(1: Create a catchy title that will entice people to read your post.)

All I ever needed to know about great content, I learned at the movies.  These learnings can be distilled down into seven keys (hidden throughout this fantastic post!) (2: Keep the reader in active anticipation of what’s coming next.)

Upon reading his daily Google Analytics report, the internet marketing manager took his iPhone and, in a complete rage, threw it at his whiteboard.  He had tried everything and this was the end of the road for him.  (3: Grab attention so your audience will read on.)

According to analysts, 46.5 percent of all internet marketing managers were in complete and utter agony that month due to unprofitable pay-per-click campaigns. (4: Share some previously unknown, valuable data to emphasize significance.)

All these marketing managers have one thing in common: their hopes and dreams of overnight internet success were quashed by websites that seemed to care about giving visitors a good bounce more than taking their money.  (5: Enable the reader to relate to you and your story.)

How could he go on? As he paced around, he plotted one last course of action, knowing the boss would soon likely pull the plug on his campaign and show him the door.  Aha – he had the answer!  Forget this PPC, CTR, CPC stuff: social media marketing is all the rage these days.  He would start a viral marketing campaign using a chain letter!  That was sure to get the dollars pumping into the site!   (6: A little humor never hurts.)

He patched the hole in his whiteboard, gave his iPhone an apology kiss and set off to work.  In the world of online marketing, there is no such thing as giving up.  There are so many different options to try, you just need to keep testing new channels and messaging until you strike a balance that brings you the results you desire.  It’s OK to make mistakes as long as you are actively engaged in learning from them. (7: Motivate change or action; move your audience to think differently.)

We hope you are able to use all seven of these “hidden” keys to get two thumbs up (and a ton of links) from your readers.  It may take some time to regularly produce amazing content, so until your articles are getting a proliferation of “Likes” on Facebook or re-tweets via Twitter or multiple links from many blogs, be thankful there is no way for readers to throw rotten tomatoes online!  With practice, you’ll get there.

Jamie O’Donnell of SEO-PR interviews Matt Malden, CEO of Yield Software and an exhibitor at last month’s SES San Francisco 2010.  Here’s a synopsys of Jamie’s reporting:

Yield Software’s Yield Web Marketing Suite handles three aspects of automated web marketing. It has a pay-per-click (PPC) bid management module that includes spending on the three major search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo.  Second, the Yield Web Marketing Suite offers automated SEO or natural search engine optimization. Using the Yield Web Marketing Suite, Web marketers can get higher organic search rankings for their important keywords and learn how to improve their landing pages, link building, on-page and off-page optimization. Finally, the Yield Web Marketing Suite offers Web marketers a landing page optimization module. Using Yield, marketers can conduct complex multivariate testing of landing pages, using a visual drag and drop interface to automatically implement recommendations.

Yield Software is great for advertisers who want to be more effective in the search space, particularly medium and large-sized companies. Yield Software has also been adopted by digital and interactive media agencies that are conducting bid management, natural search optimization and email campaigns in order to help them generate better search marketing results.

Yield Software empowers any organization in the world to attract high-value customers at the lowest cost. Using advanced algorithms and techniques, the Yield Web Marketing Suite optimizes internet marketing expenditures, attracts visitors to a web site and tunes web page content to have the greatest impact.

For more information about exhibiting at SES, please visit: http://searchenginestrategies.com

One of the frequently over-looked pieces of content on a webpage when it comes to SEO is image optimization.  Optimizing images can significantly contribute to your SEO and also help you get additional exposure on SERP pages now that universal search results frequently include images.

While it might be difficult to get your pages to rank highly for many head terms, you might be able to get an image on page one for the head term, which, if compelling enough can bring you a decent volume of traffic.

Here are the five most impactful things you can do to optimize your images:

Use your keywords in your image file name. Rather than the typical image01.jpg filename, use a filename that it descriptive and keyword rich.  For example, seo-optimization-diagram.jpg. Make sure to separate these words by dashes only so the search engine can read them.

Include variations of your keywords in the image’s ALT attributes.  Many sites do make use of these attributes since they help searches who can’t see get information about what your image is about.  Just be sure to leverage keywords in the descriptors you use.

Include variations of your keywords in the image’s title tag. This one isn’t quite as impactful as the previous two, but should not be neglected.  The title tag is another great place for a variation of your keywords describing the image.

Make sure the content immediately surrounding the image on the webpage is relevant and includes variations of keywords.  The placement of the image on your page does matter when it comes to SEO, and search engines interpreting it’s meaning, so read the text above and below the image and make sure it has variations of the keywords emphasizing the theme of the image.

Get some relevant links.  Not all images will be link worthy, but many are.  Leverage your internal link structure to support your images.  For external links, social media can be a great way to share interesting pictures or insightful diagrams to get link juice pointing to your images.  As with any other piece of great content – just make sure they are easy to share.

One word of caution: keep the number of images on your page in check, unless you are a photo gallery or it’s a catalog of some sort.  Just a couple images on a page is all that is necessary for a powerful punch.

Start to optimize your images today and start to enjoy the road less traveled of SEO optimization.

If you check out popular crowdsourcing websites, you will find the “jobs” sections dominated by requests for social media marketing activities.  It can be difficult to get your social media up and off the ground–especially a regular, high-quality blog publishing effort–so it seems many small businesses have turned to what I would consider to be “black hat” techniques.

Consider the following most common social marketing “job” listings…

Blog and Article Writing. The pay for these ranges from $0.50 to $5.00 per article.  Most article requests range from 350 to 500 words and specify the keywords to be used and the keyword density.  These jobs seem to fall into a gray area.  If you can find good writers out there who can provide you with legitimate content, why not?  However, the quality of article you will get for the most popular price of $1.00 is very questionable to me.  It’s clear these businesses do not agree that truly valuable content is the best approach.

Now we will exit the lone “high-end” job category and get into the low-paying jobs.  Most jobs in this category pay anywhere from $0.01 to $0.50 for the tasks below.  (Personally, I think these folks could do better at the penny slots, or even begging on the street corner.)

YouTube. The jobs pertaining to YouTube involve getting paid for watching a video, voting on a video (some request likes only), leaving comments about a video, sharing a video or subscribing to a YouTube channel.

Twitter. Jobs pertaining to Twitter pay people to make tweets that link to a particular website (tweet included), retweeting messages, or becoming a follower for a business.

Facebook. These jobs typically pay for liking a Facebook fan page, leaving positive comments on a fan page, liking posts on a fan page or liking products or content on a company’s website.

Social Bookmarking. The tasks for social bookmarking are based on bookmarking a page on multiple social bookmarking sites.

Website Evangelism. This one involves posting a comment to popular forums, groups, or other related websites.  The post text and link are provided, along with posting frequency guidelines to avoid raising any spamming flags.  Obviously most of these are no-follow so it is not going to help with SEO.  However, these do certainly help drive traffic through online word-of-mouth which people attribute a high level of trust to.

Joining New Communities. This job involves getting paid to sign up for a new online social group or community.

Forums. These businesses are typically trying to quickly build out large forums in order to give their site more credibility.  Some tasks involve creating questions, most involve writing short answers to questions.

Contest Voting. You can get paid to vote for a particular participant in an online social contest, for example a best photo contest.

Posting Comments. This job requests that you post comments on forums, or on articles to help them appear more popular.

Blogger. This one involves getting paid to become a follower for a blogger account.

I will stop there, but it does get worse on freelancer sites — much worse.

Is it clever to employ the masses? Or, is this all shady?  The more I read the more in need of a shower I felt.  The things I value most about social media are the great content and the implied trust that comes with a comment or “Like” or other social endorsement action, and this type of behavior breaks both.

I am in no way saying that all crowdsourcing jobs are bad.  There are a ton of legitimate jobs out there and thousands of great ways to leverage crowdsourcing.

But, I was heartbroken to see all of the unethical social activity going on.  It’s probably even sadder to see what people will do for mere pennies – I mean, you can’t even get a gumball for a penny anymore.  (Although, in some countries this pay probably ends up working out to be a pretty decent job.)  The best way a business can get a social following — and the endorsements that come with it — is by diligently publishing high-quality content on a regular basis and winning fans for your efforts.  The pay-offs are often in the longer-term, but having earned it the honest way will mean you see real business benefits rather than just a list of hollow gestures.

When looking to hire or partner with someone to help with your search marketing, the traditional ideas of a fancy advertising agency tend to pop into people’s heads –fancy glass office, dressed fancy, talks fancy, creates fancy messaging and images, etc.  However, when it comes to search marketing, Fancy Nancy isn’t likely to get you very far.

Her sophistication and wit will likely mean that her content won’t reach, attract or convert the average searcher you are seeking out.   For online marketing, you should be thinking about working with Redundant Rhonda.  Qualities you really want are redundant, simple, monotonous and patient.

Why am I advocating for Redundant Rhonda?  Who in their right mind wants a boring person to handle activities related to marketing and advertising?

Here’s why…

Quality #1: Redundant

Being successful online is all about keywords.  From search to social, SEO to paid, from your home page to your landing page, keywords (in your audience’s voice) are the heart and soul.

Keywords are not fancy.  These are basic phrases that your leads use to research your offering and find you.  Long tail keyword generation is helpful – there is nothing fancy about this – which is just different combinations of the exact same words or plurals, singulars, prepositions, etc.

Once you know your keyword targets, these keywords and their variations must be redundantly used everywhere you are online:

Pay-per-click keywords

SEO keywords

Website copy

Blog titles

Blog copy

Landing pages

Pay-per-click ads

Website URLs

Google Local profile

Twitter profile

Twitter handler

Facebook profile

Tweets on Twitter

Internal anchor text

Inbound link anchor text

Press releases

Videos

Photos and images

Getting the picture?

Just to clarify: I said redundant usage – which should not to be confused with spammy usage!  Redundantly use your keywords in natural ways that any average person reading the English language would expect to see.

Quality #2: Simple

While Fancy Nancy is likely to come up with some very catchy tag lines, online searches are less about award-winning copy and more about helping people weed through information overload to find you, quickly comprehend what you do and contact you. Fluff need not apply.

Your PPC ad copy (in addition to being redundant) needs to simply state what you do, why it’s better than anything else, and inspiring a click-through.

Your website copy (again, in addition to being redundant) needs to very simply state in easy-to-read copy what it is you do – and why it’s better – with a clear call to action indicating what the visitor should do next.

You only have a few seconds to get a searchers’ attention and turn them into something valuable, so simple words lead to the fastest possible comprehension and action.

Quality #3: Loves Monotony

For managing and optimizing your search marketing, you will need a data geek who is happy with monotony.  My guess is Fancy Nancy would like to jump off the building at this point.  You’ll need someone who is happy pouring over tons of data, slicing and dicing it in oodles of formats, making some optimization adjustments based on the data, and then reviewing all of the metrics again.

The process goes like this: analyze, slice, dice, adjust, analyze, slice, dice, adjust, analyze, slice, adjust… there is no end game. (In the world of consumer products, it’s called “lather, rinse, repeat” — check your shampoo bottle!)  The world of search marketing is constantly changing, so the monotonous process will repeat itself again and again and again.

Quality #4: Patient

While some aspects of search marketing, like pay-per-click, carry with them some instant gratification, the process of getting to great results whether on PPC, SEO, landing pages or social takes time and patience.  Fancy Nancy is likely to want some immediate accolades for a campaign that is launched, but in the world of search, great downstream benefits can take quite a bit of time and stick-to-it-ness.  It can take quite a while to find pockets of great success – which may not last long before the world changes and you need to find new pockets of success.

So, as you think about your search marketing support system, remember this: forget the glamour, the glitter and the fluff and seek out someone who understands how to get you found, keep attention and create real results online.

One of the best ways to ensure your website ranks well for your most important keywords in natural search results is through in-bound links to your site.  But how do you attract them (short of begging other website owners to link to you)?  We’ve got some tips and tricks below that will help you build links to your website.

Before we get started, though, just a quick reminder about links, link juice and the social etiquette of linking:

First, not all links are created equal.  Google, Yahoo! and Bing all evaluate links to your website relative to the quality of the source of the link.  So, for instance, if you get a link from The New York Times it’s vastly more important to the search engines than if Yield Software links to you (we hope one day soon we’ll be in the same league!)  In practical terms, what this means is that the NYT link has more juice than the Yield link, and when the algorithm is determining what your page rank should be, it’s weighing the link juice of each individual link.  Other types of sites that provide powerful link juice are links from .gov sites and links from .edu sites, in addition to links from mainstream media source sites or very popular blogs such as BoingBoing or ReadWriteWeb.

Second, link unto others as you would have the link to you.  If you hope to generate lots of great links to your site, you must also be someone who sensibly links regularly.  The social etiquette of the Web dictates that website and blog owners conscientiously link to the sources of news, information, reference material or other sources of content; this, in turn, will inspire web publishers to link to you.  By declaring you’re a good netizen, people will want to engage you more.

Now, on to those recommendations!

“Top” Lists

One of the all-time best ways to get people to link to your content is through lists.  For instance, the top 10 best ways to evaluate a purchase.  Or three things to consider when making a purchasing.  Remember that your “Top” lists should have some relevance to what your site is all about, but SHOULD NOT be an overt promotion of or commercial about your products and services.  These should be objectively helpful lists that people would intuitive want to share with friends or colleagues or family members (for instance, in their own blogs or via a tweet on Twitter or in a post on Facebook.)

Video

After social networks, like Facebook, video is the hottest segment of the Web.  People can’t get enough of video!  So a good way to get people to link to your site or your blog is use video.  It’s super easy to embed a video in your site (especially if you’re publishing your website or blog on a content management system like WordPress).  As with “Top” lists, be sure to choose videos that relevant to what you do, sell or serve.  If you produce and publish your own videos (which you should!), again, make sure you’re doing something that is going to be useful to people.  How-to videos are hugely popular on the Web, particularly if it’s about something emerging that people want to do but don’t yet understand.

Photos

Believe it or not, photos are still very popular and capture people’s eye.  Photos that capture an amazing moment, or are somehow instructional in nature can always drive interest, links and traffic to your site.

Downloadable Content

Publish content on your site that is new, unique or unlike something folks can get elsewhere.  Perhaps it’s a how-to guide relating to your industry or the services you provide.  If you have the budget, commission a white paper or a study on some important aspect of the work you do.  Or maybe you’ve been doing a great job with your blog over the last few years and have a collection of blog posts that, when taken together, make a terrific e-book on a subject relating to your business or work.  There are a whole number of online e-book publishing sites that enable fast and easy production, and which you can then offer for free download on your site.  It’s easy to say, “oh, no one cares as much as I do about the thing I do” — but guess what: you’re NOT that unique!  If you love what you do, chances are there are a whole bunch of people (potentially tens of thousands, even) who share your interests and passion.

Graphs and Graphics

Another great, link-worthy strategy for your website and blog is the use of graphs and graphics.  From simple charts and graphs created by Excel to timeline graphics, tag cloud graphics and workflow illustrations, folks love great visuals that bring into specific relief that which may be difficult to imagine.  There are many free or low-cost graphic creation tools across the Web (do a search!) that enable you to simply plug in a number of data points and return a beautiful illustration that you can copy and publish.  If you have a little budget, you can also always hire graphic artists to create stunning visualizations of either data or workflow or technology stacks (among many other options.)

At the end of the day, content, even in the 21st century, is still king.  If you consistently publish good stuff on your website and blog, it will be link-worthy.  And when you do publish, don’t be shy about publicizing that fact.  You should copy the URL of your new content and paste it into tweets on Twitter, your Facebook updates, your LinkedIn updates and any other sites where you can provide updates of what you’re working on.

Once you’ve gotten into a rhythm, be sure to see how your site is ranking for your keywords across Google, Yahoo! and Bing. If you’re a Yield Software customer, you can do this quickly and conveniently by clicking on the Natural Search tab in the Yield Web Marketing Suite and checking your link counts.  You’ll also be able to see the sources of those links so you can evaluate how well you’re doing in terms of link juice / link source quality.

Google is constantly making changes to its algorithms, which determine what websites appear in their natural search results and in what order they appear. Most changes do not have significant impacts, but Google’s recent change made between April 28th and May 3rd — called the “May Day Update” because it happened mostly on May 1st, but also “Mayday Update” because of its potential adverse impacts on websites — has resulted in the following for many websites:

• Rank of deeper individual pages within websites
• Rank for long tail keyword searches (three-plus words in the search query)

In a nutshell, Google has cracked down on quality for longer-tail keywords – making its evaluation of deeper individual website pages more similar to how it conducts natural search rankings for keyword searches with one-to-two words.

This is probably due to the fact that more and more searches these days contain more than three words, so it’s necessary for Google to ensure that its search results for these searches bring back the most relevant and highest quality results possible.

You can think of the change this way: your homepage is like the parent and it used to be able to boost up its children (the individual page on its website) just by having great authority itself — similar to how a parent’s reputation can often help children get a leg up in the world. But now, your individual pages have all grown up and are standing on their own two feet. Google is evaluating each of your website pages individually – for their own unique relevancy and individual page quality.

This individual evaluation will help Google ensure that even for the long-tail searches it is always providing a great set of search results.

What this means for websites:

• No more free rides for any of your individual pages based on your overall domain authority.
• All individual website pages must include unique and truly useful content.
• All individual website pages must have a strong back-link profile.

Who is typically “negatively” impacted by Google’s Mayday… er… May Day update?

• Deeper internal pages with duplicate content and no links
• Automatically-generated pages and content farms

Were you impacted?

Review your stats from around April 28th to May 3rd with an eye out on the following:

• Natural search traffic volumes coming to your deeper internal website pages
• Volume of natural search traffic you are received from long tail searches (three-plus keywords)

Google says the May Day change is here to stay, so what do you need to focus on?

There is nothing new here – just the same basic SEO principles, but now it’s imperative that your focus extends across all pages of your website, not just your home page and a few other top-level pages.

Here’s what you need to focus on for all individual pages of your website:

• Make sure you have unique, valuable and truly useful content on all of your individual pages within your site. How do you do this? Put yourself in the searcher’s shoes and think about what would truly help them in their quest for information that no one else is currently doing a great job of providing. Some examples include:

1. Reviews, videos, images, comments, etc. are all great ways to help make your content both unique and valuable to searchers. Leverage user generated content as much as possible so the workload is not so daunting.
2. If you have any copied or duplicate content (like from a manufacturer), replace it with your own unique content.

• Get lots of links for every single page. Ensure your link building campaigns focus on all of the individual pages for your site and not just your homepage and first tier pages. How do you do this?

1. Make it easy to link to your individual pages and encourage others to do this.
2. Link out to others in your blogs, forums, comments, etc to encourage others to link back to you.
3. Promote all of your content pieces individually.
4. Produce very unique and valuable content that others will want to link to.
5. Create a strong internal linking structure within the pages of your own website with long tail variations on anchor text.
6. Leverage social media to help get links tweets, or promoting specific pages with promotional offers and other incentives.

If you’ve been neglecting the deeper individual pages of your site, you can thank Google’s May Day for lighting a fire under your butt to give those pages some love.

Google “Everything” (also referred to as “blended search results”, or “universal search”) provides companies with several opportunities to appear on the first page of natural search results. The days of search results pages (SRPs) being limited to text links are ancient history. SRPs now includes a variety of results, from tweets to images and videos. We encourage you not to limit yourself to just one link presence on the first page, but to go for as many listings as possible. The larger your presence on that first page, the better your click-through rate (CTR) and brand recall will be.

We’ve compiled a list of eight opportunities for landing on page one of SRPs for your keywords that are relevant to most business types, together with a “Cliff’s Notes” version of key points on how to optimize each of them.

1. Organic Search Text Link. This is the traditional listing we think of that used to be the sole content of SRPs on Google. Key optimization points here include:

• Have a properly configured page (good page title, etc.) with relevant and original content related to your target keywords.
• Attain high quality, relevant links from authoritative sources for your keywords with a variety of relevant inbound link text.
• Have a URL that is short and relevant to your business name and keywords.
• To bolster your CTR, make sure your page title is less than 64 characters and includes your keywords at the beginning and your meta description tag is succinct and also includes your keywords at the beginning. Both your page title and meta description tag should be unique. For more on Google’s page title and meta description recommendations read here.

2. Paid Search Ad. These are the traditional AdWords text ads that appear at the very top and down the far right-hand side of the results. To optimize your quality score and CTR you can:

• Choose your keywords wisely – it’s actually good to double up. If you rank well for a keyword in natural search or get natural search traffic for a keyword, you can actually increase traffic and brand recall for that term by also having a paid search ad appear for it.
• To have a strong CTR, write ad copy that is highly relevant. This requires very tight ad group organization so you can get highlights in 2 or more lines of your ad copy by incorporating the keywords from your ad group directly into your ad copy in more than one location.
• Offer something unique from the competition in your ad copy.
• Have your ad take up as much space as possible on the page. Take advantage of location display, site links and product feed links to get more “free” lines of space to have your ad stand out.

3. Local 10-Pack Listing. The 10-pack is the box within the set of natural search results that includes a map and a listing of 10 local businesses. When the local 10-pack appears, it takes up a monster amount of space. In order to make your way into the 10-pack, you can:

• Claim your business listing on Google local. Also make sure your listing is accurately submitted to Localeze and InfoUSA.
• Complete all of your business information on Google local – every single field. When categorizing your business be sure to focus on search queries searchers are likely to use.
• Include images of your business with your local listing.
• Get reviews. Reach out to customers and offer incentives for them to post reviews.
• On your website itself be sure to include your local phone number and business address across your pages.
• Get inbound links to your site from local authorities and location oriented sites, such as local news organizations or local business associations.
• Submit a Geo Sitemap to Google – instructions can be found here. There’s also a great free tool that helps you create a Geo Sitemap.
• For more information on the Google 10-Pack, check out our blog post.

4. An Image. Images can also appear in the blended search results. In order to have your images appear here you can:

• Optimize your image alt attributes to include your target keywords.
• Optimize your image file name with your keywords. Be sure to separate the keywords in the file name using dashes.
• Optimize your image title tag, but this one doesn’t carry as much weight.
• Ensure the text surrounding the image on your page is relevant.
• If possible – try some inbound links, or even internal links with descriptive anchor text to further re-enforce your relevancy.
• Avoid going overboard on the number of images on any page, ensure the number of images is appropriate for the page content size.
• Include the word “picture” or “image” along with your keywords – these are very popular search terms.
• Make sure the image links to your website.

5. A Video. I’ve seen some search queries generate up to eight video listings on the first page of the results – what an opportunity! If you can your video to appear here, you can:

• Create and submit a video sitemap to Google.
• Include your keywords within the video sitemap, in the Title, Description, Tags and Category.
• Optimize your thumbnail image – include the code for the image in your sitemap, specify which one Google should use, make it 80X60 pixels and make sure it’s very relevant to the target keywords so searcher are likely to click on it.
• Get inbound links (even internal) with keyword rich anchor text.
• Make sure the content on your page that surrounds the video is highly relevant.
• Include the word “video” in with your target keyword phrase . Video is a very popular search term.
• Host your video on your website, so that you reap all the benefits.

6. News Listing. Especially for hot topics, news listings frequently make it to the first page of Google’s search results. To have your news item appear here, you can:

• Submit a News Sitemap to Google.
• Only submit original-content news, not republished or from a syndication feed.
• Make your news timely. Check out Google Trends to find keywords phrases that are currently hot and trendy for Google. Use these exact terms as target keywords for your news article.
• Make it a dynamic article – include recent updates and allow comments.
• Include your location. Google loves to show results closest to searchers, so let Google know the location the news article is relevant to and where it’s coming from.
• Have a strong publisher reputation. This can be influenced by how much and how often you produce original content for your news category.
• Do some basic article optimization – URL with keywords, relevant title, keywords in the content, etc.
• Include a .jpg image with relevant alt text and caption with no link.
• CTRs matter — so focus on relevant images and your best lines first to bolster your click-through rate.

7.  Twitter Feeds. Another aspect of universal search means that Twitter feeds can be included on the first page of the Google results. Here are some tips to get your tweets onto the first page (for a primer on Twitter and associated lingo, check out this blog post first):

• Make your twitter handle relevant – your company name is a great choice since it will add to your first page presence. Or, make your handle something simple based on target keywords.
• Be sure to include your target keywords into your Twitter bio and page description.
• Get as many “high quality” followers as possible. These should be highly credible sources for your target areas with high volumes of followers themselves.
• Make sure the first words of your tweet include your most highly prized keywords.
• Use a hash tag before your target keyword, but limit yourself to one hash tag per tweet.
• Your hash tag keyword should also be included in your tweet content if you can do this naturally.
• Timely topics and re-tweets are great – another great use for Google Trends.
• Not only can you tweets appear, but your twitter profile can appear on the first page of the results, too, so be sure to include a link from the Twitter profile to your website.

8.  Product Listing. Feed your products to Google Shopping.  Try thinking outside the box here: you can feed your available hotel rooms, pictures of your software product, pictures of homes for sale — it doesn’t just have to be traditional e-commerce products, but anything that’s for sale on the Web.

• Set up your product feed into Google.
• Provide very frequent updates to your feed — daily, if possible.
• Do some link building on your specific products.
• Include keywords in your product names, product descriptions (in the first words), and product images (separated by dashes in the image file name).
• Optimize your product categories for specific keyword terms.
• Fill in every single detail for the product that you possibly can.
• Don’t use any marketing or sales terms in your product feed.  Stick to words that people would use to find you, not necessarily how you refer to things.
• Including holiday or special event terms can be really beneficial for more long-tail terms.
• Connect to your Google AdWords account so that you get your products to also display along with your AdWords ad.
• Always set your location.
• Get ratings. Offer incentives to get a volume of high rates.
• Have a competitive price (including tax and shipping, if applicable).

As with everything else online – the following four main principles apply and will always get you results:

1. Make great, original content…
2. …from your searchers eyes (that is, use terms your searchers use to look for your offerings)…
3. …that is popular (thanks to links, ratings, followers)…
4. …and locally relevant (whether at the country level or a small town level, always indicate where you are from).

Happy first page domination to you!

As I look back over the last few months and consider the developers’ conferences for Twitter, Facebook and Google, when taken together with Apple’s iPad / iAd introductions, the first half of this year has been nothing short of breathtaking.

At the I|O Conference last week, Google made it abundantly clear it’s going after Apple (and many others), and that they’re all in for HTML5. It’s also clear Google is all in for TV by officially introducing Google TV. One last thing Google is all-in for is mobile, and announced a new Android OS.

One thing they don’t seem to care much about any more is search. That is, it would be easy to conclude that, since search per se didn’t come up once during the conference.

But it’s easy to see why all the things Google is all-in for plays into their core search strength. Before I elaborate on this point, however, consider some numbers:

• More than 100,000 Android-enabled devices are being sold every day, overtaking sales of the iPhone worldwide.

• While there are one billion computer users globally, there are two billion mobile users. And as more and more searches emanate from smart phones these days, its getting easier to imagine these outpacing computer-based searches.

• Moreover, there are four billion TV users around the world; in the U.S., folks spend, on average, five hours per day watching the old boob tube (that’s an old-timey term for TV, not porn.)

• According to Google, $70 billion is spent on television advertising in the United States alone.

So, yeah, it’s easy to see why Google is all about these other things: it all comes back to its core search advertising strengths. The embrace of HTML5 similarly plays to their core strength while also improving the prospects of another key Google priority: YouTube (the boob tube of the 21st century).

A key reason why HTML5 is a darling not only at Google, but also at Apple and Microsoft, is because the as yet un-ratified Web development language supports, among other things, video, graphics and audio. Which means search engine crawlers are now able to index all those bits of web sites that were formerly unindexable (like Flash animations or Flash-enabled video.) Moreover, because these bits can be tagged via HTML5, they can be indexed more accurately.

As search engine optimization pros struggle to understand how to optimize sites for Facebook’s Open Graph, which was announced only a few weeks ago, they must now also contend with migrating to HTML5 – fast. Those that lag might potentially see a diminution in search rank as more nimble sites make the transition faster.

And what about Google TV? First, watch the video. Then, consider all the ways in which Google might use its expertise in marrying just-in-time ads generated from its bidding platform with all the intentions we might express when doing searches (powered by the Android OS and the Chrome browser) via Google TV. Though I imagine they’re going to be more focused on Content Network-type advertising (potentially expanded to enable the just-in-time placement of interstitials in YouTube videos), there will likely also be appropriate ways to include text ads from AdWords.

Users will also be able to visit a favored Web site via Google TV and instantly turn that into a widget displayed on your TV screen, essentially creating a new TV channel that you can tune-in to any time. Add to that all the apps from Google’s app store that will accompany Google TV, and your TV will now go well beyond what your cable provider makes available.

Many of these apps have the potential of bringing social networking components to televised entertainment, such as HitPost, a social app focused on sporting events and which also provides the potential of highly targeted advertising. Advertisers of all stripes will have better targeting capabilities via multiple channels (both literally and figuratively) with much improved measurability.

For brands willing to serve as the early adopters of Google TV advertising opportunities, potentially big rewards – and pitfalls – await. In terms of HTML5, however, that’s a bandwagon all search marketers need to jump on sooner rather than later.  Web developers can get some information from the W3C site, the Standardista Blog and industry leaders are rushing to publish guidelines and materials (follow @HTML5Now on Twitter for regular updates.)

One of the common objections we hear from people regarding writing a blog regularly, producing content for marketing purposes, is that they are likely to just waste hours of time with no real results.

However, one of the keys to finding online success is great content — without it, any real success is unlikely.  Some reasons why content continues to be king:

Your competitors are doing it

Your customers expect it

It builds credibility and community

Most importantly, it’s a central component of SEO strategy – from dynamic updates, to links, to keyword relevance

How do you write content that will bring you links and leads, and is not just wasted time?  I find that judging content is very similar to how I shop for fruit in the produce aisle.  For instance:

1) On the Shopping List.

If it’s not food that I need, I’m going to walk right by it.  Just like the produce section is filled with items I don’t care about, so the online world is filled with content that just doesn’t matter to me.  Is your content a piece of information that your customers need?  Put yourself in the shoes of your customers.  What are common pain points that they share?  What are common decisions that they have to make? Only write about what is relevant to them and their role.

2) Non-Exotic.

The audience for exotic fruits is significantly smaller than for the basic staple fruits.  What is considered exotic depends on many factors such as season, geography, demographics, etc.  A highly sought-after fruit in Honolulu might not see the same demand in Hoboken.  Think carefully about your target before you decide the flavor of content to provide.  Like all good marketing that produces results, your content must be a highly targeted staple for your customers.

3) Not Covered with Dents or Bruises.

Every time you mention your own product, solution, service or anything else promotional, it’s just as if you’ve taken a lovely banana and pounded a hammer on it – well, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but you get the point.  Do not constantly mention your products, solutions, services in your content.  Think of your content as an additional service you are providing to your customers, potential leads and industry as a whole.  This is not the place for naked self-promotion, with one exception: case studies.  If you’re able to tell a story about how a customer using your products was able to achieve a particular objective, and that information may be useful to many others, go ahead and tell that story.  Just be sure to highlight your customer more than your own products.

4) Fresh and In-Season.

Don’t write about anything that’s so yesterday, or over talked-about, or is no longer a hot pressing issue.  Stick with current events.  What’s the impact of a recent news event?  What’s a way to deal with a new or upcoming change in the industry?  Be current.  Be fresh.  Also be sure to do this in a way that maintains a politically neutral voice (unless your business is about being partisan!), and is seen as intending to be helpful to all your customers.  You don’t want to inadvertently alienate a segment of your customer base.

5) Home Grown.

There are channels for just being an information pusher — that is, simply republishing what others are saying — but if you want links and to showcase your unique knowledge, you’re going to have go home-grown.  Be original and express your unique view, experiences or knowledge.  Help expand your customer’s way of thinking by sharing new ways to look at things.  If you’re not a naturally strong writer or video producer, get help from friends or associates who are.  You don’t have to write “War and Peace”, but dashing off a couple paragraphs of thoughtful prose, proof-read by someone you trust, should be easy for most people to do.  We frequently hear from business professionals that their kids helped them produce short videos that have big impacts.

6) Looks Appealing.

Fruit that’s bruised, or has worms crawling out from a holes, will get passed over.  Which is why content format matters.  Something that looks appealing will easily catch my eye.  You don’t have to be a great designer or deeply experienced in the art of blogging.  If the content appears to be easy to read – usage of images, headers, etc. — then I’m more likely to read it since it seems like it will be quickly digestible.

7) Easy to Eat.

A tough chew is going to get spit out, so make your content readable and even entertaining.  Jokes, no matter how lame, are almost always appreciated.  We are more engaged in learning when we are entertained along the way.  Just be sure you’ve got an angel on your shoulder whispering in your ear, in addition to that little devil!

8 ) Easy to Digest.

There’s not point in chowing down on something if it’s just going to come right back up.  No one wants any pain from eating something.  So make sure to write in the correct tone and language for your customer base.  Only use advanced terms or acronyms if that’s the way your customers speak and think on a regular basis.

9) Healthy.

This is fruit, so it should be good for you.  Content that is bashing or negative in tone isn’t a healthy read, so keep positive.

10) Disease Free, and Passes the Scratch-and-Sniff Test.

I might be wary of some random piece of fruit if I’m not sure it comes from a credible source.  Make sure you give credit where credit is due and provide context around why or how you know what you know.

11) Tastes Good.

The end result needs to be positive.  If the recommendations you share don’t work, or the news is inaccurate then the whole thing was a waste of time.   If it doesn’t taste good it will be thrown away, and worse, the reader might even tell their friends how truly awful it was.  Check and double check that your information is right.

12) Sharable.

When we find something amazing, we love to tell others about it: “Oh my gosh – you have to taste this!”  Make it easy to share and even encourage comments and sharing.  If your website isn’t built on a blogging platform like WordPress, be sure your blog is (and that it’s integrated into your website — a stand-alone blog won’t help your SEO prospects).  Blog publishing platforms automatically build in optimization features so you don’t have to worry too much about your content being found.  If you haven’t already, make sure you have a “Share This” feature included in your blog posts, which enables readers to instant share a link to your stuff via Twitter or Facebook, among other social sharing services, and ensures your content is as portable as possible.

13) Get it Delivered.

If I fall in love with something, I’d really like to make getting it again a breeze.  Make it as easy as possible for a happy reader to subscribe – whether it’s an email newsletter, an RSS feed, or following you on a social network.  Once you’ve got their attention, make them a repeat reader.  You should be gathering a following of your content just like you gather customers of your products.

14) Regularly Available.

I will stop looking for a type of fruit or fruit from a certain producer if it’s not regularly available.  So preset how frequently you are going to publish content and stick with the routine. (For instance, if you subscribe to the Yield Software newsletter, you can count on getting it delivered to your inbox every Tuesday morning.)

15) Consistently Good.

We are creatures of habit and value consistency.  If I don’t consistently have a good experience with a particular type of fruit or producer, I’ll look elsewhere.  So take the time consistently to ensure you content is always great and aligns naturally with your brand’s values.

Spring is here – so start writing your bushel of content today!