Hardcore SEO & Social Power Tools

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The room is packed for Hardcore SEO & Social Power Tools

Bruce Clay is giving the sponsored mention. We’ve been around since 1996. Before Google. Anybody here remember 1996?

Moderator: Monica Wright, Social Media Editor, Search Engine Land and Marketing Land (@monicawright)

Q&A Moderator: Vince Blackham, Director of Social Media, 97th Floor (@vinceblackham)

Speakers:

Rhea Drysdale, CEO, Outspoken Media, Inc. (@rhea)
Michael King, Director of Inbound Marketing, iAcquire (@ipullrank)
Merry Morud, Account Manager, aimClear (@MerryMorud)

For more on this session search #smx #14C on Twitter.

Michael King

Michael King is leading off. [Last time I saw Michael we were on the same Link Building panel at SMX Israel]

iacq.co/toolspullrank3

I’m a programmer and an SEOmoz associate. If you think I have biases because of those things, you’re right.

I agree with Matt Cutts for the second time in my life [what was the first time?] The ability to write code is a super power in today’s society. It’s true.

iAcquire is not a tool. It’s not a link network. That’s why there was nothing for Google to ban. [Recently a big story about how Google banned iAcquire for being a link buying network].

Used to be brute-force outreach. Now we’re content-based outreach.

On the tools:

  • Screaming Frog. Can’t live without it.
  • Scraper for Chrome
  • HTTPFox. See header codes of pages as they load
  • Page Speed Plugin. Tells you what’s wrong with your page.

And for keyword research:

  • Yahoo! clues. (hat tip: Christine Churchill). Great for demographics
  • Keyword Eye for visualization of keywords
  • Soovle.
  • Ubersuggest
  • Scrapebox. Known as a black hat tool. But use it for quick keyword research.
  • SEOGadget Adwords API Excel plugin

How do I come up with content ideas?

Built a tool called GoFish. Put in Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson trial. South Park. Great idea, I wrote a post that was interesting and got an interesting angle into Michael Jackson.

Facebook recommendation demo.

Get SEOTools by Niels Bosma.

IMPORTXML for Google Docs.

How can I get actionable info on a link profile?

Link Research Tools tells you why your competitors are outranking you. Slices and dices the competitive info into nice charts, actionable items.

Link Detective shows you the links a site had.

How do you do competitive analysis quickly?

Searchmetrics essentials.

Analytics?

Keyword level demographics. Put your site on the FB open graph. Combine that with Search referrers.

Google Analytics Debugger.

How can you find your target audience?

Facebook ad creator. Get the inventory on people by interest.

Facebook Insights

Doubleclick ad planner

Link building quick hits?

He wrote 2 posts on this

Brand fans

  • simply measured + majestic. Reach out to the people who are following you but not linking

Data for infographics?

World government data, Google public data

Tools for infographics

PiktoChart

Beyond infographics:

Dipity, storybird

AHREFS, blekko, linkdiagnosis

Has a big top secret project. He’ll talk about it around mozCon.

Open Graph Helper.

Wirify. Helps you tell your UX people why they suck.

STAT search analytics.

FollowerWonk. Identify influencers

Outreacher. Take your Followerwonk data and throw it into outreacher.

Knowem. Helps you stalk people. Throw a username in and see what they’re into.

MentionMapp.

IFTTT (if this than that). Automatic retweeting …

Rapportive

Boomerang

Buzzstream

Zemanta. Content network, wordpress plug in for bloggers. Can get you links.

ManageWP.

Most important tool?

Your brain. You’re not going to use everything, you’ll use maybe 2 or 3.

Who should I follow on Twitter to find out more? This guy (picture of himself: @iPullRank)

OK, he’s almost as fast as Marty. Moving on. Merry Morud from Aim Clear.

Merry Morud

[I’ve been Twitter stalking her for a while but this is the first time I’m hearing her]

How do you consume social data?

Key questions

  • What your goals? KPIs?
  • How big is your circle? Degrees of separation?
  • Where can we associate conversations?
  • To what extent was your content exposed?
  • What types of content got the most exposure?
  • How did users engage? Rebroadcast?
  • Demographics
FB insights:

Reporting gems. What are people hiding? What are people liking?

Identify your needs. Is it

  • Page management
  • Manage multiple accounts
  • Social listings
  • eCommerce
  • Robust Analytics
  • Reporting

Button & URL analytics

  • bit.ly
  • ShareThis
  • AddThis

Their free, give you location demographics, help you identify demographics.

janrain starts free, then costs. It’s worth it.

Google: Social interaction analytics.

Used to be lame. Now it’s great.

Associate social conversions, last touch conversions. Who came from where. How long did they stay? Sort by visit duration and look at the traffic.

Conversions and assists. Visitor Flow

Monitoring Tools

Social Mention (free), TrackUr ($18 and up).

Twitter specific tools

The archivist. TweetReach.

They track KWs, give you reach, volume, ID @Replies vs RT, platform used, users, top words

Track profiles with TwitterCounter

Page management tools

Facebook Tools: Tab / Contest built in

CrowdFactory, WildFire, Shoutlet

You can build tabs from templates, Like-Gate, contests. Wildfire also has competitive data, location & language specific.

Facebook management & analytics tools

Hootsuite, mediafunnel, BuddyMedia, Awareness, Lithium

Post to social media, multi-account, analytics & reporting, team collaboration, influencers.

Posting + Listing + Analytics + Reporting Powerhouses

Sysomos, Radian6

SEO + PPC  + Social + Analytics Super Powerhouse

Raven Tools

Monica asks how we’re doing. I’m wiped, thanks for asking. These people are fast. No more caffeine for you. Next is Rhea Drysdale. Making the business case for purchasing tools.

Rhea Drysdale

Lost her USB drive. It looks like every other USB drive. In case you see it.

Processes and people.

What qualified me to talk about tools? Not much. But .. I’ve “built” tools (through others), purchased, do a lot without tools, and I’ve dated some. I was going to put a picture of one up, but …

We were hired to think, not just to use tools. I hate when I hire someone and they just use tools instead of thinking.

Need to combine tools and brains.

Epic fail story:

Their traffic growing very nicely, shows a nice looking graph. Unfortunately, organic traffic to target keywords dropped badly. They launched a new CMS.

What went wrong?

New CMS contract signed before SEO got involved.

SEO team couldn’t get access to dev servers before launch. Launched on organic site, not a test site. IT had no training on new CMS. Guarantees were baseless. Poor communication between SEO & IT teams. Unplanned and extended code freezes. SEO agency positioned as vendor, not a consultant. [She just shot a Whiteboard Friday at SEOmoz on this].

How are they fixing it?

Did an SEO audit and ongoing analysis.

In-person visit of client by agency, met IT. Got to see that each other is human [Face time is SO important]. We asked them what motivates them. They said donuts. We sent them lots of donuts. Donuts work. [mmm, donuts]

Actual cost of tools

  • New CMS
  • Internal time
  • Agency time
  • Loss of sales due to drop in traffic
  • Agency SEO audit and consulting
  • Travel costs
  • Morale & productivity
  • Turnover
  • Missed opportunities

There’s a lot that they wanted to do, that we wanted to do … couldn’t, all we could do was deal with this crisis.

Criteria 1: Access. Is the tool accessible by Windows & Mac users? Different browsers?

Criteria 2: Cost: It’s not just the direct cost

Criteria 3: Usability. Easy to use? Good help section? Do you have to create an account? Customer support (free or paid)?

Criteria 4: Protect personal data? Protect data submitted through tool? Allow you to retain sole IP rights to the content created? Determine copyright status of the content you created. Hire a good lawyer.

Criteria 5: Resource management

Criteria 6: Added value. Can the tool be easily replicated for the same price? Mike can build the tools. I can’t. I can barely  talk. Is it customizable?

The business case

Tool Value – (True cost + Risks)

Switch cost considerations

Data import, export, sync, sources, freshness. Analytics. Support & customizations. Data limits.

They made it easier with a spreadsheet: http://bit.ly/KNdyIS

Now for the Q&A

Q&A

Q: Tips for getting providers to add new features?

Michael: Just contact them. Let them know what you want and why.

Rhea: Bing had a rep here looking to know what people want.

Merry: Yeah, they want to know what you want.

Rhea: If you can’t get it pushed through, try to find others who need the same thing, and contact them together.

Merry: Point out how nobody else is doing it so it’s an opportunity, or how others are doing it so they need to to be competitive.

 

Q: Social tools that automate posting to G+

Rhea: Yes, but I can’t share it yet.

Monica: There’s a Chrome extension.

Merry: It’s DoShare

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