Surviving Personalization with Google and Bing – SMX Advanced 2012

Follow the hashtags for this SMX Advanced session with #smx #12A. Duane Forrester of Bing is our sponsored moment and he says the webmaster tools session tomorrow is simply can’t-miss. He says that if you come and find it’s not worth your time, he’ll give you back your time – that’s how important the session will be.

Danny Sullivan @dannysullivan welcomes Marty Weintraub @aimclear to the podium. First he thought of a snarky title that sounds like he’s trying to game Google but Identity, Feeds and Social PR is where he landed. If you want to impact personalized search, the best thing to do is be personal.

As pertains to Google SEO, personal means Google+. They’re extremely committed to it. Offer strong incentive for existing community to subscribe. Why would anyone want to follow your smelly stuff?

Classic SocialAdvertising & PR Hooks

• Product updates, manuals’ addendum
• Deals, offers, commercial plays

Vanity Bait: Marty Weintraub says you’re great, a scumbag… Understanding human nature.

He discovered a lot of traction for blog posts that were curations of resources offsite. If you go to Alltop you can search users Google+ profiles.

• Mention names and publications
• Bestow or highlight awards
• Review and curated reviews
• Interviews and curated interviews
• Conference Coverage
• Aggregated resources
• Hot button call-outs

*Especially proven influencers

Start by wiring up inside stakeholders = internal relations

Customer service:

• Intersection of commerce and SEO
• The best SEO is a product that doesn’t suck.

Celebrate community:

• Where your business lives
• Rotary Salvation Army, Junior League, sports

Integrate low hanging fruit into the publication calendar.

Minimum + participation:

• “Identity feed”: If you can’t find 2 or 3 things to say about your business a week, you need a new business. Weekly representation of what your business is.
• Push optimized content
• Actual day to day business flow
• Videos, press releases
• Be there!

More aggressive participation:

• Set community business KPIs
• Active participation to serve and delight
• Research and proactively engage users
• Social ads to build Circles
• Give, give, give
• Network with competitors’ community

Danny says if you’re not participating in Google+ you’re missing opportunity. Searches for cars when he’s signed in show up Ford. When he’s not signed in, Ford doesn’t show up. Danny is friends with Ford on Google+. If you start thinking about influencing personal results in Google, engage in Google+.

Aaron Friedman @aaronfriedman will explain his views on personalization: current issues and the future.

Barriers of Personalized Search

• How do I reach a larger audience?
• How do I show up?

Quantity: For users this means getting more relevant results based on people we’re connected to. For marketers it’s about getting in front of more users.

What this means:

• Facebook: buy ads on Facebook
• Tools: Compass Labs and Kenshoo Social
• Google+ and Twitter: Grow your other networks
• Once you have a footing your network can take off and grow on their own.

Quality:

• Create unique content
• Don’t neglect your networks
• Be creative

Tactics to improve quality:

1. Twitter long tail suggestions:

• Identify keywords – understand what’s driving people to your site
• Use tools like Topsy and Social Mention and understand the social data
• Create content

2. Open Graph Optimization

• OG titles have about 95 characters
• OG description has about 297 characters
• Without optimizing, the post looks bad.

3. How Tweet buttons work: typically grab title tag, header. This doesn’t utilize to full advantage. Put

• Increase Google+ followers
• Use LinkedIn to identify your network – if you don’t have a Wikipedia page (who does) LinkedIn can give you an idea of networks you’re part of
• Giveaways, contests
• Use Facebook login for comments – for Bing integration
• Create long- and short-term content
• Engage community – threaded comments, subscribe to comments, comment voting (ego bait)

Virginia Nussey is the director of content marketing at MobileMonkey. Prior to joining this startup in 2018, Virginia was the operations and content manager at Bruce Clay Inc., having joined the company in 2008 as a writer and blogger.

See Virginia's author page for links to connect on social media.