Search Marketing Sage

Continuing with the Semantic SEO Track today at SMX West, the next session I attended today was the session on authorship, featuring Mike Arnesen of SwellPath (@mike_arnesen), Lisa Weinberger of Bankrate, Inc. (@PearlyWrites) and AJ Kohn of Blind Five Year Old (@ajkohn).

Mike Arnesen

Mike was up first and focused on the journey to quality search results via authorship. Many search results today may seem like a lost cause. Even though there have been many algorithm updates, we often still have to dig through many results to get to the result we want. Search should instead be a tool that connects us with resources that inspire us.

“Great content comes from great authors, and we’re looking closely at ways this markup could help us highlight authors and rank search results.” – Othar Hansson, Google

Snippets – the few lines of text that appear under every search result – are designed to give users a sense of what’s on the page and why it’s relevant to their query. These “snippets” of information can become much more detailed and relevant with the use of rich snippets, which can show things such as: reviews, event dates, price ranges, telephone numbers, etc. Rich snippets help users quickly recognize when your site is relevant to their search query, and provide them with useful information at a glance.

So you have something you want to promote…you want to create awareness, build inbound links for SEO, and ultimately, generate leads and/or sales. One of the most overlooked news sources today are blogs. Not only can bloggers provide you with links, but they can also spread the word about your news or product to their readers. Bloggers are big.

How can you get bloggers to love you and want to post about your news or product? It’s definitely important to note that any relationship takes time and effort. Bring the romance to your bloggers with a little patience and extra work. Just like when you have a crush on someone, it’s best to act cool and not too pushy. Follow these same rules with your outreach campaign.

Last night we said goodbye to one of my favorite television shows — 30 Rock. 30 Rock launched seven years ago at about the same time that I launched Search Mojo. Not only did the show provide great wit, it provided a type of business mentor in the form of Jack Donaghy.

Jack Donaghy represented a titan of industry and a mentor to the scrambling Liz Lemon. His business philosophies have been covered by revered business publications including The Washington Post to Fast Company. The Huffington Post called Donaghy “the most important and influential person of our time”.

Over these past seven years as our company has grown, I’ve taken stock in the wisdom of Donaghy. I feel as if an era is coming to an end. But fortunately, Donaghy left us with many pearls of business wisdom over those years that will serve us all for many years to come.

Let’s face it: sometimes your branding strategy doesn’t always play well with your search marketing strategy. Your website copy, while true to your brand guidelines, doesn’t contain the keywords needed to drive traffic from search engines. Or perhaps you have a beautifully-designed website, created and coded using tools and programs on the bleeding edge of web design. But, Google can’t read it or index it into search results. Have any of these situations happened to you?

Thankfully, there are ways to resolve these challenges. Join us for a free webinar, Harmonizing Branding and Search to Achieve Optimal Results, on Thursday, January 24th at 2:00pm ET. During this webinar, Janet Driscoll Miller of Search Mojo and Pam Fitzgerald of branding and marketing services agency The Ivy Group will discuss ways you can integrate your branding and search strategies. You’ll learn:

• The basics of branding and how it’s more than just your logo.
• How to create messaging that utilizes your top search keywords while staying true to your brand.
• Best practices for designing a website that is aesthetically pleasing, user-friendly and search engine-friendly.
• How to make sure your brand is protected and represented positively in search engines.

UPDATE 2/7: Did you miss the webinar? Click here to watch Harmonizing Brand and Search to Achieve Optimal Results in its entirety! For a quick preview of the webinar, check out the video below: