust you. The best part, it’s ok to promote yourself and clients (within reason & with disclosure). Twitter can be a great source of traffic to the content you have elsewhere. FYI – you can follow us here: @StoneIG
3. Create a Resource List: Create quality content on your website or blog is a must, and creating a resource list is a great way to do this. Examples of resources could include free tools, magazines and blogs relevant to your industry, or case studies and white papers that would be valuable to your potential customers. Make sure that the resource list is targeted and industry specific. Not only will customers appreciate the information, chances are others in the industry will find the information valuable and link to it as well.
4. Article Syndication: Create great content that doesn’t go directly on your website. It sounds backwards, but writing articles on your industry or products and submitting them to the plethora of article sites and directories will get you lots of links. You relinquish a bit of control on your piece, but the pay-off is worth it. Websites and online content publishers grab articles and re-publish them constantly. By submitting a quality article 2 or 3 times you can get 100 links back to your site.
5. Top 10 lists: It’s called ‘link bait’ and it is good. Whether it be Top 10, 50, 100 or 5 (see what we did here), lists tend to be fan favorites when it comes to earning links. Lists can also give you valuable ‘expert status’ when packaged correctly. They can also be a start to a series, giving you automatic ideas for future blog posts or articles. They can be about anything, and as silly or serious as you’d like. Doesn’t matter the industry, lists are always good. Hair Salon – Top 10 Cuts for Fall. Law office – The Top 20 Craziest Lawsuits in History. Restaurant – Top 50 Things You Can Use a Spork For. People even makes lists of lists (I kid you not) Make it unique and interactive, a good discussion post will bring in comments and links for quite some time.

photo from here by Shane Michael
and post adapted from our Public Relations site.

Warm Colors

Warm colors include red, orange, and yellow and variations of those three colors. These are the colors of fire, fall leaves, sunsets and sunrises, and are generally energizing, passionate and positive. Use warm colors in your designs to reflect passion, happiness, enthusiasm and energy.

Red

In design, red can be a powerful accent color. It can have an overwhelming effect if it’s used too much in designs, especially in its purest form. It’s a great color to use when power or passion want to be portrayed in the design. Red can be very versatile, though, with brighter versions being more energetic and darker shades being more powerful and elegant.

The true red accents stand out against the dark black background, and give a powerful and high-end feeling to the site.

Orange

Orange commands attention in design without being as overpowering as red. It’s often considered more friendly and inviting, and less in-your-face.

The bright orange box draws attention to its contents, even with the other bright red elements on the page.

Yellow

Bright yellow can lend a sense of happiness and cheerfulness. Softer yellows are commonly used as a gender-neutral color for babies (rather than blue or pink) and young children.

Light yellows also give a more calm feeling of happiness than bright yellows. Dark yellows and gold-hued yellows can sometimes look antique and be used in designs where a sense of permanence is desired.

The bright yellow header and graphics used throughout this site give a sense of energy and positivity.

Cool Colors

Cool colors include green, blue, and purple, are often more subdued than warm colors. They are the colors of night, of water, of nature, and are usually calming, relaxing and somewhat reserved. Use cool colors in your designs to give a sense of calm or professionalism.

Green

Green can have a balancing and harmonizing effect, and is very stable. It’s appropriate for designs related to wealth, stability, renewal and nature. Brighter greens are more energizing and vibrant, while olive greens are more representative of the natural world. Dark greens are the most stable and representative of affluence.

The extremely muted greens of this site give it a very down-to-earth and natural feeling.

Blue

The exact shade of blue you select will have a huge impact on how your designs are perceived. Light blues are often relaxed and calming. Bright blues can be energizing and refreshing. Dark blues are excellent for corporate sites or designs where strength and reliability are important.

The light, muted blue of this site gives a very relaxed and calm impression.

Purple

Dark purples can give a sense of wealth and luxury. Light purples are softer and are associated with spring and romance.

The dark shade used here evokes the royal heritage of purple, which is very appropriate for the Asprey luxury goods brand.

Neutrals

Neutral colors often serve as the backdrop in design. They’re commonly combined with brighter accent colors. But they can also be used on their own in designs, and can create very sophisticated layouts. The meanings and impressions of neutral colors are much more affected by the colors that surround them than are warm and cool colors.

Black

Black is commonly used in edgier designs, as well as in very elegant designs. It can be either conservative or modern, traditional or unconventional, depending on the colors it’s combined with. In design, black is commonly used for typography and other functional parts, because of it’s neutrality. Black can make it easier to convey a sense of sophistication and mystery in a design.

The strong black accents on this site add to the overall sophistication of the design.

White

In design, white is generally considered a neutral backdrop that lets other colors in a design have a larger voice. It can help to convey cleanliness and simplicity, though, and is popular in minimalist designs. White in designs can also portray either winter or summer, depending on the other design motifs and colors that surround it.

White backgrounds are very popular on minimalistic sites, and provide great contrast to black typography.

Gray

Gray is generally conservative and formal, but can also be modern. It’s commonly used in corporate designs, where formality and professionalism are key. It can be a very sophisticated color. In design, gray backgrounds are very common, as is gray typography.

The grayish-brown here lends a sense of responsibility and dependability.

Brown

Brown is commonly used as a background color. It’s also seen in wood textures and sometimes in stone textures. It helps bring a feeling of warmth and wholesomeness to designs. It’s sometimes used in its darkest forms as a replacement for black, either in backgrounds or typography.

The orangish-brown here gives a very earthy and dependable feeling.

Beige & Tan

Beige in design is generally used in backgrounds, and is commonly seen in backgrounds with a paper texture. It will take on the characteristics of colors around it, meaning it has little effect in itself on the final impression a design gives when used with other colors.

The beige header background and other accents on the site lend a refined and traditional feeling to the overall design.

Cream & Ivory

Ivory can lend a sense of elegance and calm to a site. When combined with earthy colors like peach or brown, it can take on an earthy quality. It can also be used to lighten darker colors, without the stark contrast of using white.

The grayish-cream background here is made warmer by the orangish-brown accents.

1. Justin Bieber – The young Canadian R&B/pop singer is trending these days because his new song, “Never Let You Go,” was released for download on iTunes this week, as well as a duet with Sean Kingston, and an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” He also had his birthday March 1st.
2. Olympics - The 2010 Winter Olympics from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada ended last Sunday. There was a flurry of Twitter activity around the gold medal hockey games for both men and women.
3. Jonas Brothers - Fans of the Jonas Brothers from both Europe and South America wanted the band to tour there, a fan of theirs died in the Chilean earthquake, and Joe Jonas and Demi Lovato’s new song “Make a Wave” premiered Radio Disney.
4. BBC - People are tweeting about The BBC Trusts’ decision to close DAB stations 6music, Asian Network and to cut back on program spending by as much as 25%. Kristian Digby, host of BBC daytime TV show “To Buy or Not To Buy,” was also found dead at his home.
5. Twitter - Twitter trended due to crossing the 10 Billion tweet mark, users experiencing frozen timelines, William Shatner playing the dad in a tv show based on the Twitter account @shitmydadsays, and a @mashable post about Twitter’s valuation.
6. Alice in Wonderland – Tim Burton’s eagerly anticipated movie, “Alice in Wonderland”, opens in cinemas worldwide March 4th and 5th; starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway.
7. Galpao 29 - A Brazilian band that appears to have sent Twitter direct messages with links as part of a flawed marketing strategy.
8. #BETmessedUpWhen – People explaining when the network BET stopped entertaining its viewers. This topic was originally started by @spokenreasons.
9. #MeWithoutYouIsLike – MeWithoutYou is actually a band, and people are misinterpreting it to mean something else.
10. Bad Girls Club - TV show on the Oxygen network (USA) that follows seven girls living in a house with crazy and wild personalities.

Source: Advertising Age, adage.com

Building a Company with Social Media

But sometimes it’s not so bad. When a designer takes the time to create a custom 404 page it adds to the user experience. Sure, you’re still a little annoyed you haven’t found what you were looking for – but running into an error page that’s funny or creative or just plain great to look at lessens the blow a bit. You might even stick around and give it another go instead of bouncing right off the site.

We love well done custom 404 pages – here are 35 of our favorites for your inspiration!

Tweets are a main component of Google’s real-time search results, but up until now there was very little information available about the algorithm used to rank these microblog posts.  One factor of their ranking doesn’t really surprise those in the SEO industry, as it is similar to Google’s PageRank technology used for websites in traditional search. Basically, Google judges the value of a website by looking at it’s link structure – how many links on the web are pointing to the site, and the number of pages linking to those linkers. The same is true for their ranking of tweets, just replace the word ‘link’ in the previous sentence with the word ‘follower’. Of course, quality comes into play as well – the better the reputation of any given follower, the better your reputation is as well.

“You earn reputation, and then you give reputation. If lots of people follow you, and then you follow someone–then even though this [new person] does not have lots of followers,” his tweet is deemed valuable because his followers are themselves followed widely, Singhal says.

He’s quick to point out it is not a popularity contest, but it sure seems that way. Granted, judging number of followers may seem a good indicator of the level of clout one person has, but this model doesn’t take into account ‘tweet’ of originality. Say a small time reporter breaks a big story and tweets about it from their personal account, and then CNN tweets it from theirs – CNN will get the credit, while the reporter responsible for the news gets lost in the shuffle. Also, social media is a different ballgame than traditional websites, and using this rank method may not transfer well. If I place a link on my website to another page it is a very clear sign that I do, in fact, endorse that page – which may not be the case for all the people I follow. For example, I may follow competitors to keep track of my industry when I would never link to their site directly. Hopefully as real-time search develops Google will come up with a better way to deal with the Twitter account reputation factor.

Google has also developed a way to determine which tweets should show up for more common terms, such as celebrity names or current event keywords. The idea being to weed out spam and low quality tweeting from appearing in the results.  A common practice on twitter is to include  hashtags – basically the # sign following by the topic keyword. It’s a great way of keeping tweets about the same topic connected, and to get your tweet seen by those following the conversation. Unfortunately the practice that began as a useful organizational idea has been abused by spammers, and Google has determined it could be a red-flag marker of lower quality tweets.

Also, Google is scanning to find the “signal in the noise” to help sort through the tweets from different sources and viewpoints to determine the most up to the minute, relevant tweets for these popular terms.  They are essentially looking for a sudden influx of similar tweets, for example tweets that mention ‘hospital’ along with ‘Lady GaGa’,  and consider that evidence that the particular event mentioned is most relevant.

While real-time search encompasses many things and Google has intentions to continue refining their real-time results, Twitter updates are currently a major component. It’s nice to have the ranking factors those in SEM assumed were affecting tweet placement confirmed by the source.

If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

That’s what Google CEO Eric Schmidt said when responding to concerns raised about internet privacy and recent updates to the search engine.  The comment created a mini firestorm, with internet industry blogs and forums lighting up in discussion…  And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Over the last couple of weeks Google has made quite a few announcements that are rapidly changing the game for users and search marketers alike – and they are doing so pretty much under the radar.

The most noticeable change for the average user was Google’s inclusion of Real-time Search, currently in the form of “relevant” tweets.  You can read Google’s official announcement for the basics, the general idea being that users can now get an idea of what is happening right this second in regard to any given subject.  Seems like a good idea in theory, but check out this post from Rae Hoffman of Outspoken Media for a surprisingly scary look into how Google’s solution could go very very wrong.

The second change was the universal roll out of personalized search.  Until very recently, Google returned pretty much the same results for everyone. Meaning, if user A ran a query and user B ran the same query, they would get back the same results. This simply isn’t the case anymore. Again, I’ll point to Google’s official announcement of this to explain how it works. In a nutshell, Google now keeps track of your search history (for 180 days) and uses that to customize your results, whether you are logged in or not.  Sort of makes you view Eric Schmidt’s glib comment about internet privacy in a whole new light.

Now, personalized search results are not new. They were available previously as an opt-in service for those users with a Google account, this change makes personalized results the norm for every user, or, opt-out.  The problem with this is that the only mention of this change was a blog post, the one I pointed to above…that’s it. No space on the search pages announcing the change, no easily identifiable opt-out button, nothing.  A user would have to spot the ‘View Customizations’ link, or the ‘Web History’ link up at the top to realize that tracking is being used to customize – neither are particularly visible, and the average user won’t be that clued in. To me, and to many others in the industry blogging about these changes, it seems a little too ‘Big Brother’.

So what does all this mean for your SEO campaigns?

Rest assured, the ‘normal’ search results are dead.  For better or worse, the way Google handled this announcement ensures that very few users will opt-out of personalized results. However, the reality of the situation is that ‘normal’ results have been dying for a while now, and many of us saw these changes coming in one form or another.

The main strategies of your SEO campaigns won’t drastically change. At least in the beginning, there will still be tons of queries that return ‘normal’ results – until Google gathers enough data for users to personalize them.  Even when results are personalized, Google will still use their algorithm to rank those sites, and you’ll want to optimize so you have a chance of getting that top spot for any user.  First impressions are now more critical than ever, as the more a user clicks on your site from their results, the more likely it is you’ll jump to the top of that list.

There’s a lot of debate right now about whether these changes have Google moving down a dangerous path. In response to the privacy issue Mozilla’s Director of Community Development put up a blog post inviting users to switch to Bing.  It’s a big deal.  But it can be (and has been) argued that Google has a monopoly on the search industry, and as such I don’t see many users jumping ship because of these changes – especially when you consider the fact many won’t know about them.

Banner n is not a new issue, it has been around as long as there has been web sites.  One of the reasons that people seem immune to the banners on your site could be that you expect them to “see” the banner as content for the site.  Recently I had a conversation with a client that wanted to put product information in the banner space on the side of the page. The reason was because they didn’t want to overwhelm the customer with information in the content area on the page and lose a sale.  (thankful, after many conversations we did NOT do this)

Many different researchers have concluded that the users eye will go to the content area of the page first even before they look at navigation.  No matter what colors, fonts or how large the banners are, customers equate banners as promotions and they get ignored.  Customers are tired of being burned with pop up banners that are unnecessarily distrating and not having the information they are interested in.

While this is a common issue that you can run into on your site, you should by no means discount banner ads all together. Well placed and  well worded banners will still attract the people you would like. Tips you should keep in mind:

1. Dont use the same banner on every page, this really will increase banner blindness.

2. Using links within your banners will give the banner the feel that the information is important.

3. Dont put content in the banner that is critical or and extension to the content on the page. (While you can use this area for complimentary information or for the logical next step you want a user to take, you dont want to have this be the only place for key info on the page)

4. Think about what the real goal of the banner is and design and distribute appropriately.

While we aren’t going to remove banner blindness anytime soon, there are ways to increase the usefulness of the banner location and how you display reasonable next steps for your customers.

In his post Six Social Media Trends for 2010, David Armano says…

With groups, lists and niche networks becoming more popular, networks could begin to feel more “exclusive.” Not everyone can fit on someone’s newly created Twitter list and as networks begin to fill with noise, it’s likely that user behavior such as “hiding” the hyperactive updaters that appear in your Facebook news feed may become more common. Perhaps it’s not actually less social, but it might seem that way as we all come to terms with getting value out of our networks — while filtering out the clutter.

This makes sense, paring down your networks can allow you to get real value out of them. But now Sean Silverthorne at Bnet is asking what does this mean for all the companies flocking to social media as a marketing tactic?  Well, as so often is the case, if you’re doing it right it shouldn’t matter.

Yes, the fact that your target audience is paring down their network connections will undoubtedly make them harder to reach. Sending out a few intermittent tweets and counting on your customers to find and connect with you on their own just won’t cut it.  Social Media has become such a big trend that it may seem like the answer – or that easy button from the Staples commercials – when in reality it is simply just another tool in the toolbox. Companies who have success in the space realize this, and use the social media networks as tools to build up a loyal customer base – and actually continue to interact with them regularly. Which is why they make the grade the next time that particular customer goes to clean out his or her network. It’s about becoming a relevant resource and providing real value to your followers/customers.

Which is what quality online marketing teams have been telling their clients all along.

There’s really no excuse for not having goal tracking set up within your analytics account. It’s essential to know how your SEO strategies are improving your site’s overall performance and your online marketing ROI. Setting up goals will allow you to judge this, not just by visits, but by the actions those visitors take.

Each profile in your account can have up to four “goal sets”, each of these sets can contain up to five goals.  In addition to the standard URL destination goal, analytics now has the option to track engagement goals – such as time on site and pages per visit.

URL Destination Goal Tracking

This type of goal is used when you want to know how many visitors came to a specific page on your site.  Webmasters can use this method for something as simple as keeping track of how many people visited a blog page.  It can also be used to track form submissions or registrations by entering the ‘thank you’ or confirmation page as the URL goal. When you set up a URL destination goal you have a choice between 3 different ‘Goal Types’, also known as ‘match types’. The type of goal that is appropriate will vary based on how your website is built and the page you are interested in tracking. Here’s a basic breakdown to help you decide which type is best for your goal:
Exact Match – to use this type of goal the URL entered as your goal must match the URL shown in the reports exactly. For example, if you want to track the page www.mysite/contact-us_thank-you.html, you need to enter /contact-us_thank-you.html as your goal.
Head Match – use this type of goal when the URL is the same for this step of the goal, but is followed by unique session or user identifiers.  Enter the URL but leave out the unique values. For example, if you want to track www.mysite.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&id=528, but the ‘id’ changes for each user, just enter ‘//checkout.cgi?page=1′. This will cause the goal to be counted no matter what id number is assigned.
Regular Expression Match – use this type to match your URLs. This is useful when the url is dynamically generated and can vary between users. For example, if a user could be coming from one of many subdomains, and your URLs use session identifiers, use regular expressions to define the constant element of your URL. For instance, ‘page=1′ will match ’sports.mysite.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&id=002,’ and ‘football.mysite.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&language=fr&id=19.‘

Time on Site Goal Tracking

A new goal available in Analytics is the Time on Site goal. This allows webmasters to create goals based on how long users stay on their site using hours, minutes and/or seconds.  For example, if you notice that visitors tend to become customers if they spend more than 5 minutes on the site, it may be worth keeping data on those visits that last. In this case you would simply select ‘Time on Site’ as the Goal Type and select greater than 5 minutes as the goal. You can also track visits that last less than a determined length of time.

Pages per Visit Goal Tracking

The pages per visit goal allows webmasters to keep track of visits that browse through a specific number of pages. Also known as ‘depth of visit’, this information can be valuable when determining how engaging your site is. Options of ‘more than’, ‘equal to’ or ‘less than’ a number of visits are available so you can completely customize how you’d like to use this goal.

While the data for these engagement goals has been available in Analytics for quite some time it’s nice to be able to set them up as goals and gain the ability to analyze it further. Obviously this is just a basic overview – there are many way to customize and break down your goal data, such as using filters, funnels, advanced segments and custom reporting. Google Analytics is a wonderful (not to mention free!) tool, stay tuned to the Stone blog for more tips, tricks and updates on using the program wisely down the road.

image from here