What is a Microsite?

Sometimes referred to as a “sitelet,” a microsite is a relatively small website with a specific purpose and function. It is highly customized and branded to achieve that purpose. In many ways, it is the exact opposite of the all-inclusive, multipurpose corporate website. It is built around a specific marketing campaign for a specific product or service.

The purpose of a microsite is to achieve a level of branding and specificity that is generally not possible on a company’s main website. Microsites can also be used as part of a unique marketing or promotional campaign.

Consider OfficeMax’s website, ElfYourself.com. This website has little to do with office products. It allows you to embed a photo of yourself into a dancing elf, and then email the resulting cartoon to your friends, family and coworkers. Of course, in doing so, you are also spreading the OfficeMax name and brand. You are essentially becoming a brand ambassador for the company, without even thinking about it. This is one example of a microsite marketing strategy.

Microsites can also be used for more down-to-earth business roles, such as product promotion. Consider the different types of products and services your business provides. Could any of those products or services take on a life of their own? Are they interesting and useful in their own regard? If so, they might be well suited for a microsite campaign.

When to Consider Using One

The microsite marketing strategy is not right for every business. So when should you consider using one? If you can check off more than two items from the list below, it might be time to pursue microsites for your own business.

• You have a clearly defined marketing strategy in mind, and you feel it would be better executed on a website of its own.
• You cannot achieve a certain marketing or sales goal on your main website, for whatever reason.
• You feel the intended subject matter of the microsite (a specific product, service or idea) is strong enough to stand on its own.
• You want to create a viral marketing campaign, but your main company website isn’t “sexy” enough to support such a campaign.
• You have the time, technical resources and enthusiasm necessary to develop an effective microsite.*
• You want to pursue an aggressive SEO strategy utilizing techniques that would be too dangerous to risk on your primary money site
• You are an affiliate marketer looking to target a ton of niches

* In most cases, creating a microsite is easier and more affordable than building a full-sized company website. But it still requires an investment of time and attention on your part. So make sure you have the resources needed to do the job well.

The Benefits of Microsites

When properly executed, a microsite marketing strategy can do a lot for your business. Here are some of the primary benefits it can offer:

• Multiple Paths. When you create one or more microsites, you are giving people more ways to find your business online. This has a positive, cumulative effect over time. You are not replacing your main website. You are creating additional stand-alone websites to increase your overall exposure and brand reach.
• Creative flexibility. Microsites allow you to be bold and daring with your marketing experiments. You can do things you probably wouldn’t want to do on your company’s main site. Consider the “Shave Everywhere” microsite and marketing campaign launched by Phillips. It would be hard to imagine the company offering a body-shaving game on its corporate website. But with the microsite approach … why not?
• Specific message. You can be ultra-specific with the branding, domain name and content of a microsite. You can choose a domain name / URL that relates to a specific product, service or idea. You can develop an entire design theme around your campaign, right down to the logo. Do this on your main business website, and you would create too much brand conflict.
• Marketing unleashed. Microsites empower your marketing team, whether it includes one person or twenty. Instead of trying to shoehorn their marketing ideas into the company’s existing website, they can build an entire site around the marketing theme. Now that’s something they can get excited about.
• Higher conversions. There’s a strong chance your microsite will outperform your company’s main website, in terms of on-site conversions and other marketing goals. This has to do with the tight focus we mentioned earlier. Visitors don’t have to navigate the site to find what they need. The entire site is built around the one thing they need. This is the whole point of creating a microsite in the first place.
• Reputation management. Microsites can also be used as tools for reputation-management. By publishing additional (but non-redundant) websites relating to your company, you can suppress any derogatory listings that may appear in search engine results. As with the other strategies mentioned in this article, the key here is to offer unique content and value through each of the microsites. Each site must have a specific reason for existing. Reputation management should be the side benefit of a broader communication strategy.
• SEO. Internet marketers sometimes build microsites for a specific product or service, in conjunction with a search engine marketing campaign. Affiliate marketers, for example, often deploy dozens, if not hundreds, of websites in order to target very specific niches.
• Going viral. The key to a viral marketing campaign is to get people excited about a certain product or idea. When this happens, they become eager to share it with others. And there is certainly no shortage of ways to share things online — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc. You’ll have an easier time generating this level of excitement with a creative and niche-based microsite.

Of course, there are some downsides to consider as well; logistics is chief among them. Every microsite you create will bring its own set of costs. And there’s the promotional effort to consider. Each site must be promoted to the point that it can serve its intended purpose. This dilutes your marketing budget and other resources. Think of search engine optimization, for example; much of SEO revolves around link popularity, or the quantity and quality of links pointing to your website. It takes time and effort to create something “link worthy.” If you shift some of your SEO resources from your main website to the microsites, the main site may no longer get the attention it needs.

Microsites are all about flexibility. They allow you to do things you probably couldn’t do otherwise. They give you another way to connect with your audience. They can help you generate buzz and awareness for a specific product, service or idea. Best of all, they are fairly easy to launch, when compared to a full-fledged corporate website. If these things resonate with you, it might be time for you to think micro.

Objective: Your primary objective is to create a library of well-written SEO articles built around specific key phrases. This will help you achieve the four goals stated below.

Goals: (1) Increase your website traffic by adding keyword-rich articles to the site, in a highly organized manner. (2) Keep people on the site longer by offering a larger volume of useful information. (3) Transform your website into a valuable resource. (4) Distinguish your website from others in your industry.

Tools: You’ll need a couple of keyword-research tools. You can find these online for free. You’ll also need at least one grid board, which you can find at most office-supply stores. And last, but certainly not least, you’ll need a skilled writer to develop your content.

SEO Articles Defined

In this context, an SEO article is an article written with certain keywords and phrases in mind. These keywords correspond to search engine queries conducted through Google, Yahoo and Bing. Essentially, you are creating website content to attract visitors who are researching your products and services (or closely related topics).

The seven qualities of an effective SEO article:

• The article is written to help people in some way. This is the primary goal.
• The article is optimized for one or two specific phrases. This is the secondary goal.
• It explains or analyzes the topic at hand in great detail.
• It gives the reader everything they need to understand the topic.
• It ranges in length from 500 – 1,500 words (or even longer). No “puff pieces.”
• It is part of a broader library of articles.
• It links to other articles on the same site for related information.

If you create articles that meet these seven criteria, there is no limit to what you can accomplish.

Step 1 – Conduct SEO Keyword Research

This is a writing project. But it’s also a search engine optimization project. You are writing SEO articles to increase your website traffic for a select group of key phrases. So you have to start by identifying those phrases. One way to do this is by using keyword-research tools. These tools show you how much search activity there is for a certain word or phrase. They also give you a list of variations based on the word or phrase you start with.

Refer back to the goals stated above. You are trying to accomplish several goals simultaneously. But they all come back to same thing — having a large library of quality content. That’s why keyword research is so important. It helps you identify a broad range of topics to write about, all of them related to your business in some way.

You could start by using the free version of WordTracker. It’s an easy way to identify topics for your SEO articles. If you like the free version, you can always sign up for the full program. Google also has a helpful tool that will make additional suggestions, aside from the exact phrase you start with. This makes their tool particularly useful for the purpose at hand.

When building a list of key phrases, be sure to include plenty of “long-tail” keywords. These are longer extensions of your root phrases. Stephen Mahaney from SearchEngineNews.com explained it well: “Long tail keywords are those three and four keyword phrases which are very, very specific to whatever you are selling.”

Here’s an example:

• Software — no tail
• Antivirus software — short tail
• Best antivirus software for Mac — long tail

Keyword-research tools can help you identify long-tail keywords that are relevant to your business. Generally speaking, it’s easier to rank well in search engines for long-tail keywords, as opposed to their short-tail (or no-tail) counterparts. There isn’t as much web content or competition for these ultra-specific topics. Keep this in mind when building your library of SEO articles. A well-rounded SEO program will include content for both the long- and the short-tail phrases.

Step 2 – Identify Hot Topics Within Your Industry

This is an extension of the strategy we just covered. But this time, you’ll use additional sources to identify hot topics within your industry or niche. The goal here is to develop a substantial list of topics for your SEO articles and website content.

Here, you’ll tap into your existing knowledge of your industry to come up with a list of popular topics. You can identify these topics in several ways:

• Leverage your customer service people, if you have any. They spend their entire day talking to customers and answering their questions. They can probably give you a list of topics off the top of their heads.
• The same goes for your sales people. They spend a lot of time talking to current and prospective customers. Explain what you are trying to do, and ask them to create a list of potential article topics.
• Spend time in industry forums and blogs, particularly those that are frequented by your target demographic. Which topics are being discussed the most? Include these within your article library.
• Read magazines and journals that relate to your industry. What are the current top stories within your field?

At this point, you should have two documents. The first one is a list of SEO article topics created during the keyword-research phase (step #1). The second document is a list of hot topics, basically an expansion of the first list. You will use all of this information to create your grid board.

Step 3 – Create a Grid Board

A grid board is basically a poster board with hundreds of little squares on it. It’s the poster-sized equivalent of graph paper. You can find them at Office Depot and other office-supply stores.

The squares of the grid board will help you draw neat little boxes. And that’s exactly what you’ll be doing next. You will use a Sharpie pen to draw dozens of boxes on the board, with each box representing an SEO article for your website. You can probably see where this is going.

Use the two documents you created earlier, under steps #1 and #2. Draw a small box for each topic you plan to write about. When you’re done, you should have dozens of boxes on your board. Each box represents one of your SEO articles. Essentially, you’ve created a blueprint for your article library. You can also use the grid board to track your progress. Just highlight the boxes in yellow when the corresponding article has been published onto the site.

Do you plan to have a handful of primary topics with subtopics under each one? If so, you could draw a structured hierarchy on your grid board. Put the main topics in wider boxes across the top of the grid board. Put the subtopics (and short-tail keywords) in smaller boxes under their main topics. This hierarchy will correspond to your website’s navigation system, as well. It’s a paper version of how you will present your library, in terms of organization and linking.

For example, you might have a “Learning Center” link in your website’s main menu. The Learning Center itself might display a dozen primary topics. When the reader clicks into one of the main topics, he sees a variety of subtopics. It’s all nice and neat.

The grid board is an excellent tool for content planning and development. It’s well worth the effort.

Step 4 – Write Your SEO Articles

An entire book could be written on how to write website content. In fact, you can find a dozen of them on Amazon.com. But this is not a lesson in writing. This is a lesson in search engine optimization and content strategy. Still, I would be remiss if I didn’t offer at least one useful tip for writing your SEO articles. So here it is…

The difference between quality website content and “fluff” can be summed up in one word. Details. Your SEO articles should be thoroughly developed. They should never gloss over the key points. They should cover those points in detail. Aside from pleasing your readers, this will also make other publishes more inclined to link to your content. These links translate into higher rankings and more website traffic.

The more details you can include, the better. Note the difference between the following statements:

• A lot of homeowners are upside down in their mortgages.
• According to data released by CoreLogic last week, 11.1 million homeowners were underwater in their mortgage loans in the fourth quarter of 2011.

The first statement is a lazy generalization. It’s clear the writer didn’t do much homework, if any. The second statement is more engaging, simply because it offers more details. This writer has done her homework. The second article is authoritative and well researched. It offers specific facts instead of generalizations. It will acquire more links from other publishers and bloggers. This is the kind of writing style you should apply to your SEO articles.

Adding fresh content to your website is an effective way to boost your traffic. It’s a low-cost, low-tech strategy for SEO success. It’s simple math. A website with 100 pages of keyword-rich content will pull in more traffic than a 5-page website.

Try it for yourself. You have nothing to lose and plenty to gain. Build a library or learning center with 20 – 50 articles in it. Promote the library through social media, press releases and any other marketing channels you have at your disposal. Watch how your website traffic grows over time. You might be pleasantly surprised.

An entire book could be written on the features and functionality of Google Analytics. In this article, we will focus on five new features that are particularly useful for Internet publishers.

1. New-and-Improved Dashboards

Dashboards allow you to customize the way your data is presented. For instance, you can create a dashboard that shows entry keywords for a certain section of your website. You can tailor the presentation of the data so it gives you everything you need but nothing you don’t.

Dashboards have been part of Google Analytics for some time. But they got a makeover as part of the 2011 – 2012 rollout. You can now create more individual dashboards than ever before, and you can customize the presentation of each one.

Dashboards give you quick access to the data that matters most to you. It only takes a few minutes to set them up. After that, you’ll have instant access to the site metrics you need. It saves time and eliminates distraction.

2. Real-Time Web Data

You may feel like you’re in The Matrix, as you observe your visitors crawling over your website in real time. Google added this new feature in September 2011, and they’ve refined it since then. Real-time data is equally addictive and useful. It shows you what’s happening on your website right now. It allows you to generate custom reports on the fly, using the freshest data available.

Real-time data is a great way to measure your day-to-day success, especially when used to track specific marketing campaigns. For example, you can get instant feedback on the success of a social media campaign. Send a tweet through Twitter and watch the impact it has on your website, in real time. It’s a powerful tool for testing different promotional strategies.

3. Smarter Intelligence Reports

Google Analytics has offered “Intelligence Reports” since 2009. But in 2011, they made several enhancements to this feature. One of the most notable improvements is the overview report.

When you click on the “overview” link under the Intelligence tab, you’ll see a variety of events listed in a table. The table can be sorted by type of event, date, level of importance and other factors. These events represent significant changes to certain patterns on your website. For example, if your website traffic spikes as the result of a news story or citation on a popular website, the anomaly would appear in the overview section of the Intelligence tab.

As usual, this feature is fully customizable. You can create your own alerts based on the parameters of your choosing. You could set up an alert for a daily traffic goal, or for a bounce rate you deem unacceptable.

4. Visitor Flow at a Glance

The Visitor Flow feature shows how your visitors behave once they reach your site. It provides a graphical flow chart that helps you visualize certain patterns. For instance, you can see how people behave after entering the site through your top entry pages. If you notice an entry page with a high “drop off” rate, you can take the appropriate action. This might mean cross-linking some related content so readers can dig deeper into the site. Visitor Flow makes it much easier to spot beneficial and problematic trends.

5. Multi-Channel Funnels

Multi-Channel Funnels show you how certain traffic sources or “channels” have contributed to sales or conversions on your website. For example, some people might make a purchase (or other conversion) on your site after reading about you on another blog or website. Multi-Channel Funnels help you identify these conversion paths.

In fact, Google Analytics will show you every interaction a particular visitor has had with your website going back 30 days. This makes it easier to identify the original action that led to a certain conversion. Multi-Channel Funnels help you measure ROI for various marketing efforts.

If you’ve never used Google Analytics to monitor your website statistics, now is a great time to start. If you’re a veteran GA user, you might want to take a closer look at the new features available in 2012. For a more detailed explanation of the new features, check out this series of posts on the official Google Analytics blog.

Every business can benefit from adding timely news into the website content mix. It helps you attract new readers. It keeps people coming back, time and time again. It makes your website more useful. It helps you attract links from other publishers, which can boost your search engine visibility. It also helps you distinguish yourself from the more “static” websites in your industry or niche. All of these benefits come from publishing timely news that’s relevant to your audience.

That covers the “why” side of things. But what about the “how” factor? What steps should you take when publishing news on your website? How does it help you boost your website traffic? This article provides the tips, tools and techniques you need to succeed.

Mission: Increase Traffic With News-Related Website Content

The purpose of this strategy is to improve your search engine visibility, traffic levels, and overall website success. You can accomplish these goals by publishing relevant news that caters to your specific audience.

Here are some of the things you’ll need to get started:

• A clearly defined audience
• A publishing scope (areas of coverage)
• Google Alerts for key topics
• A feed reader to gather relevant RSS feeds
• Basic research and writing skills
• A content-management system or blogging program
• Keyword-research tools for optimization of content

You’ll soon learn how all of these tools can help you increase your web traffic with quality news content. Here are the seven key steps to publishing relevant news on your website:

1. Define Your Audience

You need to know who your audience is and what they need from you, in terms of information. Professional publishers spend a lot of time getting to know their audience. They conduct endless polls and surveys to understand what their audience wants. They conduct “focus groups” and data analysis to uncover their readers’ wants and desires.

You may not have the resources to conduct this level of research. And that’s okay. At a minimum, you should spend some time thinking about your intended readers and what they need from you. Better yet, put a feedback tool somewhere on your website. Allow your readers to rate your individual stories and articles. Let them comment on your news stories. Solicit their feedback any way you can. Look at your website analytics program to determine what articles are most and least popular (based on time spent reading versus bounce rates). With these efforts, you’ll have a much better understanding of what your readers want.

2. Identify Your News Topics

Once you know who you’re writing for, you’ll know what you need to publish. Make a list of the different topics you want to cover. This list might include two or three topics, or two or three dozen. It will depend on your publishing goals and your audience.

Now take it one step further. Combine your audience (from step 1) with your key topics. This becomes your mission statement. Every Internet publisher needs a mission statement. It helps you stay on task. It simplifies the research and writing process. It reminds you, constantly, of what you are trying to accomplish. Your mission statement can be as short as two or three sentences.

Here’s an example: “I will publish news related to the software industry. My readers are people who are shopping for certain software products. My areas of coverage will primarily include personal finance software (budgeting, taxes, etc.).”

Remember, you’re not just trying to increase your web traffic in general. You’re trying to increase your targeted traffic. You want to attract those people who are most likely to buy your products or click on your ads. You want traffic that supports your business model. The mission statement helps you focus on this task. Print it out. Put it someplace where you’ll see it every day. Revise it as needed. Build your news program around it.

3. Create Some Relevant Google Alerts

Professional publishers use a variety of tools to keep up with the topics they cover. The Google Alerts feature is one of those tools. You can create Google Alerts for a variety of phrases relating to your industry or niche. Then, whenever somebody publishes new information online that includes your key phrase, you’ll be notified by email. Google will send you a notification email daily, weekly or “as it happens.”

It’s like having your very own automated news assistant, scouring the web for relevant press releases and news stories. And best of all, it’s free.

Example: If I wanted to publish news relating to the U.S. housing market, I might set up Google Alerts for the following phrases:

• “home prices in the United States”
• “foreclosures in the United States”
• “U.S. housing market”
• Et cetera

I would then choose “news” from the “types of results” dropdown box. Now I’ll receive email notifications when news stories are published that include any of my key phrases. Time spent on this task — 90 seconds!

Remember the goal here. You want to increase your web traffic by publishing timely news related to your industry. In order to do this, you must stay on top of your industry. You must know about new developments as they occur. Google Alerts can help you achieve this. It’s a fire-and-forget weapon for the serious Internet publisher.

4. Gather RSS Feeds from Relevant Blogs and Websites

This strategy is similar to the last one, in that it helps you stay informed about your industry or niche. But instead of using Google Alerts to “harvest” news, you’ll be collecting RSS feeds for specific blogs and websites. RSS feeds allow you to follow certain authors and publishers, without having to visit their websites every time. It saves you time and energy while improving your coverage.

You can use a “feed reader” to keep tabs on any website or blog that publishes an RSS version of its content. Best of all, you can get one for free. Google Reader offers a full set of features that will help you gather and display an unlimited number of feeds. FeedReader is another popular (and free) tool with sufficient capabilities.

Imagine visiting a single web page and seeing the latest posts / stories from 25 of your favorite websites. That’s what you can do with feed readers. Basically, you are creating a reading room full of up-to-the-minute news content on your chosen topic. Combine this with the Google Alerts explained earlier, and you’ll always be well informed about your industry.

This is a key step to writing timely news content — the kind of content that will help you increase your web traffic. Let’s not forget the primary goal here. You want to publish relevant news on a regular basis, to keep your readers coming back to your site. You want to make your blog or website more useful, so that it attracts links from other publishers. You’ll have an easier time achieving these goals if you stay informed about your industry.

5. Compile Relevant Quotes, Data, Trends, etc.

You’re almost ready to write your first news story. Once you’ve identified a topic for the story, you can begin gathering support material. This will include relevant quotes, data and other details. These things will make your story more useful to the reader. They will also help you attract those all-important links from other publishers, which is the key to search engine optimization.

Here’s how each of these things can help you:

• Statistics and data will make your stories more believable.
• Expert quotes will make your stories more interesting.
• Supporting graphics will make your stories more appealing to readers.

Where do you get all of this supporting material? You dig into your Google Alerts and RSS feed reader. It’s all right there at your fingertips!

6. Write Your News Story

I don’t expect you to become a professional journalist, just to increase your web traffic. But you will benefit from having a certain degree of skill. The best way to learn news writing is to read plenty of news. Pay attention to the way professional journalists start and end their stories. Notice the details they use to support their content. Apply these skills to your own website.

You can boost your web traffic by publishing quality content on a regular basis. Quality and quantity are both important in their own ways. But it’s the quality of your content that keeps people coming back. So work on your writing skills daily.

Here are some quick tips for shaping your news stories:

• Write as much as you need to fully cover the story. It might end up being 500 words or 2,000 words. It’s done when all of the questions have been answered, and all of the angles have been addressed.
• Include the basic “who, what, when, where and why” details within the first couple of paragraphs. This is referred to as the inverted pyramid style of writing.
• Use the next few paragraphs to expand on the topic. Broaden the pyramid with supporting information.
• Include relevant quotes from experts and analysts.
• Include supporting graphics if you have them (charts, diagrams, etc.).

Now that you’ve written a great story, it’s time for the final step in the process. It’s time to optimize it for search engine performance. This will help you increase your web traffic even more.

7. Optimize Your Content for Search Engine Visibility

I’ve put this step last for a reason. You shouldn’t even think about the search engines until you have a well-written news story your readers will find useful. This is your first priority. Thinking about keywords and SEO will only distract you from this mission.

Once you’ve got a great story down on paper, you can always go back and optimize it for certain keywords and phrases. You can identify these phrases by using a keyword-research tool like WordTracker, or the Google AdWords keyword tool. Spread these keywords naturally throughout your story. Include them in the title, the first paragraph, and throughout the rest of the piece. Just make sure your keyword optimization doesn’t harm the readability of your content. Remember, people first and search engines second.

This article explains how to increase your web traffic by publishing relevant and timely news. As we continue this series, you will learn some additional strategies for developing high-quality website content.

Related Articles:

• SEO Content Strategy: Conducting Online Surveys
• Growing Your Website With Panda-Friendly Content

Objective: Your goal is to publish original research that is unique to your industry. This will help you attract links from reputable and relevant websites, which in turn will boost your search engine rankings over time. This SEO content strategy will also help you distinguish your website from others within your industry. Original research is the key to unlocking these benefits.

Tools: It doesn’t take much to conduct an online survey. You only need two things: survey software and a survey group. Do you have a steady amount of traffic to your website or blog? If so, you have a survey group at your disposal already. All you need now is the software program. We will talk more about these and other logistical factors below.

By the Numbers: How to Conduct an Online Survey

Let’s revisit the purpose of this SEO content strategy. You want to publish a survey that will generate interest from other publishers who cover your industry. There are many benefits to this kind of coverage. But in this lesson, we will focus on the SEO-specific benefits. By publishing web content around original research and analysis, you’ll have an easier time acquiring links from other websites. That’s what makes this an effective strategy for SEO content.

Here are the steps you’ll need to take:

Step 1 – Choose a survey program.

The first thing you need is a web-based survey tool. You’ll use this program to collect and analyze responses from your survey group (your website visitors, in this case). If you choose the right software program, it will handle 99% of the work for you.

SurveyMonkey is one of the most popular tools for conducting online surveys. They offer a free version, but it will limit you to a certain number of responses. The paid version allows you to collect unlimited responses. It’s relatively affordable, too. At the time article was published, their paid options started at $17 per month.

Other programs worth considering:

• Zoomerang (www.zoomerang.com)
• QuestionPro (www.questionpro.com)
• KeySurvey (www.keysurvey.com)

Some of these products have free-trial versions available. This is a great way to test the different features before purchasing anything.

Step 2 – Identify your survey topic.

Before you choose a topic for your survey, reflect on your mission. You are using this as an SEO content strategy, among other things. You are trying to create interesting web content to attract links from other websites. This will boost your search engine rankings over time.

Ideally, the survey should relate back to the primary focus of your business. You should also think about the journalists, bloggers and publishers who cover your industry. What kind of news do they report on most often? What might be considered a hot topic among these people?

In 2010, when the housing crisis was still fresh, RealtyTrac published the results of a survey relating to homeowners and foreclosures. That story got a lot of coverage. It was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and countless other blogs and websites. Talk about a boost in link popularity! Why did this story have good legs? Because it focused on a hot topic. It was also a well-structured survey with an intriguing headline (more to follow on this).

Step 3 – Conduct your survey.

Once you’ve identified a good topic for your survey, you can begin collecting responses. In order to be considered “statistically valid,” your survey will need to include a certain number of responses. Aim for a thousand, if possible. How long you run the survey will depend on the amount of exposure you give it. A high-traffic website could gather a thousand responses in a couple of weeks. A smaller website might have to run the survey for a couple of months or more.

You could also conduct the survey on other websites that share a similar audience. So consider partnering with other publishers or bloggers in your industry. Of course, you’ll have to share the exposure with this other publisher as well. It’s a tradeoff.

Step 4 – Publish the results.

Now we are getting to the SEO content side of things. It’s time to publish your findings on your website, and optimize it for search engine visibility. Be straightforward and factual as you present the results of your survey. This is not the time to be clever or cute with your content. You want to be taken seriously by journalists and bloggers. So play it straight.

Include the following items when you publish your survey:

• The timeframe when the survey was conducted
• The number of responses you’ve collected
• Key findings from the survey
• Your analysis of the findings
• Supporting graphics such as pie charts or graphs (see next step)

Remember, you are publishing dual-purpose website content. Your research will help you position yourself as an authority in your field. It also serves as SEO content, helping you attract high-value links from other websites. So be sure to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Make sure the information is presented in a professional manner. Proofread for clarity, spelling and grammar.

Step 5 – Use graphics and other supporting images.

You’ll attract more links if you include some “eye candy.” For an online survey, this might include a bar graph or pie chart to help people visualize the results. Some of the survey software programs mentioned earlier will handle this for you. They allow you to create charts and graphs to support your data, with the click of a button. SurveyMonkey is particularly good for this.

Graphics will help you turn your survey results into highly effective SEO content. Publishers will be more inclined to link to your survey if it includes visual elements. Include a “source” citation in the bottom corner of each graphic. That way, if other publishers share your graphic with their readers, your website and brand will go along with it.

Step 6 – Publish a press release.

You’ve conducted an online survey. You’ve published the results on your website or blog. Now it’s time to promote the content through any means available. Press releases are ideally suited for this task. You can write a news-style press release to publicize the results of your survey. You can publish it through a distribution service like PRWeb.com.

The headline is the most important part of your press release. It’s the headline that will (ideally) capture the attention of journalists and bloggers. The rest of the release just covers the basic facts of the survey, and offers a link to the published results.

Public Relations 101: You can increase readership by including percentages or other numbers in the headline of your release. For example:

• “78 percent of homeowners believe that…”
• “Three out of four small business owners expect to…”
• “67 percent of consumers plan to purchase…”

A well-written press release helps you grab the attention of other publishers. It will help you attract those all-important links to your survey results. Thus, it improves the performance of your SEO content.

Step 7 – Contact industry journalists and bloggers.

You can submit your press release through a website like PRWeb.com. And you may get some decent exposure in this fashion. But you’ll get even more coverage if you send the release to specific journalists, bloggers and publishers who cover your industry. Just send them a short email with the press release attached. Provide a link to the page on your website where you’ve published the survey results. If it’s an interesting survey, that’s all you have to do.

Original Research + Website Content = SEO Success

What’s the point of all this work? Why should jump through all of these hoops to conduct an online survey? For one thing, it will help you improve your search engine performance in the post-Panda world.

In May of 2011, Google engineer Amit Singhal explained how the so-called Panda update measures quality of content. He said: “if you want to step into Google’s mindset, the questions below provide some guidance on how we’ve been looking at the issue … Does the article [being considered] provide original content or information, original reporting, original research, or original analysis?”

This the type of content Google seeks to reward with its ranking algorithm. The online survey checks all of the boxes mentioned above. It provides original reporting, research and analysis. It’s an effective SEO content strategy in the post-Panda world.

So why all the headlines? What makes this algorithm change different from the hundreds that have preceded it? For one thing, it can affect your entire website — for better or worse. Here’s what Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land had to say about it:

“Panda is a filter that Google has designed to spot what it believes are low-quality pages. Have too many low-quality pages, and Panda effectively flags your entire site.”

As a result, many webmasters are scrambling to add new content to their websites. Some have suffered a tremendous drop in Google traffic and rankings, as a direct result of Panda. Others are being proactive, lest they fall victim to a future version of the dreaded filter.

This brings us to the focus of our tutorial — creating quality content. If you want to achieve top Google rankings in the post-Panda world, you must fill your website with quality content. But therein lies the challenge. You can’t just pull useful and original content out of thin air. And if you take shortcuts, you could suffer the same fate as these people.

• If you publish a bunch of “quick tips,” puff pieces and other shallow content, you could be slammed by the Panda.
• If you copy a lot of content from other websites, you could be slammed by the Panda.
• If you outsource your writing to content “factories” and bottom-bidding SEO firms … well, you get the idea.

So what’s a publisher to do? How do you grow your website with Panda-friendly content? We have some helpful tips to get you started.

Your first priority is creating quality content for your website. Every page on your site must offer value in some way. It must be able to stand on its own. Within that framework, you should also strive for content volume.

Here are ten tips for growing your site with quality content:

What do all of strategies have in common? For one thing, they all seek to engage the reader in some way. This is the key to Internet marketing success, Panda or no Panda. You have to engage your readers with useful content if you want them to stick around. This is the first step to onsite conversions (turning readers into customers).

These strategies will also help you stay on the good side of the Panda. Through all of these techniques, you’ll be creating useful website content that helps people achieve a certain goal. This is the kind of content that attracts links from other publishers. This is the kind of content that keeps people on your site longer. This is the kind of content that helps you survive — and thrive — in the post-Panda world.

AND THE WINNER IS…..

FLO!

Here are more images throughout the day:

Many online writers are discussing the recent introduction by Google of a link tag attribute that allows content sites to identify their writers. The attribute is rel=“author” and links authors to their content, not only on one site, but all across the internet. The goal is to gather as much information about published online authors to determine credibility. According to Google, the concept behind this new feature is to specify whether a writer publishes a great deal of helpful content online and if so, other content created by this writer may be worth a look. Gathered information about a writer who publishes content may help a viewer decide if this content is relevant to their search engine query or of they need to continue their search and find another source.

Signals Like a Byline

Author credits are well-known in the publishing industry. Newspapers and magazines assign author bylines that identify the writer of the published content; some even supply author bio boxes that help identify the writer further enhancing reasons a viewer should read the content. Many offline content sources also publish the author’s webpage address in this bio box. This concept is currently on many websites where the content also includes a link back to the author’s website. Through use of the rel=“author” link attribute, the search engine recognizes this is a link pointing to the author’s page and not somewhere else. The author attribute (rel=”author”) is placed inside the <a href=”authorpage.com”>.

Creating an ‘Attractive’ Profile for Your Fans to See and For Google to Love

An attractive profile is more than just a way to readily share information about you and your work; it provides Google with the ability to more-effectively recognize a person as the writer of site content. Below you’ll find helpful advice regarding the creation of a rich and effective Google Plus profile. You can also check out Google’s Webmaster Tools Help for more information.

• Your personal profile with Google Plus needs to be updated using links to all of your published writing on the internet. (To include your profile links, click the profile edit function, then click on the Links field to the right on the web page adding links you desire.)
• Your profile image must be a professional, clear headshot in order to show up the search results page. Google utilizes facial recognition software to determine if your picture is a face or not. This new feature allows Google Plus to show who the author is and generate more for interest and traffic to his or her profile.
• For website visitors to easily connect to your Google Plus profile, include a “g+” button on each page.
• When publishing any blog or website showcasing content material from any one writer, a most basic approach, in order to determine writer details, is to create a link for your Profile at Google in each and every web page, such as:

Sites Containing Multiple Authors or Blogs

When a website showcases written content from several different writers, you’ll need to separate yourself as the writer of your own work. In this case, Google’s search engines look for a link from the content page to the writer’s personal website, as well as their Google Plus profile. The content page may be virtually any item of written content from the author; an important news flash, blog post or even a piece of fiction like a short story or a poem. If the author is tagged somewhere, Google is going to pick it up the rel=“author” attribute.

When verifying authorship, Google considers two things:

1. Links coming from the actual content page to an article author web page. In the event that the pathway link proceeds to a Google Plus profile, the information can be found in search outcomes

2. A link path coming back to your Google profile. These two-way links are essential; with no reciprocal links, anybody can credit themselves for your work to or even credit you to writing something you didn’t actually write.

Create a Link for Multiple Pages Authored by the Same Writer

Any writer’s ideal content page would be able to connect with additional pages related to the same writer, like an author’s home web page or even a social media site such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. In order to inform Google about these other pages describe the same writer, make use of the rel=”me” link to create a connection from each writer’s different profile pages. For example, if you were a frequent and steady writer at http://www.this.example.com, a link on the author’s page would lead to your home page at http://yourhomepage.com by using this code:

Subsequently, your profile page at http://www.yourhomepage.com should point also to your writer’s profile at http://www.this.example.com that could read:

Use of the rel=”me” tag as a reciprocal link informs Google that your profiles at http://www.yourhomepage.com and http://this.example.com/authors/yourname are the same writer.

This new author tag has excited online writers all over the world, but only time will tell if the new attribute is being utilized and used properly. If it is, the attribute has the potential to benefit the writers on a large scale and we’ll have a better understanding of the tag and its plans for the future.

Author: Tony Berastegui

Per the official Google Analytics blog:

Author: Tony Berastegui

Here are several excellent social media sites of which you may not be aware. They’re all quite useful in their own way and well worth checking out.

1. BuzzFeed.com – Here is a true niche-based – and welcome – social media site, one that tracks viral items on the web. Got a new piece of content that you think is going to be picked up by thousands? Now you can track its progress with BuzzFeed. Its “Viral on the Web” section shows you what’s hot right now. Plus, it separates viral content into a variety of mostly humor-based categories. BuzzFeed allows you to track your viral entries by simply opening an account and loading your URL information into the site. It’s a vital tracking system for companies who do a lot of link bait.

2. Quora.com – This fairly new site is generating a lot of buzz. The site allows users to create a profile and share their knowledge with the social community by way of answering open-ended questions submitted by other users. The site setup is very user friendly. Questions are separated into specific categories, which make it easier for users to find the questions that interest them. Answers can be edited and amended by other experts with ease. While the site has its limits, its use is catching on quickly.

3. ThisOrThat.com – This comparison engine is great for getting a quick idea of how the public feels about one thing over another. Just open an account and create a survey. Let’s say you want to find out which color women prefer most in a formal dress – black or red? Find out by asking on ThisorThat.com. Easy “share” buttons for your Twitter followers and Facebook friends allow you to get the word out about your survey immediately.

4. WeePlaces.com – This site works with Foursquare, Facebook or Gowalla. It tracks your check-ins and puts them into a routing format. It allows you to share the places where you hang out most often with your friends.

5. Fiverr.com – What would you do for five bucks? That’s the whole idea behind Fiverr.com. Fiverr allows you to buy various products and services for five bucks. For example: Need somebody to read a script or a quick plug for your business? Chances are you can find a good voiceover announcer on Fiverr. You will also find people who are willing to do some of the most bizarre things ever on this site (such as perform an entire song of your choice by a person in a hot dog costume) This could be a great way to save some money on audio and video projects that come your way.

6. Wordle.net – Wordle allows you to create your own word clouds from any text you create. It gives you an idea of which words in your article are being used the most. In addition to giving you an entertaining way of checking such things as keyword saturation and SEO, the site creates “art” out of the word cloud that can be printed out if you like.

7. KickStarter.com – Many companies have great ideas. What they don’t have is the financial backing to make those ideas a reality. KickStarter.com is here to remedy that. Users create videos that clearly state their ideas for various products or services. Would-be venture capitalists then pledge money to the idea owner in an effort to see a finished product – and presumably get one free. One recent funded project netted five times what the inventor was seeking to make injection molds for his product, a pivoting iPad stand.

8. StickyBits.com allows users to scan the barcodes from all kinds of products with their cell phones. The information is uploaded to the website, where you can then access information and reviews left by other users. There is a constant stream of what everyone is doing, much like Facebook’s news feed. The site also allows you to win products if you scan certain things. The layout is a bit cute but the potential for gathering consumer information with StickyBits is virtually infinite.

9. StoreEnvy.com – Probably the best way to describe this site is Etsy on steroids. StoreEnvy lets you set up your own market, where shoppers find you via interests. You can “like” products and stay notified of updates at their favorite stores. This extremely customizable site allows you to use added graphics and photos to create your own, unique-looking store site. This is a relatively new site but the buzz is rather huge.

10. FolkDirect.com – If you’re one of those people who would prefer total control over your social media presence, FolkDirect could be for you. The site offers everything you might need for your social media experience, while keeping out advertisers and third-party apps. On top of all that, it’s free.

11. Yammer.com – If you struggle to keep your personal and work lives separate, Yammer is what you need. Yammer offers private messaging services for companies and internal departments of those companies. In other words, what happens at work stays at work.

Whether any of these social media sites (or thousands of others) is right for you is something only you can answer. Try them and see if they prove useful to you. Then tell us what you think about them.

Author: Tony Berastegui