Did you know your customers are your secret weapon for SEO? Join BusinessOnLine, and featured guest, Lithium Technologies, for an engaging discussion about the value delivered by online communities and the role they play in search engine optimization.

1. Tapping Into the SEO Goldmine –
The Customer Network
March 2010
Lithium Confidential
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2. Tapping Into the SEO Goldmine – The Customer Network
Speakers:
Ray "Catfish" Comstock
BusinessOnLine
Phil Soffer
Lithium Technologies
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3. About
Lithium Technologies
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4. Lithium Social CRM: Driving Real ROI
Accelerate Innovation
300% increase in beta
Innovate program participation.
Reduce Costs
Your
Customers Increase Sales
$3MM saved from 300K
calls deflected annually
Support Promote 66% increase in
customer purchases.
Powering the Customer Network
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5. About
BusinessOnLine
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6. Ray "Catfish" Comstock
Senior Search Strategist,
BusinessOnLine
Overview
• About BusinessOnLine
• Convergence of Social Media
and SEO
• Online Social Community Benefits
How Communities Affect SEO
• Content
• Links
• Real Time Search
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7. About BusinessOnLine
Founded: 1996 Certifications
• Google Adwords Certified Company
• Yahoo! Search Marketing Certified
Ambassadors
Headquarters: • MSN Certified AdCenter
San Diego, California Professionals
• HFI Certified Usability Analyst
• Omniture Certified Professional
BusinessOnLine is a
performance-driven online
Selected as one of
marketing agency focused
exclusively on search engine Magazine’s
and internet marketing
strategies. Top Interactive Agencies
for 2008, 2009 & 2010
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8. Performance-Driven Online Marketing
+ 372% Organic Traffic in Google
+53% Monthly Returning Visitors
Web
+ 293% Organic Traffic Overall Development +74% US Site Conversions
+ 75% Total Page Views +122% Overall Site Conversions
User
Social Media
Experience
Web
Analytics
Online
SEO/SEM
Strategy
+178% Total Traffic +38% in Material Sales
+113% Organic SEO Traffic +11% in Avg. Dollar Sales
+23% traffic from organic search results +75% Online Renewals
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9. Social Media & SEO Convergence
• Social Media has been creating content/links
since the first forum
• Blogs are a huge force in the world of SEO
• Yelp reviews get pulled into Yahoo local search
• Universal search integrates social media
components
• YouTube is now the worlds second largest
search engine
• Google real time search
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10. Online Community Benefits
SEO – Allows you to rank higher for
target keyword phrases.
• User Generated Content
• Authoritative Links
• Real Time Search Opportunities
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11. Audience Poll
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Are you currently operating an Online
Community?
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12. How Online Communities
Affect SEO
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13. How Online Communities Affect SEO
1 Content
2 Links
3 Real Time Search
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14. Content Strategy
User generated
content (UGC) can be
generated through
social media in a
number of ways:
• Forums
• Blog Commenting
• Reviews
• Videos
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15. Content Strategy
UGC tends to be keyword focused and is
typically effective at targeting the “long tail”
which occurs naturally in online
conversation.
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16. Content Strategy
Community platforms,
such as Lithium allow for
user generated content to
be created in an SEO
friendly manner.
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17. Content Tactics
Be an active
participant in your
community.
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18. Content Tactics
Ensure that your
community’s
information
architecture is
keyword focused.
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19. Content Tactics
Optimize top
level category
pages by hand
(Page Titles &
Meta Data).
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20. Content Examples
http://forums.logitech.com/ http://forums.t-mobile.com
Pages Index in Google: 83K + Page Indexed in Google: 121K +
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21. Links
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22. Link Strategy
A Link is a Vote, take advantage of your:
• Internal Links
• External Links
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23. Internal Link Strategy
Social Media is effective at creating keyword
focused internal links:
• Communities provide thousands of new opportunities for you to
internally link social media content to relevant content within your
site
• Communities allow users to internally link content for you
• Tags allow users to create keyword focused links
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24. External Link Strategy
Social Media is very
effective at generating
external links that
influence SEO.
• Many links are generated as a result
of increased visibility through Social
Media (Community Engagement,
Blogging, Video, etc)
• Some links are generated by asking
for them through Social Media
channels (Lithium Community,
Twitter, Blogging, FaceBook, etc)
• Some links are generated as a
result of your community being an
authoritative hub of information
about your relevant subject matter
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25. Link Tactics
Link text (or alt text) should be keyword focused, especially on homepage
logo links.
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26. Link Tactics
A right hand column menu for
“Most Popular Products” is a
potential mechanism.
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27. Links Example
Barnes & Noble
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bookclubs/
Links include:
Forbes Best of the Web
http://www.forbes.com/bow/b2c/category.jhtml?id
=230
Austin Public Library
http://www.austinlibrary.com/referral.cfm
Friends of Rutgers
http://english.rutgers.edu/alumni/newsletter/spring
_summer_05/beyondtheclassroom.html
Eagle Valley Library District
http://evld.org/br.resources.cfm
Townsend University
http://tiger.towson.edu/users/plige1/istc653/bookcl
ubs.htm
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28. Real Time Search
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29. Audience Poll
2
How many of you have integrated Twitter
with your Online Community?
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30. Real Time Search Strategy
Google now incorporates real
time search results:
• Twitter
• Facebook
• MySpace
• FriendFeed
• Jaiku
• Identi.ca
• Yahoo Answers
• News Articles
• More
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31. Real Time Search Tactics
• Encourage users to use Twitter
• Show users genuine value in subscribing to your Twitter feed
• Announce blog posts through Twitter
• Create keyword focused hash tags
• Time Sensitive, Twitter-only coupons and discounts
• Attribution analytics
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32. Real Time Search Examples
T-mobile
Lithium Twitter
integration
encourages users
to tweet.
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33. Phil Soffer – VP, Product Marketing
Summary
Q&A
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34. Lithium Platform: Lots of Keyword Opportunities
Conversations contribute
keywords for SEO
User generated tagging,
kudos, and labels expand
keyword attribution
SEO friendly mark-up and
hand-optimized category
pages
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35. Extensive Linking Opportunities
Tribal Knowledge Base:
Authoritative hub linked
internally and externally
URLs optimized for SEO
http://supportforums.blackberry.co
m/t5/Your-Stories/bd-p/YourStories
Users link community
content
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36. Enhancing Real-Time Search
Twitter Integration
increases volume of
Tweets with your content
Active community links in
multiple social networks
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37. Q&A
Speakers:
Ray "Catfish" Comstock
BusinessOnLine
Phil Soffer
Lithium Technologies
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38. Next Steps
Complimentary SEO Performance Labs
• Discuss different SEO tactics with a subject
matter expert that can help achieve your
marketing objectives
Lithosphere Community
http://lithosphere.lithium.com/
• Check tomorrow for more Q&A posted from
today’s webcast
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39. Thank You!
BusinessOnLine SEO Blog: More Questions?
http://www.businessol.com/seo-blog Contact Candyce Covington
P 619.699.0767 x242
Follow Catfish On Twitter: Candyce.covington@businessol.com
http://twitter.com/BOLSearch
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