This peer group discussion with about two dozen marketing executive leaders was so different from the one we had 18 months ago, I some times found myself wondering if it was even the same topic. Didn’t search pretty much used to be about links? There is without a doubt big, dramatic change in SEO – and more to come in the near future (including mobile, how the Google+/Facebook search engine war will play out, and more). Search today includes social media and personalization. Content matters more now than it ever did. In fact, the basics that still matter all relate to content. The most important thing we can do is to build quality, ORIGINAL content and get rid of the “crap.”

What did we want to discuss?
• How to integrate, especially with social.
• How to handle mobile, especially the user experience/U.I./U.X.
• Initial investment in SEO vs. ongoing support.
• UX for person vs. Bot – challenges and trade-offs?
• Resource allocation – where to spend the most time?
• Issues around localization/internationalization.
• How to catch up /stay current?
• What’s around the corner?
• Impact of B2B vs B2C environments
• Attacking diverse audiences

Questions, comments and facts I found interesting:

• What hasn’t changed: Sharing content is still important.Quality content is important.Still need to have crawl-able content, to use keyword targeting, fresh, etc.
Stick with the basics…sitemaps, URLs, no Flash, image descriptions, keyword focus.
• Ask yourself what questions Google quality raters are being asked.
• Find out what Panda is about.
• Ranking is a horrible way to measure your success on search.
• Why you should Ignore Facebook (well not really): Most search happens on Google, but Google doesn’t use Facebook, they use Plus. So you should have a presence there, even though nobody else is there.
• Did you know that 60% of your search results are personalized based on your online history – so even with the same search terms you and someone else will get different results.
• Do you know what your customers want to read about? Guest blog. Go after what your competitors are doing. Create “buzz” through creative content. Bait your customers, but don’t cross the line Do link building by creating relationships – use the phone, less is more. Use widgets, plugins, badge campaigns. Long lasting video content. Use news content. Make your content easy to tweet. Have a lot of hash tags. Leverage your own social network. Use your employees. Are you keeping track? Is your content improving? Is it personal, conversational, concise and current? Is it creating conversions?
• You Tube is the second largest search engine. It’s an opportunity to move up high in the search results. But it’s extremely hard to build well and to scale. Figure out how to get your audience to build video for you.
• Be aware that you get different search results when you search from your smart phone and your desktop PC.
• More traffic will come from mobile than from desktop PC’s by 2013.
• Make sure you nail “mobile.” Search engines are using mobile if you have a mobile optimized site.
• As tablets become more commonplace we need to optimize for tablets.
• SEO consultants can be insanely expensive but are totally worth it
• Get the “crap off your web site
• Metatags are out. Forget about them.
• It’s nice to have everything on one top-level domain. But if you’re in Spain, you want to see the Spanish site in your search result. They want to see their own country call-out. Google prefers an in-country domain and ideally an in-country server. Don’t just translate the keywords as they may not relevant in another language.
• Sharing content is still super important.
• Know who the influencers are and how to use them in creating content. You would be surprised how many of them will engage with you. FollowerWonk.com can help you find influencers.
• Link Building: Links matter, both in and out. Linkbait is worth doing. Don’t pay for links. Google doesn’t like it. Exchanging links is often crap, but be careful. Be a guest on another blog is good for you (links back to you). Helping other people build content is good for you. Social links are good, such as likes, etc. It sounds cheesey, but it can be valuable.Think about building “share” buttons like “twitter,” “facebook” and “plus” links on the bottom of your article. Make it easy to share. WordPress has about 50 different plug-ins to share.
• Old Vs New Tactics: See where your competitors are and go after those places.Create buzz with creative content and humor. There is a fine line, but people like to have fun.Call people to build links. Get three effective links with phone calls vs. 20 weak ones via email exchanges.Build quality profiles – encourage your leadership to use profiles. But be sure it’s authentic!Hot topics around info graphics.Use plug-ins, give people widgets and badge campaigns.Stay on top of gripes, complaints and compliments. Make it clear there’s a human behind your site.Use a corporate profile on Twitter for “corporate stuff.” But to build relationships, you’re going to have to use a real person – a genuine face/person.
• Basics of Getting Content Out There! Mobilize your user baseGet them to tweet their forum postsHashtags for every webinar, etc.Slideshare for every event (IRL and Webinars)Run FliptopGroups/Meetups.
• Get your audience to create your content.
• ROI compared to other marketing channels: Overall, compared to traditional methods for obtaining leads and publicity, is cost-effective. Two to six times better results than traditional PR or traditional advertising. It could become all-consuming. You have to put boundaries around the effort.

Questions Marketers in charge of SEO Need to Ask:
• How much SEO traffic do I really have? Break out every branded term in the way you perform in search. People use Google to find you rather than type in your web address.
• Is my site what I think it is about? What are the top terms used?
• Is my site authoritative? Go to Open Site Explorer to see how you rate.
• Is my site authoritative Part II? How many pages do the engines crawl in a week?
• How does my site’s authority stack up to competitors? How many domains are linking to my site? How many links? How authoritative are those linking to you?
• Are you a good/creative linkbuilder? Google will tell you how many links go to your site and how deeply they link.
• Was that a valuable link? How much traffic came from that referring site?
• Do I nail the long tail? Look at the volume of keywords that are bringing traffic to your site? Is it increasing over time.
• Do I nail the long tail Part II? How many sites are bringing traffic to you site? It should grow over time.

Favorite quote:

“Remember! A lot of people are social. A lot are not.”