Archive for April, 2008

This post is meant to provide further detail to the strategy, creative, and optimization tactics used in a Reputation Management campaign. Your actual Campaign objectives, Tactics, and Success Metrics could be different than the ones I use here as examples.

Campaign Objectives:
1) Primary:
- Ensuring an online presence on all the top social networking websites.
2) Secondary:
- To control the information served by Google. To dominate the Search Results with webpages we create.

Tactics:
1) Optimizing the corporate website.
2) Internal linking strategy.
3) Have multiple web properties linking to your Target URL.
4) Bidding on name in Google, Yahoo, MSN.
5) Use Naymz - Naymz is an innovative Reputation Network that lets you establish and promote your good name online.
6) Increasing Link Popularity:
7) Paid Blogger Reviews
If necessary throw links at the blogger reviews.
9) Creating profile pages on the top social media websites. Building a robust profile page, and interacting with the community on each of the Social networking sites.
10) Creating forum posts, and profiles. Leveraging the use of the Title tag on forum threads. Identify strong forums. More info: Optimizing Title tags.
11) Leveraging the use of the Title tag on sites like: Rollyo and Wikipedia.
12) Personal Blog development
13) Choice of username when creating profiles: Firstname Lastname, or Firstname-Lastname depending on the site.

Target URL: http://www.mydomain.com/target-url

Measurement requirements:
1) Install Web Analytics tracking code on website, and ensure the Target URL is tagged properly.

Material needed:
1) Photo to use as profile photo, and avatar.

List of Social Networking Sites:
Linkedin
Facebook
Myspace
Digg
Stumbleupon
Youtube
Propeller.com
Delicious
Reddit
flickr
last.fm
Fark
Furl
Squidoo
Technorati
Buzznet

Reputation Monitoring Tools:
BlogPulse
Technorati
Cymphony
Moreover
Trackur
Google Web Search
Google Alerts

Success Metrics:
1) When somebody does a search for “Firstname Lastname” on any of the top social media sites, your official profile page should appear. Not any slanderous false pages.
2) Your Target URL to appear as the 1st position in the SERP’s.
3) Eliminate any bad press in the Search Results.

Next Steps:
Optimize corporate website.
Begin building profile pages.
Create a strategic link popularity campaign using blogger reviews.
Build a PPC campaign for Google, Yahoo, MSN.
Build a Naymz profile.

Campaign Review (Bi-Weekly):
First review on *Date*.

A good SEO Consultant should be able to craft the strategy & execute a Reputation Management campaign. Although, some clients might be more comfortable retaining the services of a dedicated Reputation Management specialist who even wrote a book about the subject.

Additional Sources:
The Future of PR is Participation, Not Pitching
Future of Online PR and Reputation Management
Reputation Management Emancipation Proclamation
Online Reputation Management Beginner’s Guide

Between Passover, and getting the flu I haven’t had the opportunity to post in the last week. I’m getting over the flu, just like Barry. I guess it’s going around. So, naturally my energy levels have been a little lower than normal. So, when I got the question: Does size matter for Header tags in regards to Search Engine Ranking? Does an Unformatted H1 tag really make a difference, or can you use CSS to scale down font? I decided to just have a conversation with my friend Avi.

In my opinion its okay to use CSS to change the font color, or style, but I think its a bad idea to change the font size.

However since an H1 tag in raw format looks like crap. I agree with “Design People” that using the H1 in it’s native format certainly can look ugly. Here are a few things you can do that should make the “Design People” happy.

There is no need to reduce the size of the header tag. Just change the color and font style. I say this because I think size has an impact with regards to importance of keyword ranking.

Perhaps it’s okay to scale it down a little bit. But to make an H1 in size 8 font is probably not a good idea.

Here are a few good examples of an H1 where the color and font style have been modified, but NOT the size:
http://www.businesslicenses.com
http://www.markdavidny.com/rentals/murray.hill/0br/259688
http://www.qualitybath.com/browse~category~Bathroom+Vanities~dept~422.htm

And here is great looking unformatted H1: http://www.homeandstone.com/cats.cfm?Group_ID=40

Does anyone have any other examples?

Additional Resources:
Hiding H1 font size in CSS
H1 SEO Rules
Font Size Examples
H1 vs Font Size +3

I asked 2 questions via email to a few thought leaders that specialize in the fields of Search Marketing, Social Media, Reputation Management, and Internet Marketing.

1) Should a CEO’s Blog need approval from legal before posting?
2) What if it’s his personal blog? Would the same hold true for opinions, forecasts, etc regarding his industry?

Kevin Lee - CEO of Didit:
“CEOs are constantly interviewing with analysts, press and making speeches at conferences, all of which are documented. They should be well trained in what can and can’t be said. A blog is no different and “legal” should not need to babysit the CEO online or offline. However, if the CEO has proven him/herself to be a loose cannon, perhaps some second party should advise on blog posts as well as during interviews.” Buy Kevin’s Book“The Eyes Have It”.

Andy Beal CEO of Marketing Pilgrim says, “Best not. Have legal help draft up guidelines of what CEO shouldn’t say–anything material–then let him use own due diligence.”

My preference is to not force a CEO to have each of his posts reviewed by the company’s legal department. There are many reasons to avoid such a step, with slowing down the conversation and removing personal tone of a blog post being the most important.

Instead, I would advise a CEO to sit down with his legal and public relations team and craft a general blogging policy that includes guidelines of what the CEO will and won’t discuss. This allows the legal and PR teams share their expertise and counsel, while giving the CEO freedom to post as and when he’s inspired.

How much should a CEO hold back in his blog posts? That depends on the size and status of a company. A small, privately held company CEO can raise his profile by being edgy or critical in his posts. Meanwhile, the CEO of a large, publicly traded company would be wise to be more reserved and consider the ramifications of what he has to say.

What if it’s his personal blog? Would the same hold true for opinions, forecasts, etc regarding his industry?

“Absolutely. The CEO of a company is the CEO 24/7 and even an opinion expressed on his personal blog could be construed as the official stance of the company he represents–despite any disclaimer he may have to the contrary.”

Buy Andy’s new book:Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online.

Chris Winfield -CEO of 10e20 says:
“Depends on the company…if its going to be anything worth reading - then NO, the CEO should know what he should or should not say. If he doesn’t - he shouldn’t be blogging. Noone is going to read it the other way.

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land says:

I guess I’d say that if you’re at a company where legal clears any type of publication, then yes, a blog falls under that. But if legal doesn’t clear each and everything that the CEO says or writes, nope!

What if it’s his personal blog? Can he still write his opinions, forecasts, etc about his industry?

” I think you’d need a lawyer to say. I imagine that he could comment generally on his industry but anything deemed relevant to shareholders would need to be shared through official company channels and perhaps filed with the SEC.”

Here is a variety of CEO blogs:
Rob Norman - CEO GroupM Interaction.
Bob Parsons - CEO of GoDaddy.
Richard Edelman — CEO of Edelman
Greg Hartnett - CEO of BOTW (Best of the Web).
David Neeleman - Chairman of JetBlue Airways.
Jonathan Schwartz, “Jonathan’s Blog” — CEO of Sun Microsystems.
Mark Cuban, - Owner of the Dallas Mavericks.
Robert Lutz, “Fast Lane” — GM vice chairman
Matt Heaton - CEO of Bluehost

It’s interesting to look at the different styles, conversational tone, and strategy of each of these CEO blogs. Also, some have taken the time and resources to build out a highly interactive and usable blog platform, while others are satisfied with the the basics of Wordpress.

For example, Rob Norman who works for a large agency has not leveraged his blog to showcase the talent of his agencies. Heck, it’s not even on his own domain. He doesn’t link on his blogroll to any of his agencies. Nobody comments. No Social Media icon buttons. A little scary for the CEO of a conglomorate of interactive agencies.

As opposed to Bob Lutz’s GM Blog. The GM “Fastlane Blog” has a Twitter feed, Blogroll, prominant RSS subscribe buttons, recent entries, Digg buttons, plenty of comments, and just looks great.

In my opinion, if the CEO is going to start blogging, it might as well look great and adhere to as many of the Best Practices of Blogging as possible. Especially if the CEO is the Chief Blogger.

In Summary:
The components that make for a great CEO blog:
1) Prep from legal and corporate communications.
2) Development team ( Project Mgr, Graphic Designer, Programmer).
3) Sticking to the same Best Practices of Blogging as everyone else.
4) The drive, desire, and passion to be a blogger.

The Conversion Funnel consists of 3 parts. Keywords can be segmented into these three segments:
1) Awareness
2) Consideration
3) Purchase
* See graphical representation of the conversion funnel below post.

Keyword Segments:

1) Awareness:
Keywords are broad. Medium priced CPC’s, and high impressions.
Low amount of terms.
Consumer intention is to find information about product category, options, decision criteria.
Search volume is high.
Search competition is medium.
Conversion rate is low.

2) Consideration:
Keywords are targeted. Higher priced CPC’s, and medium impressions.
Medium amount of terms.
Consumer has filtered list of purchase criteria. Consumer intention is to track and compare purchase criteria.
Search volume is Medium.
Search competition is High.
Conversion rate is Medium.

3) Purchase:
Keywords are highly targeted. Low priced CPC’s, and Low impressions.
Large amount of terms.
Consumer is committed to purchase and ready to buy.
Search volume is Low.
Search competition is Low.
Conversion rate is High.

Keyword Strategy:
To increase conversions create Dynamic Landing Pages based on Search Terms.

Additional Sources:
The eCommerce Conversion Funnel, Part One.
Four Funnel ratios.
Landing Page conversion.
People enter and exit the funnel at multiple points.