Companies and brands who have created a Google+ company page (business page) could soon start seeing their company logo appear in the search results alongside their search engine listing. The company or brand must have verified their Publisher status, which is similar to verifying Google Authorship. In order to verify Publisher status, the company would have to set up a Google+ page and link it back to their website. The website would link back to the Google+ page with the proper “rel=publisher” tag in the link.

We’re speculating that once verified, the company’s logo will appear in the Google search results similar to how we’re seeing verified Authors’ photos (avatars) show up in the Google search results. A sample search result is shown below. If this is the case, this is what will start appearing for our company, Standing Dog.

We are assuming that the “next step” here is that Google will start to show company logos in the search results because Google is now showing samples of the search results in the Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool. It’s my belief that Google is getting ready to launch this feature fairly soon–although I have yet to see any specific reports of company logos actually showing up in the search results.

Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool
Currently, if you use the Google Rich Snippets Testing Tool, you can see what the search result will potentially look like once the site is properly verified. To test any page, go here:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

Enter the URL of the site you wish to test, and you will see if the site is set up properly. You should test your site’s home page as well as a few interior pages on your site.

Keep in mind that the Publisher verification is different than the Authorship (or Author) verification. The Publisher verification applies to companies or sites as a whole, while individual authors can also be verified on websites separately. For example, you can verify your website using the rel=publisher tag and one of your employees who writes blog posts for your company blog can also verify authorship using the rel=author tag.

How to Verify Publisher Status For Your Company
In order to be all set up properly for when Google starts rolling out company logos in the search results, you must verify your company’s publisher status. There are specific steps for doing this:

- Set up a Google+ page for your business
- Add you company’s logo to your Google+ business page
- Link your Google+ page to your website
- Place a link from your website that includes ?rel=”publisher” at the end of the URL

That link should point to your company’s Google+ page. Alternatively, you can follow the specific instructions provided here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1708844

I recommend that you choose a company logo that is sized correctly and looks professional when it shows up in the actual search results. You may wish to alter your logo a bit just for this purpose, since the actual logo that shows up in the Google search results will generally be smaller–and if it includes words they may be hard to read.

Update: May 15, 2013
In a unique twist, we’re actually going to start seeing company logos in the Google search results, just as I predicted (when I originally posted this). However, it’s not necessarily going to come in the form of Google’s “publishership” that was previously mentioned. Companies don’t have to verify their “publishership” by linking their Google+ business page.

In this case, companies can include the proper schema.org markup on their website. So, if you have a site and you’re unable (or unwilling) to verify Google Authorship, then you should include the proper markup around your company’s logo.

Google has published this information on the Google Webmaster Central blog: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/05/using-schemaorg-markup-for-organization.html and you can find more at Search Engine Land.

The post Google to Show Company Logos in Search Results appeared first on Standing Dog Blog.

What is Not a Link Building Asset?

To determine quality link bait, we must first determine what is not linkable.
Landing pages, product descriptions, company information and sales content are not typically linkable because they are not unique and do not represent unique ideas.

Link Building Research is the Key

Research is the biggest part of the project as well as reverse engineering a strategy that works and creating something similar or something completely new and fresh.
Collect, combine and improve current content on the web if you choose to create link bait that is not uniquely yours.

• Consider your audience: Who are you targeting?
• Do not discount the value of content that appeals to kids because parents cater to their kids.
• Choose a side and push the boundaries or describe how the pros and cons are balanced and why it is a good idea.
• Place your content in the Google News stream using markup for news.
• Utilize the powerful and increasingly important Google Authorship and assign a consistent author for the blog instead of using several unknown authors.
• When using social media as a part of your link building and link baiting, proceed with a process and proper strategy instead of throwing it on the web and hoping that it sticks.

Anchor Text and Simple Link Building Boundaries

When choosing anchor text, include the brand for the most part instead of exact match anchor text. The strategy of exact match anchor text is dying a slow death.
It can be difficult to balance anchor text strategy without proper planning.

Utilize tools like Link Research Tools and Majestic SEO to determine your anchor text profile before engaging in the process. Shape your strategy around your current anchor text profile. If it is not brand heavy, strive to utilize more brand general terms for the anchor text.
Scott Polk’s Take on Paid Links
“Paid links work and they will work.” It is not that you paid for the link that will get you in trouble. The fact that the search engines can detect the paid link is what will get your site in trouble.

Quality of Link Bait

The content asset quality is paramount and allows your strategy to succeed. Create and develop supporting content to add link building power to the content asset.
Stop creating junk and expect people to link to the content. This is not the Field of Dreams. If you create junk, you will not get links, but you will get flies.

Simple Link Building Process

1. Research – What is the target audience?
2. What is the concept of your strategy?
3. Client review stage.
4. Content creation stage.
5. Content publication stage.
6. Content curation stage.

1. a. Curation = Socialization

i. Content marketing plan.
ii. Content seeding.
iii. Utilize relationships.
iv. Find social influencers.
v. Report on ROI every 30, 60, 90, 120, 180 days.
vi. Make adjustments to the strategy and process on the fly.

Summary

Interact with the client to create the content because they are the experts in the industry.
Begin with creating 20-30 titles and narrow them down to two or three to determine your end result. Get input from the actual link builders regarding what works now, where it works, and why it works.
Utilize your content writers for the simple fact that they write content for a living … duh.
Integrate your social media team to send the content social, as this adds an immediate boost and provides social signals to get the campaign underway.

Link to social media profiles and other content assets that do link directly to your new content. You do not always have to have links directly to the content asset. Link to other pages that may link to the asset and move the juice through the traffic funnel.

The post Link Building – Pushing Limits with Link Baiting appeared first on Standing Dog Blog.

While here I had the privilege of speaking on a panel titled Effective Audience Marketing (for the travel sector). This may have been one of the best, most engaging panels I’ve been on. The moderator was Brad King from Sojern, and panel also included Tania Leichliter from AdGenuity and Rod Perlman from Steamboat Ski & Resort Company.

The goal of the workshop was to show, now that companies can access data, how they can put it to good use. One of the audience questions I received was, “Let’s say I want to go after new audiences to visit my resort, how do I do that?” Another question was, “If I have a budget of $5,000 for online travel marketing, what do you suggest I do?”

My short, internal answer was simple, “Work with Standing Dog.”

I believe these questions are what are on everyone’s mind, especially in the mountain travel world which has been strangely flat over the last few years. I’ll repeat that again, because I was blown away by it: The mountain travel space has been flat over the last few years. I’m no snowboarding pro by any means, but I’m having a hard time fathoming that a sport so many are passionate about can be flat. I sat on top of the mountain at Snowmass and couldn’t believe that an industry that gives me this could possibly be flat.

I’ll discuss and expand on some of my suggestions from the panel, as well as serve up a few more. The mountain travel space is unique, because there’s really a short period of time in the year to reach customers and if you miss you have to wait till next year to try again.

Ultimately, being nimble and making quick, data based decisions are key.

Travel Marketing Analytics

First of all, in order to make the right decisions on the fly you have to make sure analytics is working properly. Are you measuring all of your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)? I was shocked how many people I spoke to weren’t tracking meetings and events, and weddings in analytics. As a marketer of a resort that relies on so much more than just bookings, it’s imperative that you are measuring every success and failure on your website. Any opportunity to track a revenue driving metric on your website must be done if you want to fully evaluate a marketing program.

For a resort, the KPI measuring goes beyond the standard bookings, groups and weddings, though. Are you tracking rentals, ski schools, lift tickets, gondola tickets, apparel, spa bookings, real estate inquiries, gift cards and other unique offerings like sleigh ride dinners? You can’t look at just bookings to tell the entire story.

I’ll take this just one step further, you also need to be looking at the whole picture. Google Analytics does a good job in showing you the entire funnel from first click all the way through purchase. This can now give equal weight to your entire marketing campaign by showing each touch point a guest went through to book at your resort. You can see that they started with a nonbranded organic search, clicked on one of your banners, clicked on a branded paid search ad and then came back directly to the website to book.

Lastly, please make sure you’re tracking both post impression and post click for all of your banner campaigns. Post click, we all know, is seeing a conversion when a potential guest clicks on your banner ad and converts. Post impression is when a potential guest is exposed to your banner, but does not click and converts. Yes, you can actually track this metric, which gives more weight to your banner campaigns.

The $5,000 Budget Challenge

As I said on the panel, I wished this was a one size fits all world where I could tell you exactly what to do with a $5,000 a month travel marketing budget. The truth is to determine how to spend your money comes down to your goals. If I give you $5,000 when you walk into the mall and tell you that you have to spend it, you’re going to spend it differently than I would entirely based upon your needs and wants. It’s the same way with marketing. In order to determine how to spend a marketing budget you must first identify your wants and needs.

If you need an immediate lift in bookings, then I may suggest focusing on Google AdWords, or partnering with a website that’s in your vertical to access their database. For example, if you’re a high end resort, then partnering with a website like Luxury Link in order to send an eblast would be worth considering. Then I would recommend doing a retargeting campaign in order to stay in front of the potential guests that visit your site from the campaigns. You could also look at a TravelZoo deal, Trip Advisor or Orbitz’s new click off banners in order to get an immediate lift in bookings. Lastly, amplify this messaging with your social media channels, which doesn’t cost anything.

If you just want to get your name out there and start to build a following, then I recommend doing more of a display network buy, as well as focusing on building your brand and following in social media.

Again, the key is that there’s no one stop solution to media buying and travel marketing planning. You must determine your goals and go from there.

Targeting New Audiences

Trying to reach and target new audiences is what every resort wants to achieve. Of course they do, didn’t I tell you that the last few years the mountain travel industry has been flat?

There are many ways to target new audiences, but first you need to make sure you know whether or not new visitors are coming to your website. Do you look at Google Analytics’ New vs Returning Visitors? I’ve had a new client tell me that they need to target new visitors before, and it turned out that 80% of their visits were new visits. 80%! They were getting plenty of new visitors, but the website wasn’t doing a very good at keeping these visitors on the website, and their bounce rate was shockingly high. An update to the site with better calls to action increased the website’s conversion rate, increased the pages per view and dramatically lowered the bounce rate.

Once this has been established, let’s talk about how to reach new audiences.

Not to self-promote (ok, I’m definitely self-promoting), but I recommend you read my Content Marketing pieces (Part 1 and Part 2) before moving forward. The easiest way to reach new people is to not only create content, but to actually market it. Over the course of the week, I’ve heard many people talk about content creation, but not how to market that content. Putting a video on YouTube is great, but unless you market that video no one is going to see it. It’s the same with writing a blog, you have to shout it from the rooftops in order for people to read it. I won’t dive too much more into this, because I already did in a two-parter.

Leverage Bloggers!

I can’t tell you enough how powerful the blogging world is. Mommy’s wield incredible influence over their readers and can affect their purchasing decisions. Ok, so it’s not just mommy’s, but it’s bloggers who have an audience that you can turn into advocates for your brand. Read their blog and get to know them before you reach out. Just inviting all bloggers is bad strategy. Make sure they align with your resort’s audience. Build an online relationship, invite them to your property (yes for free), and get to know them in person. Let them experience your resort first hand and then invite them back.

Because, guess what, there’s a little discussed secret about the power these bloggers have. It’s not just the audience they reach… wait, let me look around and make sure no bloggers are reading… ok, clear… they provide excellent SEO benefits, as well. You’re getting an earned link to your website, and they’re going to tweet their story, facebook it, +1 it (maybe?). Then they’re friends are going to retweet it, and share it, and pin it, and +1 it (maybe?). You’re going to do the same, and your resorts followers are going to do it too, because that’s the kind of followers you have. Now you’re getting powerful social signals along with your link and countless new eyes looking at your brand. We call this Travel Marketing Magic.

Now, why do I mention mommy’s and not action sports blogs? We’re looking for a way here to reach new guests. My feeling is that the value of a family booking a trip is more meaningful to the entire resort than a snowboarder (like myself) would be. Ideally, you have already captured the diehard snowboarder who is reading action sports blogs. You now need to convince the family who is trying to decide between Disneyland or Vail.

SEO, Paid Search and Display

Sorry to group together 3 of my favorite things, but I could talk for days about this. Another way to get in front of new, potential guests is to pay to be there. Find potential guests in the discovery phase of the booking cycle. Is your meta, content and internal anchor text geared toward reaching people in the discovery phase? Is your paid search set up to reach people during all phases of the conversion cycle? Do your display ads tell the story of your resort and include a strong call to action? And, are your display ads showing up in the most relevant places?

Answer these questions, and if the answer is no to any of them, then reevaluate your travel marketing strategy.

Social Media For Hospitality Marketing

Again, I’ll try and brief, because roughly 33% of Standing Dog blogs discuss reaching new audiences in Social Media. You do need to ask yourself though, “What am I doing to insert my brand into the conversation?” Are you actively talking to people on Twitter who show interest in travel or vacationing? Are you running demographically targeted Facebook campaigns? Are you Pinning (I don’t know, it’s a thing). Are you talking to people on Instagram? These are things you can be doing to build trust with a new audience before they even start getting to know your brand.

Permission Based Email Marketing

When I brought up email on the panel, a few (well, 1) tweets came alive with disgust. Excellent! The more you don’t do email, the more email there is for the rest of us. Email is the number 2 online activity and makes up 10% of the average company’s budget. You can shake your head in disgust audience member, but email is still very important. Buying an email list, as I mentioned before, can be done through 3^rd parties such as Luxury Link, Spa Finder, YesMail, A Small World and on in order to reach their audience. Even doing things like Groupon, Rue La La, TravelZoo and LivingSocial are considered buying email lists.

You’re reaching their members in order to promote your resort. Often these subscribers have never heard of you, so it’s important to make sure you make the best first impression you can.

Video as a Travel Marketing Tool

I’ll wrap up with video, because it’s something you should be doing. As widely discussed, YouTube is the #2 search engine in the world. If you want to build new audiences, YouTube is the place to do it. Let’s be honest here, you’re a ski resort! The amount of incredible videos you can produce is limitless. Kids doing ski school, your charity involvement, learners, experts, concerts, parties, the amount of things that can be captured on video in order to show how incredibly awesome your resort is plentiful. And, here’s the secret, it’s not expensive to do. Get a camera and get to work. But remember, you have to actually market your video.

To conclude, you don’t have to have a $100,000 a month budget in order to reach new audiences and get bookings. You do need to set your goals and make a plan to achieve them. For the mountain travel industry, your season is short. You must be nimble, constantly in the data and making quick decisions. If you lock yourself into a long term plan and it’s not successful, then you have to wait a whole year to try again. Don’t risk trying to get it right the first time based on impulse. The data is there to allow you to make smart, informed marketing decisions. And don’t be afraid to pull the plug on anything thing that may not be working.

Finally, from now on every conference should be held in the mountains.

The post Online Travel Marketing: Reach New Guests and Increase Bookings appeared first on Standing Dog Blog.

A correctly done SEO audit will be portable, meaning that the contents – from analysis to recommendations – should be understandable and actionable by more than just the document’s author.

How to Audit a Website for SEO

Before you can determine the status of your site in connection to your goals, you should first understand what to look for. So much money is wasted when companies start swinging at phantom SEO problems.

In a great website SEO audit, what you actually should be seeing are 3 mini audits tied together to paint the full picture. These 3 essential categories include:

• Site Crawlability Audit - This section should help determine the health of the website in terms of how it’s viewed by the search engine spiders. Major bullet points include identifying errors, missing structural elements, and other site structure related problems that could be causing potential ranking issues.
• Website Content Audit - Having great content is seldom a strategy by itself. The presentation and structure of the content plays a major role in achieving ranking goals. A content audit encompasses everything from keyword strategy to the markup of the content and how it’s organized and displayed on the website.
• Link Audit - With all the search engine updates in recent years, link audits are quickly becoming the first place to look when diagnosing search engine visibility concerns. This area of the audit should provide a clear analysis of the website’s current link profile, along with insight into the state of linking within industry related search results.

SEO Audit Tools

While you can find software products that claim to automate the SEO audit process, the truly valuable tools are those that provide research data for an experienced SEO professional to analyze and prescribe solutions. While the they will certainly vary across websites, here are a few paid and free SEO audit research tools:

• SEOMoz - A suite of link profile analysis tools that can be used to determine how your site stacks up against competitors link campaigns.
• Majestic SEO - Another link profile tool that offers several views into the state of a website’s link profile.
• Screaming Frog - A desktop software that acts like a search engine spider and crawls a website to locate errors and other key factors used to determine site crawlability.
• Pingdom - An online service that determines how fast a website loads, and offers insight into any potential opportunities for load time improvement. This could be particularly important for sites that use a lot of images or client side scripting.

Your SEO Audit Checklist

A complete site audit should be robust, leaving no stone unturned. The only way to ensure I cover everything for each audit is to use a checklist. While every detail of my own checklist is beyond the scope of this article, I have listed a summary of everything I look for during each phase of an SEO site Audit:

• Overview: Make sure I understand exactly what the goals for the SEO Audit include.
• Crawlability: Check the site for all crawlability and on-site structure improvement opportunities.
• Content: Review the keyword strategy and its implementation on the site.
• Linking: Compare the site’s link profile with other sites already achieving similar goals, to help pinpoint improvement opportunities.
• Recommendation Summary: Prioritize issues found from each main category by the severity of existing or potential negative impact.

The SEO Audit Report

The final step to the SEO website audit process is to create an easily understandable and ACTIONABLE report you can send to the people responsible for making any adjustments recommended in the audit.

For example, if you’re sending recommendations to the site developers, you want to cover everything that pertains to their department. Likewise, if executive managers are going to be reviewing the report, it should contain the full scope of the audit in a concise problem/recommendation format.

The post Does Your Website Need An SEO Audit? appeared first on Standing Dog Blog.

Active Voice!

Active voice takes mediocre writing to the next level; however, more and more writing I see falls victim to the lazy passive voice. The difference between active and passive voice is simple: active voice has a noun and a verb that puts the noun in action. The most basic examples: Alice runs, Chuck swims, Josh writes. Passive voice, on the other hand, takes the action away from the sentence by using the “being” verbs (am, is, are, was, were, etc.) in conjunction with a verb. Example: Chuck is swimming, Alice is running, Josh is writing.

In all three examples, the subject loses its impact and directness because of the being verb; in a way, the sentence becomes diluted. For some reason, many writers default to passive voice, perhaps out of habit. Fortunately, reworking most passive writing is easy and just takes a moment.

A special note: do not confuse all being verbs as a sign of passive voice. Being verbs also function as linking verbs. Linking verbs say something is something else and are sometimes useful in writing; however, good writers prefer active sentences.

Editing Is Key

Remember when teachers would return papers with revisions scribbled in the margin? While seeing so much red ink frustrated me to no end during school, it did prepare me for writing in the real world, where editing is key. Finishing the first draft is just the beginning of the writing process, and anyone who turns in an unedited piece of writing either has far too much hubris or has simply chosen to ignore the majority of the writing process.

At Standing Dog, we take revisions seriously, not just in our writing but our overall web design. After we internally revise and edit content, we will send a polished draft to our clients, who can then provide any revisions they wish to make.

An Interesting Hook

Think about the vastness of the Internet for a moment; it’s almost as hard to comprehend as infinity itself. Creators and content makers have poured endless imagination and creativity into this network, and now you are tasked with making your content stand out. How are you going to do this? You develop your own voice and always have an interesting hook.

A few things to keep in mind:

1)      Everything has been done before. Chances are you are not writing something original, but the way you say it could make all the difference. Write it anyways and believe in your idea

2)      Consider your audience. Sometimes a hook might be good for one audience but improper for another. I wouldn’t recommend making jokes in a press release about a company underperforming for a fiscal year, for example.

The Physical Tools

I do a lot of writing, and since I don’t want to develop carpal tunnel syndrome by the age of 25, I invested in the proper equipment: a nice keyboard. Personally, I’ve used a Microsoft ergonomic keyboard for the last two years at Standing Dog, and my wrists feel great—and that’s coming from a guy who writes at least 3000 words a day, every day. It might take some time to get used to an ergonomic keyboard, but obviously the design reduces the stress on your wrists.

However, for some, the curved design makes it difficult and somewhat annoying to type. If that’s the case, I would personally recommend a mechanical keyboard. While they do tend to make more noise than more modern keyboards (and cost a little bit more), mechanical keyboards benefit fast typists by reducing the pressure point required to actuate keystrokes. In other words, I don’t have to press a key down all the way in order for the letter to appear on screen. It takes some getting used to, and the sensitivity may throw some people off, but fact, accurate typists will quickly appreciate the perks of a mechanical keyboard’s precision.

I would also recommend buying a nice mouse that fits your hand. Most electronic stores have their mice on display, so play around with finding the right mouse for your hand. I would also recommend a cushion for your mouse-hand wrist, but maybe that’s just me because I do some seriously aggressive power clicking during my work day.

The post The Write Stuff: Tips for Better Internet Writing appeared first on Standing Dog Blog.

This level of targeting is particularly useful during split-testing, because it gives the advertiser insight into who is clicking on their ads, and allows for further landing page and optimization as the campaign evolves.

Search Engine Buyer Mindsets

There are 3 basic “Modes” search engine users exhibit depending on their current phase of the buying process:

• Surfing Mode – Researching, and looking for an answer to a problem. The keywords in this phase are typically generic or question based. Solution driven search results usually yield the highest CTR and lowest bounce rates.
• Comparison/Review Mode – Knows what they want, but still unsure of the BEST solution. These searches typically contain review or ratings based qualifiers attached to their keywords. Ratings and review based search results will almost always beat others in clicks/conversions.
• Buying Mode – Ready to make a purchase, at this point looking for the solution that makes the most sense. These are solution-focused keyword searches, such as exact names for products or services. The closest matching search results with the “best” offer win the day.

Your keywords are the best way to identify the mindsets of your targeted search users, which PPC advertisers can handle at the ad group level when segmenting their keywords.

Consumer Personalities

I’m not going to try and cover this completely because there are smarter guys than me covering it in length, namely Bryan Eisenberg (author of the awesome book “Call to Action”) and other sales professionals. I will list off the 4 “classic” types of buyer personalities:

• Methodical – Skeptical of typical Internet marketing gimmicks like “FREE TRIAL”, contests, and outrageous guarantees. Wants comparisons down to the smallest detail. Think NewEgg customers who are looking for detailed product comparisons.
• Spontaneous – Responds to perks, discounts, freebies, limited time offers, and scarcity marketing. Aggregate Review Scores, instant gratification, and personalized experiences yield the best conversions. Think Zappos customers who watch the videos of someone trying on the shoe
• Humanistic – Loves to refer to solutions, and can be expected to read testimonials and full reviews. Testimonials, real reviews, and human contact are the top factors in converting this personality. Think Amazon or Ebay as the perfect examples of community, customer service, and human touch websites.
• Competitive – Wants to have the newest, hottest thing. Usually plugged into RSS feeds or social networks looking to be the first to Tweet or comment. Think Amazon or App Store TOP 10 lists.

No person fits into a single category, and no offer is restricted to only 1 personality type. Identifying and targeting the correct blend of personalities is the marketer’s top priority.

Optimizing PPC Ads

Now that we’ve covered the mindsets and personalities, it’s time to optimize our ads. As I mentioned earlier, the first step I take is to segment my ad groups by mindset related search keywords.

Next, I build an ad for each personality. I’ll run the ads evenly while I split test, and once we see which personality is strongest for the offer, start to phase the other ads out.

Here’s a visual representation of my PPC Ad Matrix to help you see how ad copy can be optimized across the consumers’ mindset process.

Matrix idea created by Eskil Nordhaug

The post Optimizing PPC Ad Copy: Consumer Mindsets & Personalities appeared first on Standing Dog Blog.

White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO can determine where your website ranks in search engines results for different targeted keywords. White Hat SEO is normally what web designers and SEO experts implement in order to make a website rank high in the search results. Unfortunately, the increased number of competition in the online world has forced some to start using unethical practices, referred to as Black Hat SEO.

White Hat SEO

White Hat SEO describes the ethical practices used to optimize a website in order to achieve optimal online visibility. The technique refers to the use of tactics and SEO strategies that focus on a human audience (as opposed to just the search engines) and follows search engines rules and policies. White Hat SEO requires more time to generate results, but the improved rankings remain stable over an extended period of time, promoting long term SEO results and being the most effective process of website optimization.

Some White Hat SEO Techniques includes:

• Research
• Keyword Analysis
• Keyword Density
• Optimize Meta Tags, Headings and ALT Tags
• Quality Content
• Quality and Relevant Link Building

Black Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO looks to achieve high rankings in the search engines, but uses techniques and strategies that are determined as unethical and that do not comply with the search engines rules and policies. It is perceived as an aggressive SEO tactic that can generate quick results that usually do not last long and could lead to getting your website banned or penalized by search engines.

Some Black Hat SEO Techniques includes:

• Keyword Stuffing
• Doorway and Cloaked Pages
• Hidden Links and Text
• Link Farming

Using White Hat SEO and avoiding Black Hat SEO is the best way to optimize your website in order to gain high rankings in the major search engine results. Every day, search engines are encouraging the use of White Hat SEO techniques instead of Black Hat SEO techniques with their most recent updates to their algorithms. Updates such as Google’s Panda and Penguin have hit millions of websites, while others are stable in the rankings due to the fact that they used ethical SEO practices that they have been implementing.

The post White Hat SEO vs. Black Hat SEO appeared first on Standing Dog Blog.

NEW YORK, NY – March 19, 2013 – It is with great gravity that Vocus announced today that the Easter Bunny does not exist and has no place in a news distribution service.

The popular press release distribution service recently contacted Standing Dog Interactive in regards to a pending press release that dealt with an Easter brunch. Writers at the Dallas-based interactive marketing agency were shocked to learn that the Easter Bunny was deemed “parodic” and could not be mentioned in an introduction, tongue-in-cheek be damned.

“We’re confused, quite frankly,” said Brian Medricka, senior copywriter at the agency. “If the Easter Bunny didn’t exist, how can you explain the thousands of plastic eggs hidden all over the country on Easter? They don’t come from eggplants, that’s for sure.”

Josh Duke, content manager at Standing Dog, could not be reached for comment and has been missing since Monday morning. His fiancée reportedly discovered a half-eaten carrot in his office along with an illegible note and a little fluff of cotton tail.

***

Okay, in all seriousness, Vocus has been really tightening up its editorial policy lately. We submitted an Easter-themed press release on behalf of one of our clients, and we received an email explaining that our press release was on hold because it “[referenced] content or a resource that [seemed] fictional or nonsensical.”

After having a good laugh, we reviewed the press release and realized that the offending sentence went like so: the Easter bunny might have a hard time hiding plastic eggs after enjoying a fabulous brunch at a particular hotel. We changed the line and resubmitted it, and then we started thinking: their no absurdity editorial rule is absurd!

While we appreciate the need to be serious most of the time, we do like to have fun. Most of our news goes directly to customers, not to businesses. When we promote a special deal at one of our hotels or announce the remodeling of a lobby, we know that travelers have far more interest in this information than businesses.

When we write press releases, we try and find the right balance between entertainment and professionalism. Some of them can be funny, others are straight laced due to the nature of their content. We reach hundreds of travelers every day and we know that no one wants to read 300 words of pure boredom, so we make things interesting. We crack puns, we add some humor, and sometimes we even reference Santa Claus (who’s also out, by the way) and the Easter Bunny.

To be fair, Vocus has had this editorial rule for quite some time, but they only recently started enforcing it, or so it seems. However, we feel like that’s a shame. What’s the point of living in the world with no Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, or Chupacabra? So lighten up, Vocus. We know you’re serious, but the people reading our press releases aren’t always looking for black-tie affairs. Sometimes they prefer giant bunnies.

The post Extra! Extra! Easter Bunny Kicked Out of Vocus! appeared first on Standing Dog Blog.

Hire bloggers by doing the research yourself

You know your brand best, so you know what kind of voice would amplify your brand best. Search for your brand’s name or product in Google. See who is already talking about you, just because they like you. Those bloggers who already love, use, and talk about your product are your biggest fans. They will be your most dedicated brand ambassadors.

Once you identify your brand on a blogger’s post, go comment on the post. Start a relationship with these bloggers by giving them the compliment of acknowledgement. Follow and talk to them in social media. Build this relationship the way you would with a friend.

Hire bloggers through a blogger job bulletin board

List your job (your desired blog post) on a blogger job board like Business2Blogger, and it gets put in front of thousands of bloggers who can then choose to apply for the project. You control the project; this service just makes meeting bloggers who are already predisposed to working with you easier.

Hire bloggers through a blogger organization

Hire a group that represents bloggers like The Motherhood to do all the heavy lifting. Blog organizations can identify, vet, and do all of the project management for you.

Hire bloggers through an ad network

Most professional bloggers are part of an ad network like Glam. Ad networks usually also have an authorship program in which their more talented writers can be hired to write to a prompt, or about a product or event, as a part of an ad buy.

Hire bloggers through an affiliate marketing network

If your brand is a retailer with an affiliate marketing program, you’ve already got a built-in base of bloggers talking about you. Work with an affiliate marketing company like Commission Junction to target a number of these bloggers with a sponsored post, giveaway, exclusive code, or other premium content program.

Bigger is not always better.

Whether you’re a PR firm, an interactive agency, or a brand manager, the practice of relying on sources like Klout, Alexa or PRChecker to choose your bloggers will only get you so far. Bigger is not always better when it comes to bloggers. Ranking systems can be gamed or just plain wrong. None of those analytics will tell you how many email subscribers a blogger has or how a blogger uses different social media platforms and blogging networks to promote their posts.

And none of those systems will tell you how much a blogger loves your particular brand.

You must visit a blogger’s site and engage with them in social media. Get to know them and their writing voice. When you develop a relationship with affinity bloggers that “get” your brand and talk about it in ways that reinforce your brand’s vision, it’s a win for everyone.

The post How to Find and Hire a Blogger to Work With Your Brand appeared first on Standing Dog Blog.

Good websites don’t just suddenly exist. In fact, there are plenty of good websites that started off as bad websites—and just as many that are still bad websites, unfortunately. A good development team understands that the life cycle of a website starts before, and keeps going far beyond, launch.

So let’s take a look and see how we went from Space Jam to Standing Dog in just a few years.

Planning

The first step in web design is to look at the needs of the audience. If you have a current site, and you’ve properly installed analytics, you should have a good idea of who your customers are and who is most likely to visit. The audience also helps determine what your website should look like, although we also have a couple web design recommendations.

This is also where we take a look at the technical requirements of your future website: do you need an ecommerce solution? Social media integration? It’s important to understand the technical limitations and requirements at this point of your website’s life cycle; changing your mind later can cause major setbacks.

Developing

Consider this the puberty of a website’s life cycle: a lot of growth and changes are happening behind the scenes. We do extensive project planning internally, giving you an estimated schedule, and laying down the skeleton of your website. While not everyone does this, we’re firm believers in creating a wireframe of your future website. This way, we have a guide internally as to what each page requires, and you have an idea of how the general layout of your website will work.

Launch

If developing was puberty, than launching a website is like graduation. Your website is now out there in the real world, and it needs to get its name out there. Newly launched websites should be promoted through press releases and social media feeds; get your name out there as much as possible and make your mark on the web.

Of course, it’s just as important to ensure that the technical aspects have been taken care of. Consider these questions: Do you have a web hosting solution? Does your website have a backup? What kind of security does your website have in place? If you know the answer to these questions, then your website will enter maturity without a problem; if you’re uncertain, you might want to contemplate these questions before future issues crop up.

Revising

Just because your website has launched doesn’t mean it’s finished its journey. In fact, this is perhaps the most important part of a website’s life cycle—it’s why Space Jam stayed Space Jam while your website will keep getting better and better. After your website has had a chance to gain a presence, review the traffic and take a look at the data. Review your business strategy and evaluate your successes.

Did you achieve all your goals?

• Yes! Now it’s time to make new ones!
• No! Do you know what went wrong? And if so, can you solve it?

Either answer takes you back to the planning stage of a website’s lifecycle. Since your website has launched you should have plenty of new data to evaluate, but you should also consider your competitors’ websites as well as general web best practices. This includes both design and search engine optimization best practices.

Sometimes the changes you need to make are minor, while others may take your website to version 2.0, but that’s just a whole new ball game. The important thing to remember, however, is that as your audience evolves and changes, so must your website, otherwise you shouldn’t even be here.

The post The Life Cycle of a Website appeared first on Standing Dog Blog.