Three ways a test crawl could uncover Hidden SEO dangers

3:34 PM

Three Ways a Test Crawl Could Uncover Hidden SEO Dangers



In November I wrote a post explaining how just one line of code could destroy your SEO.  It underscored the fact that sometimes hidden dangers can kill your SEO efforts.  In addition, it also explained how a thorough audit can reveal those issues and get your site back on track SEO-wise.  Well, I’m back with a new post about audits and SEO gremlins.  And as part of this post, I’m going to include information about one of my favorite tools (one that I’ve used for a long time – Xenu Link Sleuth).

n this post, I’m going to explain the power of a test crawl when auditing a web site.  You can learn a lot by crawling a web site, and I’m going to focus on three hidden dangers that can be uncovered by using a tool like Xenu.  And since the information is actionable, you just might be running to your development team once the crawl is done.

Xenu Link Sleuth – Free, Simple, and Powerful

I’m going to focus on Xenu Link Sleuth for running a test crawl, although Screaming Frog is another solution you can try (but it’s a paid solution).  I’ve been using Xenu for years and it’s a great tool for spidering a website.  There’s a wealth of information Xenu returns, including status codes, server errors, inbound links, external links, page metadata, etc.  As part of the process of auditing a web site, it’s always a good idea to run a test crawl.  You never know what you’re going to find.

Note, this post isn’t meant to be a deep Xenu tutorial that covers all of its functionality.  Instead, my goal is to show you three things you can uncover during a test crawl that could be hurting your SEO efforts.  Let’s take a look at what Xenu can find after you unleash it on your website.

3 SEO Dangers Xenu Can Uncover:

1. Server Errors

There are times I run Xenu on a medium to larger site and the report comes back with hundreds (or thousands) of server errors.  As you can imagine, having Googlebot encounter thousands of server errors isn’t a good thing.  The crazy part is that clients often don’t know this is happening, and that’s especially true with larger sites.

In addition, there are times those server errors are occurring on pages that the client didn’t even know existed.  Confused?  They were too.  In a recent audit, the CMS being used was dynamically building URL’s based on a glitch.  Those URL’s threw server errors.  And Googlebot was finding them too.  Not good.





2. 404’s

If you’re not familiar with header response codes, a 404 is “Page Not Found”. For SEO, you want to hunt down 404’s for several important reasons.  For example, are powerful pages on your site throwing 404’s?  Why is that happening?  And how much search equity are you losing if they are throwing 404’s?  A search engine will remove a page that 404’s from its index, and you could lose valuable inbound links that are pointing to those pages.  As you can imagine, correcting pages that 404, that shouldn’t 404, is an important task for SEO.


On the flip side, if web pages have been removed correctly (and throwing 404’s), the last thing you want to do is to drive Googlebot to a “Page Not Found” via your own internal linking structure.  That’s a waste of a link on your site (and it’s bad for usability as well).  Using Xenu, you can easily view 404’s in the reporting, export that report, and then work with your developers on fixing navigation issues.




3. Weird (and Potentially Dangerous) Outbound Links

Let’s focus on a more sinister issue for a minute.  Unfortunately, hackers are continually trying to infiltrate web sites, CMS packages, etc. to benefit their own web sites (or client web sites).


Here’s a simple question for you.  Do you know all of the pages you are linking to from your website?  Are you 100% sure you know?  Are you hesitating?  :)

For larger sites in particular, tracking down all outbound links isn’t a simple task.  If your server or CMS package was infiltrated, and outbound links were injected into your site, it can be hard to manually find those links in a short period of time (if you’re even lucky enough to know this is going on).

There are times I run a test crawl and find some crazy outbound links to less-than-desirable web sites.  And as you can guess, they contain rich anchor text that can boost the rankings of those sites.  And worse, some web site owners have no idea this is going on.  Xenu can pick up these external links and provide reporting that you can analyze.




Summary – Crawling To Action

Running a test a crawl on a web site is a smart task to complete on a regular basis.  There are several actionable findings a tool like Xenu can uncover, and at a very low cost.  Finding these simple, yet destructive problems can help webmasters improve the SEO health of their web sites.  And that’s exactly the goal of an SEO Audit.

Again, I just covered a few insights you can glean from a test crawl.  Try it out for yourself today.  As I mentioned earlier, you never know what you’re going to find.

Curtsey @  http://www.searchenginejournal.com/

http://seo-vempower.blogspot.com/search/label/Search Engine Optimization and Page Rank

Sesame Seeds and SEO

3:01 PM

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Sesame-Seeds.jpgWhy are our hamburgers square? Because we don’t cut 
corners.”

– Dave Thomas
A long time ago I did an article on my personal blog comparing airline cuts to the fast food industry. I accused them of using something I call sesame seed economics. Three years later I’m still seeing that type of thought process used not only by the airlines but by fellow SEOs as well.
Sesame seed economics is more of a cautionary tale than proper economic theory, but it’s one that should be heeded by anybody making website decisions in an organization. I can’t remember where I first heard this analogy, but the story goes like this:

Every few years your local fast food chain hires a new MBA fresh out of college and tasks him with cutting costs. After several brainstorming sessions he comes up with a great idea. “If we only reduce the number of sesame seeds on our buns by 5% we could save a ton of money. It wouldn’t noticeably effect the quality of our product and hardly any of our customers would even realize it,” he says. It’s so brilliant and obvious that everybody buys in and the restaurant starts making similar changes. It works so well that the next year they cut the sesame seeds by another 5%. Fast forward a few years and suddenly the fast food chain is serving hamburgers on plain buns and nobody remembers when or why that changed but suddenly their quality scores aren’t what they used to be.

The airlines have certainly done their share of sesame seed cutting, but so have many of us on our SEO efforts. How many of the following sentences have you heard at one time or another?
“It’s only a small section of this page that’s in this iframe – it won’t matter.”
“Those terms only accounted for 3% of our search traffic, I guess it won’t hurt if they live in that ajax widget.”
“Who visits a site on their phone? We can use flash, we’re not alienating anybody.”
“Everybody uses IE – who cares if it loads in other browsers?”
“Page speed? It’s only a minor ranking factor.”
“Google’s not currently looking at social media, so why would we waste our efforts there?”
“Validation doesn’t matter – that much, just make sure it looks good.”
Sure none of these things will have much of an impact on your site by themselves, but when you add them all up you can quickly find yourself scratching your head wondering where all your traffic went. It’s really easy to give in to developers, IAs, and graphic designers – especially over things that seem minuscule at the time. Sometimes as SEOs we can get caught up in the big picture and lose focus of all the little things that can make our lives so much easier. Don’t be so quick to discredit the little things, because even the smallest seemingly inconsequential ones can be extremely powerful en masse – just ask Leiningen.


  Courtesy @ http://www.searchenginejournal.com

  http://seo-vempower.blogspot.com/search/label/Seo Online Training Sessions

SEO Training

2:18 PM

Whenever you enter a query in a search engine and hit 'enter' you get a list of web results that contain that query term. Users normally tend to visit websites that are at the top of this list as they perceive those to be more relevant to the query. If you have ever wondered why some of these websites rank better than the others then you must know that it is because of a powerful web marketing technique called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

   


Courtesy @ http://www.v-empower.com/Services/seo/

Social Media Marketing in 3 minutes

2:09 PM

Social media includes web-based and mobile technologies used to turn communication into interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." Social media is media for social interaction as a superset beyond social communication.





Courtesy @ http://seo-vempower.blogspot.com/search/label/Search Engine Marketing

Why Social Marketing is Better than Traditional Marketing

2:07 PM

Social Media Marketing (SMM) and Optimization (SMO) is an important – perhaps even critical – Internet marketing strategy. Time and time again marketers are unsure of how to approach marketing in the social networks or even if they should at all. Almost daily I’m asked by Marketing Managers and CMOs about how to get into the networks and what the benefits are. I’m amazed that they are not sure if they should do this. At some point, one must seriously investigate and take the plunge. The benefits of marketing in this arena are far too numerous to sit on the sidelines. So today I just wanted to go through a few of the up front benefits we see all the time

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Courtesy @ http://seo-vempower.blogspot.com/search/label/Social networking

U.S. Coast Guard Uses Social Media to Protect Citizens

2:06 PM

Yahoo!site explorer is dead what are the alternatives?

2:29 PM

Yahoo site explorer is dead what are the alternatives

This post comes from our SEO channel sponsor Link Assistant

In the SEO world, November 21, 2011 was quite a day for many. In case you didn’t know, this is the day Yahoo! Site Explorer, a free and awesome backlink research service, ceased to exist.
Why was Yahoo! Site Explorer so immensely popular with SEO-optimizers? Well, first, it was free. Second, it offered one of the biggest backlink data sources on the Web. And third, it was very simple to use. So, now, with this one-of-a-kind backlink research tool gone, the game has changed, and there are several things to keep in mind:

- The amount of backlink data available for SEO analysis has decreased manifold (since Yahoo! Site Explorer had about the biggest index). As of now, there is hardly a database around that matches up to the scale of Yahoo!’s abolished databank.

- There is almost no such thing as free backlink data anymore. Whatever other backlink intelligence sources there are nowadays, for the most part, these would be paid.

- There are many SEO tools in the industry that used to rely on Yahoo! Site Explorer for backlink data. With that in mind, if the SEO tool you’ve been using is one of them, it’s probably time to switch to something else.

At the moment, many SEO-optimizers are desperately seeking for an alternative to Y!SE. Therefore, we decided to compare three industry-leading backlink checkers (worth the Y!SE alternative title) that:
Each use their own database of backlinks
Each offer a free and a paid version
Each allow for backlink data export

We wanted to see each SEO tool in action, that is, how many backlinks each of them returns, etc. So, we’re running the tests for multiple sites and will make the results available a bit later. As of now, we’d like to compare the SEO apps’ pricing and capacities, so that you can decide for yourselves which backlink checker has the optimum price/quality ratio.



As you see, each of the backlink checkers analyzed above has its pros and cons. We wanted to make our comparison table concise, therefore, we only included the most important characteristics about each SEO tool.

For more information, please, visit each SEO app, since SEO-optimizers have different needs, and what’s important for one SEO, may be of no relevance for another SEO, and vice versa.

Open Site Explorer

Majestic SEO

Link Assistant

And, your thoughts and ideas regarding these or other Yahoo! Site Explorer alternatives are welcome!


http://seo-vempower.blogspot.com/search/label/Yahoo


The 6 modules of the SEO course

12:48 PM

The 6 modules of the SEO course cover all aspects of Search Engine Optimization to ensure marketers focus their efforts on what counts.

1.Keyword Research & Mapping

After completing this module, you will be able to:

  • Understand the universe of keywords
  • Ensure searchers can more effectively map your content
This is achieved through:
  • Consideration of several keyword tools
  • Review of techniques for keyword mapping and prioritization
  • Review of best practices

2.Fundamentals & Best Practices

This module will help you ensure your site is search friendly to encourage maximum number of visits through:

  • A review of how search engines work
  • An appreciation of the 4 fundamentals of SEO:
    • Indexability (ensuring that all of the pages on your site are seen by search engines)
    • Relevance (making sure your pages are relevant to the query through the appropriate use of keywords)
    • Authority (the usefulness of links and how to successfully build them)
    • Clickability (encouraging more clicks by ensuring that your SERP snippets are relevant)
The module concludes with a review of best practices for SEO.

3.Project Management

From this module you will learn how to:

  • Use direct marketing principles to integrate SEO into a marketing strategy and plan SEO programs through:
    • Identification of projected revenue and costs
    • Ability to prove to prove the usefulness
  • Make SEO operational, in particular how to:
    • Monitor activity
    • Use scorecards to motivate teamwork
    • Select the right metrics to monitor
    • Establish early warning systems when things go wrong
    • Set up central teams to assist the extended teams in larger organizations
  • Differentiate between running SEO campaigns and using project management principles to:
    • Align SEO into your strategy
    • Plan out programs
    • Use tactics to identify problem areas

4.Link Building

Upon completing this module, you will be able to:

  • Define links and appreciate their importance for SEO
  • Differentiate between internal, external and incoming links, as well as reciprocal, triangular and one-way links
  • Develop efficient link-building strategies through:
    • Identification of why users should link to you
    • Construction of an asset matrix of content to satisfy needs
    • Construct an efficient content distribution strategy
  • Identify key link acquisition concepts and how to choose quality links
  • The steps in the SEO process

5.Research

In this module we consider the items that should be periodically reviewed in a search program to ensure it is being optimized, covering the key SEO diagnostics that you need. In particular, by the end of the module you will be able to answer the questions:

  • How are we doing and how to benchmark
  • How and what is my competition doing?
  • What opportunities am I missing?
This module provides you with the tools to be able to:
  • Understand your business goals
  • Baseline your current state and desired outcomes
  • Monitor performance against baseline
  • Develop "cost of not ranking" analysis
  • Develop missed opportunity analysis
  • Use multiple tools to monitor competition
  • Diagnose site performance

6.Optimized Copywriting

After this course, you will appreciate the fundamentals underlying website usability, including:

  • Understand the meaning of optimized copywriting and the benefits it will have for your online marketing strategy
  • Learn the three fundamentals of search engine optimization
  • Understand the value of good copywriting and how these set the law of attraction for websites, social media news and blogs
  • Know the importance of keywords and how these can be used in your copy to get the best results in a search
  • Understand how to use links and calls to action in your copy to increase traffic to your site
  • Have knowledge of the optimizing guidelines and how you can use these for effective copy
  • Understand how optimized copy can also be used across the social networks, specifically Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn


http://seo-vempower.blogspot.com/search/label/Seo Online Training Sessions

The 12 modules of the Online Marketing

2:39 PM

The 12 modules of the Online Marketing Foundation course provide an introduction to online marketing, plus a detailed look at each discipline including SEO, Email, Online PR, Social Media and more.

1.SEO

This module will make sure your customers can find you using organic search:

  • Differences between SEO and SEM
  • The features of today's search results
  • The importance of the keyword
  • The steps in the SEO process
  • The importance of measurement and analytics

2.Web Analytics

This module shows you how to use the statistics that you have generated in relation to clicks, hits and visits to determine your strategy:

  • What web analytics means to you as a business owner
  • How data is collected and which method will work for you
  • How to decipher data and interpret it to meet your business objectives
  • How to set and track your goals, increase your conversion rate and your ROI
  • Tactics for tracking and interpreting online and offline visitors by:
    • Tracking events
    • Traffic sources
    • Email campaigns
    • Tracking links
Note: This module is also part of the Web Analytics course.

3.Demand Generation

After this module, you will be able to:

  • Define demand generation and define the key terms and acronyms used in this area
  • Differentiate between B2C and B2B tactics
  • Identify the 6 stages of the B2B scales cycle and the length of these cycles to conversion
  • List the key tactics for generating leads and appreciate their relative success vs. cost
  • Know several methods for optimizing conversion rates including:
    • The use of A/B & MVT
    • What to test and the quality of leads
  • Measure KPIs - leads, CPL, Sales, ROI
  • Appreciate some of the consideration in converting leads to sales
  • Sales cycles
  • Conversion funnel types

4.Pay Per Click

After this module, you will:

  • Understand the benefits of balancing SEO and PPC resource allocation to obtain marketing objectives
  • Understand the importance of relevant keywords and phrases to optimize the opportunity of each
  • Know how to optimize your quality score through a knowledge of the factors which go into Google's Quality Score and Ad Rank
  • Identify how to develop your AdGroups, and what you need to remember when structuring them
  • Appreciate post-click behaviors and optimizing around balance rates and stickiness
  • Identify the best strategies for optimizing retargeting opportunities as well as when not to retarget

5.Email

By the end of this module, you will:

  • Appreciate how useful email can be when used as part of your marketing mix
  • Know the importance of permission in email marketing and the 2 primary types there are to consider
  • Understand the importance of online calls to action when growing your email list
  • Understand the importance of the online registration page and know how this can be improved to best utilize your website's traffic
  • Know the different types of email and when it is best to use them
  • Understand why it is important to recognize the issues with email deliverability
  • Recognize the laws regarding email marketing and understand the general practices which make it easy to comply with the laws in almost every country
  • Know the importance of tracking opens and clicks and how to do this

6.Introduction to Usability

By the end of this module, you will:

  • Appreciate the fundamentals underlying website usability, including:
    • How it is defined and measured in the context of tasks and goals
    • Listing the 6 steps to website usability
    • Explaining why usability is an important factor to make and save you money
  • Be able to list the key usability activities including usability testing and heuristic (expert) reviews and:
    • Describe what usability testing includes
    • Advantages and disadvantages of focus groups
  • Appreciate what usability professionals are measuring
  • Understand the myths and misconceptions regarding website usability, including:
    • The best time to conduct usability tests on a website
    • Whether you are testing the website of the users
    • Whether a focus group is a usability test

7.Online PR

By the end of this module, you will:

  • Know the different topic areas that you can cover in an online press release
  • Appreciate who you are writing for and the different content
  • Understand that keyword research is required, that your chosen topic will dictate the keyword and how keyword tools work
  • Know the format for writing a press release and the best ways to make newsworthy and engaging content
  • Understand how multimedia such as images and videos can be used within a press release to optimize your online PR plan
  • Recognize the tools available that can be used to analyze and measure the distribution of your press release
  • Recognize how social media can be used to optimize SEO and understand how to build a special media content strategy to distribute content
Note: This module is also part of the Social Media course.

8.Content Marketing Strategy

By the end of this module, you will:

  • Understand how integrating your content marketing goals with your overall business goals will support your business development
  • Recognize the potential content areas across your organization and the various ways this can be reproduced in social media
  • Utilize user-generated content by working with online communities to generate feedback on your business
  • Recognize the importance of an editorial calendar and understand the factors you should consider when deciding what content to use and when
  • Identify how the metrics that already exist in your organization can be used to build up and support your content marketing strategy

9.Strategy

By the end of this module, you will:

  • Understand how approaching internet marketing strategically, by defining your goals and objectives, will increase the chances of success for your business online
  • Know the 8 stages of the social media plan and how these will benefit your business
  • Appreciate the value in including a relevant call to action to your online content and how to link this to the overall goals for your online marketing strategy
  • Understand how to measure your online success as a business value focused on a high return on the investment of time, money and resources that have been spent on your online strategy
  • Understand what it means to use a balanced approach to measure your online success and how it is important to tie this back to your overall business results

10.Social Media

The essentials of using social media as part of your online marketing strategy. By the end of this module, you will:

  • Understand that social media can be an efficient marketing channel and that using Twitter, Facebook and other channels is a good way to disseminate your content
  • Know the importance of planning your strategy when marketing in social media and that this must fit in with the business goals you hope to attain
  • Know who your audience is and where the communities are that you should engage with
  • Research how and why you should interact with your audience and how to get the most value of this relationship
  • Learn what you can look for to measure your campaign's success
  • Include details of your social media campaigns with your other marketing strategies to integrate your content, remembering that social media doesn't happen on its own

11.Information Retrieval

By the end of this program, you will:

  • Know the difference between data retrieval and information retrieval
  • Have learned about the history of the World Wide Web as a basis of understanding how search engines work by use of a Crawler, and what you can do to make your web page more responsive to search engines
  • Have knowledge of the highly complex vector space model developed by Professor Gerard Salton, and how the search engine index is created from this
  • Understand how connected marketing works, and how this new information exchange on social networks and in online communities has changed how brands and companies now respond to consumers
  • Understand the differences in user intent, whether informational, navigational or transactional, and the three-point taxonomy of search as well as how search engines record end user data

12.Mobile Marketing

By the end of this module, you will:

  • Understand the meaning of mobile marketing and the benefits it will have for your overall marketing strategy
  • Know the variety of options available within mobile marketing and the benefits these will have for your business, with a focus on SMS and email
  • Appreciate the value in the different mobile marketing media, including advertising, mobile phone apps and mobile video
  • Understand the important differences to consider when developing your website for a mobile market, and how to facilitate a smaller screen with a slower connection
  • Learn the 7 website must haves and the 10 mobile metrics of measuring your success

http://www.clickzacademy.com

http://seo-vempower.blogspot.com/search/label/Online SEO Tutorial

    The 10 modules of the Social Media course help you

    12:57 PM

    The 10 modules of the Social Media course help you understand how to engage with customers and prospects on social networks, learn about tools to better manage relationships and achieve business results.

    1.    Why Use Social Media

    After this module, you will:

    • Understand that social media can be an efficient marketing channel and that using Twitter, Facebook and other channels is a free way to disseminate your content
    • Appreciate that marketing in social media requires a strategy that fits in with your business goals
    • Understand your audience and how social media has changed how they communicate, how they use and engage with information and how you can use this to make your business successful
    • Know that social media communities can help you engage one-on-one with your customer base on a more personal level and how to get the most value out of this relationship

    2.Blogging

    After this module, you will:

    • Understand the different approaches you can take to blogging, either as a blogger or engaging with bloggers and which will work best for you
    • Know the top 5 guidelines for successful blogging
    • Understand how to build relationships with other bloggers and learn how this community can make your blog become successful
    • Learn how blogs can be useful in alerting your audience to new content that can be found on your website or your other social network channels, and how new content will help with search engine optimization
    • Know what data you can use to measure the impact of your blog such as shared content via Twitter and Facebook and web traffic to your site
    • Appreciate how important it is to have a strategy when approaching your blog, understanding what your content will be about and who will write and edit this content

    3.YouTube

    An overview of how YouTube can be used as a central part of your video marketing. After this module, you will:

    • Understand how YouTube can work with your marketing strategy
    • Know the different ways that videos can be broadcast and identify the key demographics that they will appeal to and why
    • Understand how YouTube can be used to optimize your business' search engine results and increase your conversion rates
    • Learn how you can use tools to increase your video's success
    • Understand how to drive an audience to your video by utilizing your existing online presence, such as through your website and social media channels

    4.Social Media Strategy

    After this module, you will:

    • Understand your audience and how social media has changed how they use and engage with information, and how you can use this to develop a successful strategy
    • Know how to build a strategy based on your research, and understand the factors you will need to consider to help you achieve your goals
    • Know that social media communities can help you engage with your customer base, and how to get the most value out of this relationship
    • Appreciate the value of measuring your progress with metrics and what tools to use to recognize whether your strategy is right for you and whether it is worth your investment
    • Understand that social media can be an efficient marketing channel and that it is important to integrate your content with your other strategies to help you to engage with a wider audience

    5.Facebook

    After this module, you will:

    • Understand the best ways to engage with consumers on Facebook through organic marketing, paid marketing, location-based marketing, gaming and applications
    • Learn about the opportunities open to you on Facebook, including Facebook Profiles and fan pages, events and groups
    • Know the tools available that make Facebook easier to use, from desktop apps that make it easier to post updates, to content delivery tools that will free up your time
    • Understand how to use Facebook Insights along with your own website analytics to measure your impact on Facebook
    • Think about the policies and contingency plans to put in place to ensure your content is compliant with your brand plan

    6.Twitter

    Using this messaging service as another channel for online marketing. After this module, you will:

    • Understand the importance of building your community on Twitter and what you can do to establish yourself as an authority for your industry
    • Use Twitter as a customer service channel and understand how you can use this as a tool to engage on a personal level with both loyal and new customers
    • Plan a strategy to ensure your company's profile is compliant with your brand plan, and put in place policies and contingency plans understanding how you will respond to any negative or abusive traffic you might face
    • Understand the language used in the Twitter universe and how to use it to connect with your audience
    • Know the tools available that will help you to disseminate your content simply, and what content delivery tools you can use to make the best use of your time
    • Measure your success on Twitter by analyzing how your audience is engaging with you and your content

    7.LinkedIn

    After this module, you will:

    • Establish whether LinkedIn is right for you and your audience
    • Consider the marketing options available and what can be achieved through both paid advertising and building relationships organically
    • Understand how participating in LinkedIn can build your brand awareness and industry authority in a very targeted way through the Q&A and Groups tools
    • Plan a strategy to ensure your company's profile will comply with your brand plan, and what policies and contingencies you'll need to put in place considering that LinkedIn is a professional network
    • Measure your success on LinkedIn by analyzing how your audience is engaging with you through the Q&A and Group Activity tools

    8.Social Media ROI

    Tracking and managing your campaign's success. After this module, you will:

    • Understand how to measure your social media success and what you should look at to consider if this is a good return on investment for your business
    • Examine what you consider your goals to be, as social media requires a different view to traditional business goals of buying and selling, and are also different from the metrics that track your progress online
    • Know the value of your community and recognize the evangelists and ambassadors for your business
    • Know the value of good content and ensure your resources are being used wisely

    9.Social News Networks

    Managing your brand and your offering using social news networks. After this module, you will:

    • Appreciate the importance of establishing a voice and style on your social news networks through a brand plan
    • Understand the factors that you should consider when developing your brand plan and how this should be developed to help achieve your goals
    • Use your brand plan and the knowledge of your audience to develop a strategy for each social media channel to benefit from the advantages of each
    • Understand the current social media trends that will help you be the most up-to-date source within your industry

    10.Online PR

    Creating press releases and optimizing exposure through online news engines and directories. After this module, you will:

    • Know the different topic areas that you can cover in an online press release
    • Appreciate who you are writing for and the different content
    • Understand that keyword research is required, that your chosen topic will dictate the keyword and how keyword tools work
    • Know the format for writing a press release and the best ways to make newsworthy and engaging content
    • Understand how multimedia such as images and videos can be used within a press release to optimize your online PR plan
    • Recognize the tools available that can be used to analyze and measure the distribution of your press release
    • Recognize how social media can be used to optimize SEO and understand how to build a special media content strategy to distribute content


    How to overcome debilitating nonprofit blogging challenges.

    2:50 PM

    Last week, nonprofit blogger Kivi Leroux Miller ran the results of a survey she conducted about the biggest content challenges facing nonprofit marketers. Unsurprisingly, time and money led the results with 31% of the responses. But a number of other challenges emerged as well. I had the opportunity to talk to a few nonprofits about the survey and asked them how they handle managing a successful blog amidst their multitude of other tasks. Here's what they said, along with a few tips from HubSpot's own blogging experiences. Each challenge is also followed by its difficulty rating from Kivi's study.

    Lack of Time or Budget (31%)
    It's no secret that nonprofit marketers often have to juggle an enormous workload. But the benefits of blogging on search engine optimization and community engagement are typically significant enough to validate finding the time. The question is, how? I talked with Brian Adams of United Way of Massachusetts Bay & Merrimack Valley, who offered the following advice:
    "Use your full network and staff to tell your stories. The informal nature of a blog means that there aren’t as many rules about what you post, provided it’s something that’s relevant to your audience."
    By inviting your entire staff and your network of volunteers and donors to contribute posts, the workload gets distributed in a more sustainable way, and the blog benefits from diverse voices and outreach opportunities. To keep things organized, we advise that one person act as a central blog editor. If you're a nonprofit that deals with numerous causes, consider assigning different journalistic "beats" or topics to your bloggers and setting up a schedule that spreads out the posts evenly throughout the week and month. Christi Cahill of MyLifeLine.org Cancer Foundation echoes this. She writes:
    "Plan in advance. Set an editorial calendar and stick to it! If you’re running low on content ideas, find people willing to guest blog for you."
    Producing Content That Engages Supporters (27%)
    Nonprofits have one of the most powerful sources for posts possible: the stories of their clients and participants. And though finding individual stories to highlight takes time, creating a channel for these voices gets to the heart of the mission and provides a direct line of sight to the impact donors and volunteers are trying to drive.
    United Way's Adams writes:
    "Our most widely read posts share several key aspects; they are connected to relevant news topics, they provide a look “behind the curtain” with anecdotes and emotions not shared elsewhere, they are written by leading experts, and the content is fresh yet linked to additional information that provides context and additional factoids."
    One organization in Boston, The Crittenton Women's Union has taken a unique approach to this. They not only invite their staff and network to contribute to the blog, but also the families they serve. CWU's Kirsten Blocker elaborates:
    "As the blog evolved, it became a broadcasting space for CWU program participants to use as a learning tool for their exposure to social media, especially as an advocacy outlet. This year, the blog will undergo yet another exciting expansion and will be transformed again to include the voices of our participants as well as keeping an active eye on anti-poverty reporting..."
    It's important to remember that the blog audience does not need to be restricted to just donors. It can be an important resource for the people your organization is trying to help, as well.

    Repurposing Content (7%)

    One way to save time and give your content a larger reach is to repurpose content for your blog from other channels, and vice versa. When doing so, nonprofits should keep in mind that repurposing is not a simple cut-and-paste operation. Think in terms of editorial campaigns, and leveraging the blog as one of many ways to get the word out about a particular topic of the week or upcoming event. Take this example from United Way of Massachusetts Bay & Merrimack Valley:
    "We have had some success using the blog to preview content for an upcoming event. For example, our Women’s Initiative group held an educational panel about sexual exploitation, and we 'previewed' the content of the panel by featuring a guest blog post from each of the panelists in the week leading up to the event. It allowed those panelists some exposure on our blog (and hopefully gave us exposure through their networks) and also connected the on-the-ground marketing strategy with our online marketing strategy. During the event, we also shared quotes via Twitter and posted photos via Facebook.
    Knowing Which Content to Use in Which Channels (7%)
    To know which content to use in which channels, you really need to dive into your marketing analytics to get a sense for the role each channel plays in your overall marketing and communications program. Channel behavior often varies by audience segment. What channels do your donors typically use? How does that differ from your volunteers or your constituents/clients? Do some research on your most active channels and their characteristics before creating your outreach strategy. For example, it might make sense to share content on 'how to run a workplace fundraiser' on LinkedIn, while personal stories of impact may be better shared with your email subscribers.

    What to Do Right Now to Help Your Nonprofit

    The success of your blog will always depend on the quality and frequency of your posts. And while time can feel like a long lost luxury to nonprofit marketers, getting organized helps. As a final thought, here are a few things you can do this week to get started:
    • Create a recruitment list of staff, donors, volunteers, clients, and partners who would be good contributors to your blog.
    • Reach out to them with a first-time blogging assignment and due date. Having a topic to write about always seems less daunting than a blank page.
    • Examine your blog analytics to find your best channels for outreach.
    • Create an editorial calendar and stick to it. Start with 1-2 posts a week if you can.
    • Pick a date (several months out) to evaluate your progress and choose next steps.

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