1.  How is Google Instant going to change my ranking for keywords and keyword phrases?

In releasing Google Instant, Google made no change to the ranking algorithm. This means your rankings for specific keywords immediately before and immediately after the release of Google Instant would be unaffected. What Google Instant does change is the user experience and how people interact with Google. Because Google is now predicting what people are searching for and displaying the results before the user even hits enter, more and more website are going to be targeting predicted keywords. This will most likely cause these keywords to become more competitive and, in turn, make it much more difficult to maintain a high ranking for these specific keywords. 

2.  How does Google Instant affect my SEO strategy? 

Because Google Instant presents results before the user even hits enter, there is little reason for the user to visit the second page of search results or possibly even scroll below the fold. It is also much easier for the user to just rephrase the search they are attempting if they’re not getting the results they’re looking for. This makes it much more important to rank on the first page and, more specifically, in the top three results for specific keywords and keyword phrases, since these are the results that are going to be getting the majority of the traffic. 

3.  Are there any specific aspects of SEO that are heavily affected by Google Instant?

We believe that page titles and meta descriptions will now play a more important role than ever. Even though the page title is just a minor part in a website’s SEO relevance and the meta description doesn’t affect ranking, these are the two items that a user will see as they scan the page when they search. If you can write something compelling, grab searchers’ attentions, and stop their search process, you will get a better click-through rate. If the keyword is present within the page title or meta description, it will be bolded and even more likely to grab searchers’ attentions, so make sure to focus on creating great page titles and interesting, relevant meta descriptions. 

4.  How does Google Instant affect my PPC strategy?

Once again, the importance of ranking in the top three positions is increasing. When thinking about the effect Google Instant is having on PPC, it is important to remember that Google is still a business with the main objective of making as much money for its shareholders as possible. The increased competitiveness due to the desire for companies to rank in the top three will most likely lead to higher CPC costs (and more money in Google’s pocket). This makes it even more important to do thorough keyword research before you start your campaign and to constantly monitor your keywords and analytics to adapt to the ever-evolving search ecosystem. 

5.  How does Google Instant affect the definition of an impression?

Google now defines an impression as an instance when a user clicks on the page causing the search results to be displayed, when the user hits enter, or when the user types in the search box and pauses for 3 or more seconds. 

6.  How will this affect my PPC campaign?

Users that use Google AdWords do not pay on an impression basis. Google AdWords charges users on a CPC (cost-per-click) basis, so your spending will not be affected by the new definition of impression. However, what is likely to occur is that the total number of impressions will go up. This will cause your click-through rate (clicks/impression) to decrease since the total number of impressions is likely to increase. 

7.  Should I optimize for short tail or long tail keywords? 

There is no clear-cut answer as to whether you should optimize for short tail or long tail keywords. The factors you should consider when trying to decide are how competitive the short tail is versus how much traffic the long tail keywords receive. You should also look at the traffic each type of keyword drives to your site and try to determine which keywords drive the most qualified leads (the ones that are most likely to convert to customers). The key to this is keyword research (please excuse the horrible pun). Once you have the data to analyze the cost and benefit of optimizing for each type of keyword, you can make an educated business decision. 

8.  Should I optimize for partial searches?  For instance, if my keyword starts with a “W” and weather is the first keyword Google Instant returns when a user types a “W,” should I try to optimize for this keyword?

No, you should not try to optimize for keywords that are not relevant to your business or the product you are offering. If someone is searching for something else and your website did pop up as a result, it is unlikely that they would not be a good lead anyway. You should continue to focus on the keywords relevant to your business/product and continually monitor your keywords and analytics to see which ones are producing good results and which ones are performing poorly. Then focus on the well-performing ones. 

9.  How will Google Instant affect the Bing and Yahoo alliance?

We don’t really see this as a play by Google to try to completely knock Bing and Yahoo out of the game. Google’s main goal is to try to return the most relevant result to the user. This means attempting to return more personalized search results, an area that companies like Yelp and Facebook have been trying to secure. Early polls show that not many people have strong enough negative feelings to actually switch away from Google, so it is likely that if people used Google before, they will continue to use Google. Only time will tell how much more search traffic Google gets because of the Google Instant change. 

10.  How does Google Instant affect people who use browser-based search boxes?

Google Instant does not affect how users interact with browser based search boxes. Users who use these search boxes must continue to type in their query and hit enter in order to display search results. It is important to remember, however, that once a user hits enter, they will be taken to Google and any subsequent searches will take place using the Google Instant interface. 

Google Instant: Major Changes for SEO

Google Instant promises faster searches, smarter predictions and instant results. But what does Google Instant mean for your business and your search strategy?

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Here are 6 steps to setting a great SEO table after you’ve made the meal.

1. Setting the Right Utensils  – Choosing Target Keywords.

Before you begin setting the table, you should know what you’re going to eat with. You wouldn’t set the table with different sized spoons if you’re eating sushi, would you? Keywords should be focused around what potential customers may be searching for or discussing on social media sites. Most meals will only require a couple pieces of silverware.  You should follow the same rules by choosing 1-2 specific keywords or keyword phrases for each blog article.

2. Be Clear About What’s on the Menu – Write a Great Page Title, Headline and URL.

Your page title, headline and page URL are the most heavily weighed factors in on-page SEO. The keyword you selected in step 1 should be included in all three areas. Menus are categorized so that restaurant patrons can easily find a specific section of food they feel like having. Your website should also be setup so that visitors can easily find the content they’re most interested in, because search engines spiders were able to properly index it.

Feel free to spice up the page title and headline a little beyond just inserting keywords to make it enticing enough for someone to want to read, but keep in mind you have other opportunities to further describe the content in the page description.

3. Getting People to Choose Your Dish – Crafting a Compelling Page Description.

Although it doesn’t affect how you rank, a great page description can get a search engine user to click through to your site over another.  It still helps to include keywords in the description to reinforce what the content is about to search engines and users.

This is your chance to really describe the content, and in the case of menu that specific meal and why its so great. You may even want to include a call to action. “Our angel hair pasta is served in our superb garlic sauce with fresh jumbo shrimp. Try it today!”

4. Setting the Table with Flowers and Candles – Enhancing the Visitors Experience with Descriptive Imagery.

The mood and setting of a restaurant will have an impact on your experience. By using appropriate images associated with the blog post you’ll keep the visitors attention and give them a visual reminder of what the blog article is about. Images are great for humans, but search engines can’t understand images unless you describe it with text. Include the keywords or keyword phrases for that page in the image caption, alt-text, and file name of the images.

5. Give Visitors the Opportunity to Rave About the Meal – Add Social Media Buttons to Every Post.

Restaurants love it when people tell others about the great experience they had. Word-of-mouth marketing is extremely effective, and getting your readers to share your articlewith their network can help drive considerably more traffic back to that post. Add social media and social sharing buttons to the top of each article so content can be easily shared right from your blog. The more sharing that goes on, the more opportunity there is for people to find that article remarkable and attract inbound links.  

6. Putting a Meal on the Right Dish – Making Sure Your Blog Sits on Your Own Domain.

It’s important to put your meal on the right plate. It all has to fit and be on the appropriate dish. In order to get all the credit from the inbound links you acquire, your blog needs to be connected to your website through a subdomain or subdirectory of your main site. Many blogs are actually hosted by outside providers such as WordPress or Blogger and look like this:

Yourcompany.wordpress.com

In this scenario, all of the authority from inbound links you gain are passed to the blog software provider’s website and not to your own website. The number and quality of inbound links accounts for 75% of how you rank in search engines, so it is critical that all of the authority you’re gaining from your blog is passed on to your website.

Make sure that your blog is either setup as a sub-directory of your website like yourcompany.com/blog or a subdomain like blog.yourcompany.com.

What other tips can you apply from the kitchen to optimizing your blog articles?

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Now, Facebook Business Page administrators can report spammers and ban people who have made abusive comments.

Marketing Takeaway

Spam comments and links destroy the credibility of an online community. One of the responsibilities of an online marketer is dedicating time to managing a community, which means promoting meaningful conversation and removing spam to keep communication flowing. A great way to do this is by establishing set time(s) to do moderation, depending on the activity of your community. Another way is to assign each team member a day of moderation, if your team is large enough.  

Have you seen this new feature available on your page yet?    

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What is a 301 redirect?

A 301 redirect is also known as a permanent redirect.  When you use a 301 redirect it tells your browser or more importantly the search engines “Hey the page you are looking for is actually at this URL…oh and it’s going to be there permanently.” 

Why is a 301 redirect the best?

The reason a 301 redirect is the only redirect you should be using is because search engines will allow all of the SEO credit from on URL to pass through to the other.  This is because of its “permanent” status.  If you choose to use another form of redirect, the search engines will not pass the SEO credit and you will be splitting it between the two URLs.

An Example:

The most obvious example of how forgetting to set up a 301 redirect can hurt your SEO is by looking at the difference between http://www.yourawesomecompany.com and http://yourawesomecompany.com.  Although, both of these URLs will generally go to the same page, if you don’t have a 301 redirect set up the search engines will actually recognize them as two separate sites.  That means that whenever someone links to the “www” URL that site will be credited for the inbound link, and anytime someone links to the URL without “www” the other site will be credited.  So instead of splitting the credit for all your hard work, take the 10 minutes and set up your 301 redirect.

How to check if you have a 301 redirect set up:

The easiest way to check if your site has a 301 redirect set up is to head over to our Website Grader.  Just type in your URL to get your website graded, and we’ll give you lots of SEO tips for your website including whether or not you need to set up a 301 redirect.  If a 301 redirect is not found you’ll see an error message under section E that looks like this. 

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The biggest barrier to entry into the social media world is education. It’s difficult to “teach an old dog new tricks” especially when social media and the internet in general, are always changing. There’s so much to learn and understand – What is it? Why do I need it? How do I get started? Who has time for this? How do I prioritize? How does this benefit my business?

My advice is to just try it – start small, make mistakes and learn from them. Here’s a great article that details Simple Ways B2B Companies Can Be More Social and another on Common B2B Social Media Marketing Mistakes to get you started. We even created a comprehensive collection of Social Media Marketing Resources to help you accelerate through and overcome the social media learning curve.

So, while the “old dogs” are learning, taking it slow and giving it a chance, how can we help the “new dogs” or the next generation of entrepreneurs and business owners get onboard with social media? We need to give them a leg up and better prepare and educate them through courses and curriculums designed around social media.

Melissa Cohen, PR Manager at Metis Communications, recently wrote an article called “The Spirit of the Real-Time Web” in which she reflects on a panel discussion from the 140 Characters Conference among two principals and a high school science teacher who all “expressed the need to educate school districts – everyone from teachers, parents, students and the board about the importance of social media for education.”

Teachers are very much like many business owners in that they continue to rely on traditional methods and technologies to reach their target audience of students or parents or customers. They aren’t thinking about the way their audience gets information today – through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. They aren’t thinking about new ways to interact and engage through the internet. The world is shifting from being static and tangible to being instantaneous and changeable. We need to adapt on all levels if we want to create successful students, future business owners and businesses.

As Cohen says, “We welcome and challenge school districts and every entrepreneur out there to commit to social media. You might actually learn something…or…increase your customer base, raise awareness of your brand, recommend brands to others and obtain market feedback.”

That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

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These 10 videos provide great examples of what it takes to make a video that can capture the attention of millions and market your product in the process. Take a look at each of these videos. They are all very different and invoke different emotions in order to capture attention. These videos prove that it doesn’t matter if your company is B2B or B2C; anyone can create a video that goes viral.

1. THE NEW DORK – Entrepreneur State of Mind (Jay-Z ft Alicia Keys Spoof) | grasshopper.com

2. 2010 Kia Soul Hamster Commercial | Black Sheep Kia Hamsters Video

3. Herding Cats – Ikea

4. Tea Partay – Smirnoff

5. Will It Blend? – iPhone – BlendTec

6. Dove Evolution – Dove

7. Evian Roller Babies – Evian

8. The T-Mobile Dance – T-Mobile

9. YouTube HD Camera Trick Challenge- Samsung

10. United Breaks Guitars – Sons of Maxwell

What other viral marketing videos have you enjoyed?

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Unfortunately, there are many wrong ways to create a CTA (including a complete lack of an actual CTA). Here are a few ways you can tell that you need to makeover your site’s CTAs.

1. Your Landing Pages Aren’t Getting Traffic

One of the most obvious signs that you need to rethink your CTAs is that you’re not getting traffic to your landing pages even though your site overall is getting decent traffic. This may be because your offer and corresponding CTA don’t answer the crucial question your visitors want to know: “What’s in it for me?” One of the weakest calls to action is “Contact Us.” You want to be sure that you’re offering something that visitors are willing to exchange their contact info for.

Some ideas for lead generation offers include:

• Free eBooks
• Free whitepapers
• Free webinars
• FAQs
• Kits

Also make sure that your CTA is clickable. Many times I’ve seen a great offer on the page that either isn’t a link or is a broken link.

2. You’re Not Getting Leads

A lack of leads is another obvious sign that your CTAs need an overhaul, and is also tied to the fact that you need a compelling offer. But you also want to be sure that your CTA accurately matches the offer. Don’t overpromise on the CTA in hopes of increasing your click-through rate!  If your readers click the CTA and reach a landing page where the offer doesn’t match up, they’ll navigate away from the page instead of filling out the form. So it’s also important that you follow landing page best practices to ensure that your landing page matches the CTA and offer

3.  Your visitors have to dig to find a CTA

I often see the only CTA hidden away on a single child page that takes three clicks to get to. That means that if your site gets 300 visitors per day, that’s 300 lost opportunities to get leads (minus however many actually navigated or Google-searched to that exact page the CTA lives on).  There’s nothing wrong with having your primary call to action right on your homepage. In fact, there should be a primary and secondary CTA on nearly every one of your website pages.   

4. Your CTA Is Below the Fold

People are lazy. It’s the truth. Just like most people don’t go past page #2 in Google, people don’t like scrolling down if their eyes don’t find something interesting in less than 5 seconds. Place your CTAs above the fold so the user can see them without scrolling down.

5. Your CTA doesn’t stand out

A bit of text in the sidebar isn’t going to be enough to grab your visitors’ attention. Make your CTAs bold, with graphics and colors that they can’t miss. Contrasting colors can help draw a visitor’s eye to the action you want them to take.

Want to start optimizing your calls to action? Check out Action Grader, HubSpot’s free tool that will help you set up tests to improve the click-through rate on CTAs.

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The time for eCommerce holiday shopping is quickly approaching, and if you are not already developing your plan to maximize your return on the spike of online sales, you need to start now!!  According to a report provided from

Be  Prepared for the Online Holiday Rush

1.  Write blog posts that are optimized for the long-tail of “holiday” centric keywords.  For example, if you sell shoes, you could write blog posts around the subject of holiday specials for your products.  

• “5 Reasons Ugg Boots and Slippers Will Dominate Holiday Gifts”   
• “3 Great Tennis Shoes for a Boy’s Christmas Present”  
• “Christmas Basketball Shoe Sales Will Be A Slamdunk in 2010”

Writing content that includes your products and the holiday terms (Christmas, holiday presents, holiday gifts, Christmas ideas, boy holiday gifts, girl Christmas gifts, ect.) will help your website rank better for these longer-tail niche keywords.  Make sure that you have strong call-to-action buttons on each of your blog posts that link to landing pages explaining holiday promotions for specific products or product categories.  

2.  Develop Promotional Landing Pages that are designed to target Holiday traffic.  Entice your visitors to buy from you by giving them time-sensitive pricing incentives that are only available during the holidays.  Showcase your top performing products on holiday themed landing page with great offers.  “20% off when purchasing $50 or more before X date.”  “Free t-shirt included when you purchase before X date.”

Maybe your visitors are interested in your products, but not committed to purchasing immediately. Help convert these visitors to customers by giving them incentive to sign up for exclusive promotional offers.  “Sign up for exclusive holiday deals only available for existing or new subscribers.  This Special will expire on X Date.  Sign up now to secure your discount!”   

3.  Send Holiday marketing emails and use lead nurturing.  Increase your holiday revenue by nurturing your visitors that haven’t committed to a purchase and rewarding your existing customers with exclusive offers.  Existing customers have already purchased from you and like your products — reward and entice them to buy more for their friends and family!  Send an email reminding your existing customers that the holidays are quickly approaching, and that you are offering them an exclusive, limited time offer.   Give a coupon code with a reminder that this code will expire by “X” date.  Make sure that this email includes links back to either your blog posts about your most popular seasonal items or landing pages designed to show additional value for shopping early.  

Additionally, you should use lead nurturing emails to leverage the holiday season in your favor by placing new leads into campaigns designed entice earlier purchases.  Remembering to segment your lead nurturing campaigns is an important step.  If a visitor comes to your website and is interested in getting a special holiday deal on jackets, make sure that you send them emails designed to sell jackets, not shoes!  

4.  Monitor and promote your brand and products in social media with holiday keywords.  Monitoring and promoting your most popular products is essential for eCommerce stores in 2010.  Tracking holiday centric keywords is an advanced skill that can help you sell more.  Instead of just tracking the keyword “Ugg boots” track “Ugg boots christmas” and “Ugg boats holiday present.”  Tracking these terms in Twitter will allow you to see tweets that say, “All I want for Christmas are Ugg Boots!” and “Are Ugg boots for my daughter for a good holiday present?”  You could then engage these tweeters to let them know about your new article “5 Reasons Ugg Boots and Slippers Will Dominate Holiday Gifts”.  Or you could send them links to a landing page that offers 20% Off Ugg Boots when signing up for promotional discount emails.

Utilizing these inbound marketing tactics will ensure that your eCommerce site is prepared for the holiday rush.  Have you seen your favorite stores already using some of these tactics mentioned?  Do you have other suggestions?  I would love to hear your feedback!

Photo curtesy of Luiz A. Villa

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In this week’s top inbound marketing article, Valeria Maltoni discusses why fear is common in social media adoption and how (and why) organizations should get over this fear.

1. How to Get Over Your Fears of Social Media

Author: Valeria Maltoni of Conversation Agent

Valeria’s article addresses a common sentiment toward social media for newbies: fear. Because social media is abstract and can be overwhelming at first, says Maltoni, it’s understandable that businesses would be scared to get involved.

She therefore discusses a recent experience of hers about how she helped moderate a discussion among professionals about social media, its uses for business, and why companies should get over their fears and use it to their advantage. She also divulges a few quick tips to help organizations get over their fears and get involved.

Marketing Takeaway: Social media can be scary at first. Come up with some guidelines to make you feel comfortable; then dig in!

2. 4 Ways to Use Twitter to Support Your Blog

Author: Georgina Laidlaw on ProBlogger

Okay, so maybe you’re already using your Twitter feed to help promote your blog posts, but are you really taking full advantage of Twitter to support your blogging efforts?

Georgina’s article highlights several more unconventional ways to get more out of your Twitter account for your blog, which include telling the story of blog content creation, tweeting interesting comment responses, running a Twitter competition tie-in, and creating a Twitter conversation around an event.

Marketing Takeaway: Be creative in your Twitter strategy, and don’t be afraid to try different ways of promoting your content.

3. 7 Ways to Acquire the Right Kinds of Links to Your Site

Author: John Jantsch on Duct Tape Marketing Blog

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again — inbound links are important. Period. But how do you generate inbound links, and how do you generate good ones? John’s article describes 7 ways:

1. Write a blog.
2. Guest post on other blogs.
3. Submit posts and articles to directories.
4. Write social press releases.
5. Leave lots of relevant comments.
6. Create profiles.
7. Use social bookmarking.

Marketing Takeaway: Inbound links are important criteria for off-page SEO. Make an effort to start generating some high-quality links back to your site.

4. How to Grow a Following With Other People’s Popular Content

Author: Jamie Beckland on Social Media Examiner

This Social Media Examiner article is all about content curation, and it’s a good one. Ever get tired of the pressure to create new content day-in and day-out? Why not start incorporating content curation into your blogging strategy?

Content curation is simply the practice of “reviewing and filtering articles and blog posts from across the web,” and no, it’s not “stealing” content from others. For a deeper look into the wonders of content curation, how it can work for you, and how to do it successfully, take a look at Jamie’s article.

Marketing Takeaway: Content curation is a great strategy for driving traffic to your blog, but use in moderation.

5. Why Social CRM Needs to Be Less About the Social and More About the Customers

Author: Kevin Troy Darling on Convince & Convert

With all the recent buzz about social CRM (sCRM), Kevin’s article takes a step back and dares to say that, while social media is a helpful addition to CRM software, the real focus should be on the “C” in the abbreviation.

As marketers, he says, we need to be reaching our customers where they are, and yes, the potential of social media to help achieve this is unquestionable. However, it’s how we use this technology that matters, and that means effectively targeting your audience with the right messages for different social media.

Marketing Takeaway: Social media can be helpful for customer relationship management, but it’s not the most important thing.

Photo Credit: Jordan Pérez Órdenes

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At HubSpot, we feel fortunate to be working in an area that houses the top marketing minds and leaders in the world. October 4-8 will bring marketers from all over the United States and beyond to Boston for FutureM, a week-long series of events that will discuss and educate attendees about the future of marketing. As part of FutureM, HubSpot will be hosting its first ever global user conference and is excited to be a part of the Inbound Marketing Summit and many other great events.

Here are just a few of the great FutureM events:

Oct. 4 at 12 p.m.  GeoM – What’s New and What’s Next in GeoMarketing

Oct. 4 at 6p.m. Flying Cars are Here: The Futuristic Present of Marketing

Oct. 5 at 8 a.m.  Shift Your Thinking, or Get Left Behind by your Consumers

Oct. 5 at 9 a.m.  Social Media Marketing: The Future is Social

Oct. 5 at 8:30 a.m. HubSpot User Group

Oct. 6 and 7 at 8 a.m.  Inbound Marketing Summit

Oct. 6 at 6 p.m.  Analytics Schmanalytics: How Neuromarketing Will Change the Future of Marketing Analytics

Oct 6 at 6 p.m. How Will Gen Y Affect the Future of Marketing? Or You’re Screwed If You Don’t Get With the Program

Oct. 6 at 6 p.m.  The Future of Web User Experience

Oct. 7 at 7 p.m. Social Media Battles

Oct. 7 at 4 p.m.  Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead – an Ad Club Book Club Event

Oct. 8 at 9 a.m. Beyond Cause Marketing

These are only some of the amazing FutureM events, so we encourage you to check out the entire event calendar.

Come to Boston! Attend some of these amazing marketing events, and be sure to say hi to some HubSpotters while you are here.

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