Digital Marketing and Web Strategy by Bob Hazlett | One Half Amazing!

Still waiting for the IT guy in your office to give you that overview of SEO so you can start making some serious cheddar with your new blog?  Well, screw that guy cause Google has come to your rescue once again.  They recently updated their SEO starter guide to include some new and refreshing (like a Diet Mt. Dew at 7am) content.  In particular, they have added a glossary of terms, additional example images to support the content in the guide and mobile devices optimization techniques.

Get really good at this stuff and you’ll be in the top 80% of your field.  After that, say good bye to Mr. IT.  Today, you’ve got a date at the cool kids table.  Print it out here.

Here’s a quick tip from PPCBlog. They suggest using 1st-person quotes in the title of your Google Adwords to distinguish your product from other bland ads.

You don’t want to go too over-the-top and keeping it believable and relevant could be something to consider, but I’d be interested to hear how a 1st-person text ad like the samples below perform against similar ads.

NOTE: I originally posted this story last year right before the Super Bowl.  I thought it was timely and in addition, I’ve updated it with a little more information. I will agree that this technique is sometimes frowned upon in the search world.  This is by no means a supplement for creating an amazing product.

Don’t have $3MM to spend on a 30-second Super Bowl commercial? Take advantage of your competitors deep pockets by bidding on long-tail memorable ad keywords that your competition may have missed. For example, Career Builder put out a series of spots during last year’s game that focused on “Follow Your Heart.” Users who searched on the “follow your heart” terms most likely didn’t remember the brand behind the commercial.  Monster.com took advantage of Career Builder’s publicity by bidding on their tagline and directing a large amount of focused traffic right to their site.

NEW: Here’s how to get started.  AdAge has a list of 2010 Super Bowl commercials and the creative behind them.  First, take a look at your competitors and see if you can find any holes or key terms from their spots that may stand out in a user’s mind.

Results from Google keyword tool

Next, drop on over to SpyFu and input your findings from above.  So for example, I’m a competitor to Dockers and I see that they’re running an ad with the song “I Wear No Pants.”  From what I’ve found via SpyFu and cross-referenced through Google Adwords tool, I see there isn’t much bidding going on for the term.  There isn’t a lot of search volume on this term either, but that could change.  Again, we’re really just trying to find a small niche of long-tail terms.  The likelihood that you get rich on these is slim to none.  Heck, you may even want to go as far as registering a keyword happy domain and using it for a landing page.  I hear that www.I-wear-no-pants.com is available.

Lesson: If you’re the guy paying $3MM for a single TV commercial, make sure you have a little extra left over for other channels as well. If you’re the guy who can’t afford the budget, riding your competitors coat tails, doing a little recon and spending a few hours setting up a landing page could turn you into the MVP.

Waiting on the NFL playoff games to start and need to kill a little time?  Here are the articles I’m reading this weekend.

• 35 Beautiful and Effective E-commerce Sites. One of my predictions for 2010 is that “experience” will be the big web buzzword.  Smashing Magazine has put together a set of attractive online stores that try to do just that by creating an eye-catching look and also focusing on usability.
• Google SEO Resource for Beginners.  Straight from the mouth of the 800lb gorilla, Google hands out SEO bananas for you to make your site leaner and meaner in 2010.
• Posterous taps Post.ly to help share your media via Twitter. Attach photos, music, videos and docs to your tweets.  Post.ly takes care of the rest.
• Chris Guillebeau over at The Art of Non-Conformity kicks off his $100 business forum.  The premise being to teach individuals to start small businesses on a budget of less than $100.  I was lucky enough to get into the first class beginning in February.  I’ll keep you updated on how it works out.
• Microsoft makes learning Office fun (yes, you read that right).  Microsoft turns learning Office into a game where participants score points for unlocking challenges and achievements. Badges can then be shown off via Facebook.
• How to create custom YouTube, Twitter and MySpace backgrounds

If you’re interested in seeing more, check out my Google Reader Shared Items.

What are you reading this weekend? Let me know in the comments below.

Mark Robertson of ReelSEO caught up with YouTube’s Matthew Liu to get some insight on best practices for optimizing your videos. Here’s what he had to say.

Content

• Creative should be engaging and compelling enough for users to comment, rate and ultimately share.
• Shorter videos (2-3 min) perform better than longer (~10 min) videos.
• Learn from your video Insights.  If your viewers are engaged better than other videos, you’re going to be rewarded in search rankings.

Community

• Clear and concise tags, description and title.  Use complete sentences when you can.  Tags should be relevant, don’t try to play off of popular terms if your video isn’t related to that particular subject.
• Keep embeds on, the more links or times your video is embedded on outside pages, the better ranking you’ll get.
• Videos with more ratings, comments and views typically get better rankings.
• Use annotations to link multiple videos together.  Don’t forget to add date and location to your video’s description.

Found a YouTube tip that’s helped you achieve better rankings? Share it in the comments below.

SEOMoz did a great Whiteboard Friday video on using SEO to grow and expand your e-mail marketing list.  Here’s the synopsis and corresponding video.

Step 1 – Attract the Right Audience
Target keyword searches in which users are looking to find out more or discover information related to your product or industry.

Step 2 – Deliver Compelling Landing Pages
Build your credibility right off the bat by providing guides, data points, reports and interesting blog posts directly related to the search terms the user found your site with.

Step 3 – Offer Something Awesome (and even Free)
Increase your signup rate by offering an extended report or content relevant to your user’s needs.

Step 4 – Deliver Non-commercial Messages First
Don’t try to sell the user something in their first e-mail message.  Fulfill expectations, grow trust and build great relationships before anything.

Step 5 – Iterate
Repeat your actions.  Keep getting better and improving on your results.  Tweak and test.