SEO Made Simple - Teleseminar Thursday

On Thursday night, December 10th, I will be co-hosting a very cool SEO Teleseminar with the author of the number 1 SEO book on Amazon (SEO Made Simple), Michael Fleishner.

Michael is a marketing expert with more than 13 years of hands-on marketing experience. He has been featured on the TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio and other major media outlets.

He also holds the number 1 spot for marketing blog on Google.

On the call we will be going over:

• Why on page optimization matters now more than EVER on your site or blog!
• How Video is not just for cats and musicians and how EFFECTIVE videos can have Google sending you more traffic than your servers can handle!!
• Why YOU may be wasting your time creating Social Networking profiles and how to tell if Google is counting your links!!!
• How to take YOUR BRAND NEW SITE and get results at a FIRE pace even when playing with keywords and niches that have hype competition!!!!

The call is free and will be packed with tons of content and value that you can add to your brand, your site and your business instantly.


If you register for the call we will send you a recorded version of the call (an MP3) as our way of saying thanks and so that you can take the material and put it into action.

I am really excited for this and I hope you can make it!

-Greg

Disclaimer - The link to buy Michael's book is an affiliate link. I will receive beer money if you decide to put it into Amazon's shopping cart after clicking on the link.

If you want to check out Michael's book immediately, members of the Rock Star Business Series have a free chapter in the Backstage Pass area.

Under 30 Rock Star Business Series

I wanted to pass this along to you guys as the opportunity to get in on the biggest training series that I have ever offered is quickly coming to a close. I have teamed up with the guys from Under 30 CEO for a 4 week intense bootcamp on putting together an online brand through Social Media, SEO and Internet Marketing. It is geared towards young professionals, but we have people of all ages and backgrounds involved. We are offering only 200 seats and most of those are gone at this point.

Here is some of what is going down:

• 4 Live Interactive Training Sessions
• Week 1 – September 14th – Creating Your Voice With a Blog
• Week 2 – September 21st – Creating Your Presence with Social Media
• Week 3 – September 28th – Rock Star SEO and Internet Marketing
• Week 4 – Advanced Strategies to Blow Your Brand Up Online
• Unlimited Q&A after every session
• Private Members Forum
• Secret Twitter HashTag
• Access to the training 24/7/365 a Day After We Go Over It Live
• Limited to the 1st 200 Serious Young Professionals
• 100% Money Back Guarantee

Here is a quick video on what my role is in the training:


So there you have it, a nice solicitation to join me in a very cool course. If you have any questions, please email me at rollettmarketing@gmail.com and I will do my best to steer you in the right direction.

Thanks guys.

Sign up for the Under 30 Rock Star Course Here.

-Greg

Innovating Search at Warp Speed

When I got into search and SEO a few years back, the focus was on creating a great web page or site and to build that up over time through links, conversions, improving copy and promoting the hell out of it.

Today this is the last thing that I would recommend to a new site. The reason is we are focused on the now, or rather on time. Let's take the recent Iran election as a quick example. If I typed in "Iran elections" into Google, what do you WANT it to return?

You want Google to tell you what is going on in real time over in Iran. You wan the latest news stories - even yesterday's news is really irrelevant due to how fast things develop. If a site that had been optimized over the last few years for the key phrase "Iran election" came up at the top of the rankings, you would be disappointed and would need to keep looking.

Knowing this, Google, and more than a handful of new search applications are moving to a real time web. Perform that search for Iran election (even though as I type this it is now a few days old) and you will see blended results:

(Click the image to enlarge)

(Click the image to enlarge)

The top photo shows recent Google News selections. These are time updated and crawled to show you the most up to date news on the key phrase. You can also see that organic results from Wikipedia display headlines for the 2009 election. The number one result from Boston.com is from June 15th, 2009 and #2 The Guardian is from June 14th. This gives the searcher the most relevant "new" information on the topic.

The bottom photo shows you blog posts that are being spidered for the terms and are also fresh posts. Lastly you see related searches. These terms are derived from searches that others are making in real time on Google.

Now take into consideration all the Social Media stuff and ways to search topics and keywords on these sites. A Tweet from yesterday, even if super powerful and helpful, is no longer relevant. An article that hit Digg's homepage on Monday is long forgotten by Friday.

How does search keep up?

One cool thing that Google has done is given its searches "search options." On Monday I am going to be giving you guys an awesome video that walks you through Personal and Company branding implications for these "search options." Sorry to make you wait, but the video is awesome and has some cool backend stuff.

What about other engines?

One of the most relevant search engines in today's world is Twitter Search. Josjua Odmark from Search Engine Journal wrote this about Twitter Search yesterday

We all know how important keywords are in content thanks to Google. Twitter is teaching us how important these keywords are in our Tweets. Relationships are created via the keywords that are in the Tweets and people are finding Tweets based on those keyword searches.

He also listed some problems with Twitter search, some that can even be implied into other engines:

• Punctuation - not returning results that have ! and ? at the end of words. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.
• Absolute Matches - Singular and plural forms of words are counted as not the same. Although a trick would be to search for the plural and the singular would be returned as it is part of the plural word. Thus searching for iPhone will not return iPhones but a search for iPhones will return iPhone because it is part of the root.
• Word recognition and typos - Twitter search does not make the distinction between health care and healthcare being the same. It is not getting Google smart and showing "did you mean" when you mispell a word.
• Timing - While you want relevant searches, Twitter only returns the Tweets based on phrase and time. Spammers are taking advantage of this, by putting keywords and phrases into Tweets while promoting affiliate products and the like.

Where do we go from here?

So Twitter Search is certainly not the answer (yet) as the web has so much going on outside of Twitter - videos, photos, news, products, articles, yadda, yadda, yadda.

I found a real time social search engine courtesy of my trusty old source Mashable yesterday - Collecta. This shows results in real time for stories, comments, updates and photos. This gives you a good picture of what is going on right now on the web. Here is a sample search for Gen-Y. You can see it picked up 23 results in the last 2 minutes.

(Click the image to enlarge)

What about Bing?

So I am not going to say I have played around in Bing like I live in Google, but I did a few searches and here's what I saw. I performed the search for Iran election and below is the screen shot.

(Click the image to enlarge)

You can see that the related searches on the left seem relevant. The news results at the top are very real time (indexed only between 1 and 2 hours prior to this search). The organic results show a mixed of long time trusted links and new sites. The one I find interesting is IranElection.org. They are a new Meme tracker that popped up during the election process. I think this is a great real time source for information.

Not bad Bing, not bad. (I feel like I am talking to Chandler from Friends everytime I talk about Bing).

So Where Does This Leave Us?

Honestly, for the average person - not much of this is relevant today. The search engines do a fairly good job of displaying a mix of "real time" data and highly optimized content (you know - old school organic, great content and on page stuff, incoming links and Google trust factors). For the techie and geek people, we can expect more experimentation from the Search Engines and new applications and add ons to enhance our user experience.

For SEO types and site owners, the formula is the same, but magnified. If people are looking for content in real time, you need to produce content in real time. If someone wants a video on gardening, that is less than 4 minutes long that was made in the last week, well if you are a gardening site, you need to have content to match that. It means more work if you are going for organic rankings.

Don't panic or go on a content rampage, but some things to consider may be:

• Instead of releasing 10 videos in the same day, spread them over the next 2-3 weeks so you always have fresh videos.
• Properly tag, title and describe things. Tell the search engines what your stuff is about.
• Look in your analytics and see when search engine, twitter and social media traffic is coming to your site. If you see a lot of Twitter traffic coming in the early morning, it would be wise to Tweet at those times with your keywords.
• Get on a regular schedule. Makes it easy to manage.
• Build stronger brand awareness. This way they are doing branded keyword searches rather than generic searches. Much easier for someone to buy from you when they search for "your company name" vs "what your company dies."
• Give your clients/customers/web viewers ways to share your content. Even on static or product pages, let your people share your videos, content, etc and Digg it, embed it and email to a friend.

Search is getting smarter and in turn you need to get smarter too. There is much to gain from search and social media traffic and they are quickly blending together.

Question to ponder:
What do you think of the current state of search? What would you like to see? How is social media effecting your traffic from search engines?

Remember to check back on Monday where we have an awesome video on using the new Google stuff for Personal and Company branding. I think you are going to like it.

-Greg Rollett

Eric's Rock Star Tale - From Intern To Internet Rock Star

In life you have the opportunity to do a few things. You can help someone that is looking for help, or you can ignore it and go on with your life. My wife tells me I do too much of the first, always looking to help someone out, teach them the things in my head and help them with their problem(s). Yea, she's probably right. Today I wanted to share a really cool rock star tale with you guys about a good friend and also someone that took the things that came out of my head and totally rocked the entire social media world in a way I never imagined.

It all started...

about a year or so ago in our first office in downtown Orlando. At this point we were just starting out the agency thing and had just merged Rollett Marketing into Endagon Innovations (to make a long intro short). In this process I came along a college student with an incredible internship at a local record label, Eric. Our first chat was about a site we had in concept and he thought it was cool and he said he may have some family investors that would want to get involved. All he wanted was to learn some of the SEO and Social Media stuff I was using for my personal brand as well as for some of our early clients.

I was an asshole.
After a few weeks on board, Eric was now a full member of the EI Team and had been immersed in a few of my trainings, swipe files and tools. Our first client together was the now locally fabled Orlando Ichiban. Eric got the sale and was hot to make them a new site, start creating new media content and run out of the gates. With his questions came my rudeness and ultimately an awesome web copywriter was born!

There is no secret that money is tight in a start up agency and when student loans come knocking, you need to go get yours. An opportunity came around to Eric a few months ago from the affiliate network Clickbooth. After a tough decision, Eric headed out to Sarasota to begin a journey as the Social Media Superstar in their organization.

Always one to put his personal brand aside for the greater good of his clients and company, Eric has killed it over there. Take one look at the Clickbooth Blog Design and you can see how far he has come from his Blogger beginnings (yes, that's even a jab to my own site - I know, I know, switch it over already!). Eric has been able to bring it and rock it with top affiliates like Shoemoney, Johnathon Volk and others and really made an impact to getting the word on affiliate marketing into a fun and positive light. He even let me shine over there, writing a post on not forgetting about the youth market in your affiliate promotions.

From Intern To Rock Star

So how did Eric do it? Well here is one thing to note: Eric is not working for himself. IN fact he works for a company. One that he loves, one that he doesn't mind waking up for in the morning or staying in the office late with.


Eric found something that he was passionate about and found an employer that believed in his mission, his skills and his idea of a great job. Some other things that I think helped him along the way include:

Patience. Eric wanted to jump into everything right away but he saw that a personal brand and developing relationships is not an overnight thing. It paid off nicely.

Practice. For all the long nights we spent working on SEO, HTML stuff, link building and content writing - he has come out stronger. Being a rock star requires practice. Rehearse, regroup, brainstorm and make yourself better every time.

Commitment. This dude was on it like no one I have ever seen. He knew what every Social Media superstar was up to at any given minute, every campaign, why things worked, why things didn't and how to fix them. He lived and breathed it and you could really tell there was a passion there.

Intangibles. There are some things that no one can teach, we'll call those the intangibles. In order for you to be a Rock Star you do need to possess some things that help, motivate and display rock star qualities. Eric had them (and could play a mean bass too).

Now the Sales Pitch
This Rock Star tale is one of many that I have been so lucky to be a part of and through building this relationship, I know have a great friend and someone that I can learn from. I have been 100% intrigued with affiliate marketing from the get-go in my Internet World and now Eric is giving me the extra kick in the ass that I need to make a few extra nickels and dimes. If you are looking to get involved with affiliate marketing I strongly encourage you to check them out, I can say they have been amazing and if you ever have any problems I know where their social media guy lives.

Blatant affiliate link to Clickbooth.

Check it out and if not, well, hopefully you can see a transformation beginning in yourself from "whatever you are now" to "rock star!"

-Greg Rollett

Leveraging SEO to Find New Clients - Research Phase

After the interview with Jun Loayza for Awesome Bloggers a few days ago, I have received a few emails on how to best use SEO to get new clients. In the interview Jun asked how I was able to land clients like Miller Lite, Coca-Cola, Disney and others at such a young age. My answer was through organic traffic to my blog. SEO was one of the first things I learned in Internet Marketing and is still my number one outlet for client work, general knowledge and traffic.

I am no SEO Super Ninja, but a few Rock Star SEO moves and you can increase your visibility in the SERPS (search engine results pages) quite rapidly. I hope this helps and please keep the questions and comments coming. The Rock Star Course we are designing is geared towards helping you guys out and knowing what you want to know is only going to make the course better and you stronger. Here is part 1:

Research and Niche Grabbing

This is everyone's favorite part of the process. I hear the moaning and groaning as I am typing this. When do we get to the fun part? When do the clients start calling my cell phone? The thing is they will never call your phone if you do not position yourself to be seen by the people doing the looking. I like to breakdown the research phase into 3 parts:

• What are you good at?
• Are people looking for that?
• What is the competition like?

What are you good at?

When I started out I wanted to be the young marketing guy that had ideas, thoughts and vision that my peers and even other ad agencies and marketing firms didn't have. I got involved in some Gen-Y circles (Brazen Careerist, YPulse, MobileYouth, YPBlogs, etc). I was also working as a Social Media Specialist way before that job was cool for 20something's that wanted to get paid to blog and Twitter.

Were people looking for this?

So at this point I needed to know if people were actually searching for a young marketer. They weren't. Instead of being disappointed I looked for offshoots of this to find keywords that agencies and brands were looking for. After a not so formal process, my website was titled" Gen-Y, Youth Culture and Social Media Marketing by Greg Rollett." Wow, that sounds boring as hell, but do you know what?

Google #4 - Gen-Y Marketing Blog
Google #3, 4 and 8 for Youth Culture Marketing
Google #7 for Gen-Y Social Media
Google #9 for Youth Social Media

(note - these results may vary - Google likes to do that and I also just changed the theme of this blog to reflect the new Rock Star Life angle so I will lose some Googleness but have now positioned myself for my next move to get customers instead of clients!)

Next thing to note. These are not heavily searched terms. How do I know this? Google tells me. By using their free Adwords Keyword Tool you can get some awesome data (*NOT 100% accurate*) that can tell you how many times a keyphrase is searched every month, give you different variations of that term (the Long Tail) and some other key stats depending how in depth you want to get.

Here is a screenshot for the term "youth culture marketing"

(Click image to enlarge)

What is the competition like?

The last thing I look for when choosing my keywords and niches is the competition in the field. There are obvious terms like "marketing" that no matter how good of an SEO Rock Star you are, you are going to need a great deal of outside factors and a good time line to break into those pages. So we need to break the terms down further (again, the Long Tail) to lower the competition. How do you know the competition?

Google tells us!

Do a search for the keyphrase that you are considering, for this example I will again use "youth culture marketing." Google tells me that there are 1,980,000 web pages that are indexed for that term. That is a heck of a lot of competition, but not nearly as much as "marketing" which would pit you up against 608,000,000. I'll take my chances on the 2 million. You find this number on the top right side of the where Google says:

Results 1 - 10 of about 773,000 for youth culture marketing. (0.21 seconds)

Putting this together:

Now that I am working in more than 1 niche here is what I look for when expanding into a new one using the 3 principles above:

1. I have to know something awesome about the niche that others do not or at least have a quality that makes me better than everyone else
2. Multiple long tail keyphrases that have at least 500 searches per month
3. Competition of less than 500,000

Why did you choose that?

Knowing something about your niche gives you something to care about when you are working on it. I have tried many sites and failed due to not knowing anything about the product or industry. I have had eCommerce sites that sold bird feeders and when customers asked a question, I had to Google it and get the same content as the people asking the questions were getting. If you are trying to package in design offerings to your text message marketing campaign, you better be prepared to talk about design and not rely on a partner. This is imperative when picking your site topics and keywords - just because it gets traffic, DOES NOT mean its the right traffic for you!

The second point should be obvious. You need to know that real people are searching for your keyterm and they do so consistently. 500 is just a number that I like to use however its just a benchmark for me. Locally we have clients that rank well for terms that get 10-20 searches a month, yet the return on a lead is so massive it makes sense in their business. Do what makes sense to know and know how many visitors it takes to find the one that is going to convert.

The last one is something that I have been refining and keep refining and different folks will tell you different things. Here is my theory - the less competition the more opportunity. The more content you produce for those specific keywords the more visible you become. Big fish, small pond concept. With 500,000 or less competitive web pages I know that I can write some great copy, titles, get a few links, write a few guest posts and throw up some videos and get close in a very short period of time. In some niches with less than 100,000 pages, I have seen results on page 1 in Google in 24 hours.

Homework

I hope this helps in selecting your niche and doing some research, but to make it even easier, here is a link to a Google Spreadsheet Doc with a worksheet to get started in the research phase. This is what I use in my business and for my clients and WILL get you better search results.

-Greg Rollett

Is It All About Them Benjamins Baby

photo by DavidDMuir

It's no secret that the startup life is hard. Jun Loayza and I have traded war stories over the past few weeks on the late nights, the relationship strains and the "damn I wish I had some Taco Bell money right now."

That brings us into a struggle I've had with my company over the last few months. To take, or not to take angel funding. In the beginning of the whole creation of Endagon Innovations, we were set on being a web application company that had clients to subsidize the money going out on development. As the summer ended and funding opportunities started to dry up, I started seeing more of a need for client services in SEO and Social Media.

Small businesses were starting to catch the wave, more and more younger employees were starting to take leadership roles in local companies and mainstream media started to jump in on the craze (Twitter + Current TV for the elections). It seemed an opportune time to look into helping businesses listen to conversations and find ways to improve their brand message, communication platforms and recruitment strategies.

As this switch in a business approach came about, our overhead should have been reduced. Did we possibly make a mistake in taking on office space and extra employees too early? Unfortunately I think so. While my team kicks ass and works even harder, I often think about running a smaller operation as we get our feet wet and build up advocates and a bank account.

Then comes the questions of funding
Now that we are 80%+ client side, I have voiced my opinion about staying away from funding. With fewer lenders to choose from and an above average interest rate, it would be ill-advised to take in funding and put our company into debt during the biggest recession in our country's history.

I understand the immediate freedoms, don't get me wrong. I'd love to actually get a paycheck from MY company and maybe even be in the office during business hours. However, I would rather build it debt free and have the freedom to make choices and business decisions based on our own goals and paths, and not of those that would benefit an investor or make us second guess to make sure we have their payments on time.

Do I think we will be successful either way?
Hell yea. We are in a prime position to create a great buzz around our services and find a niche that we can dominate for long term success. Does it mean living close to broke for a few more months? I think so.

So where does this leave us? I am not sure today, I might not be sure tomorrow. I might change my mind if someone waves 6 figures in front of my face. Or I might tell everyone on my sales team that they will get a super bonus if you can find a client willing to believe in us so much that they will allow us to take on a 6-figure contract to make their company better through the belief in Social Media and Search Marketing.

So help me out. Sell out or DIY? It's like deciding on a record contract, something that I still haven't ruled out! ;)

-Greg Rollett

Gen-Y SEO Part 1: Keyword Research

(Over the next few posts I am looking at Gen-Y SEO. This is part 1 on keyword research. The goal of this series is to gather some basic research, bounce off conversation and end up with a community eBook/Report/Whitepaper that anyone can use when looking to target SEO to Gen-Y. I am by no means the authority on the subject, just the person looking to organize this madness. I need your help as well. Thanks. -Greg)

Keyword Research is generally the first step in any search or SEO campaign. You need to see what people are searching for, and for obvious reasons. When looking at Gen-Y and search marketing, there are a few things you need to consider when looking at keywords.

Tools
AdWords Keyword Tool - Free and generally reliable
SEO Book Keyword Tool - built off of the Wordtracker API, can't beat the price tag
Questions keyword tool - shows you relevant results for commonly asked questions, also from Wordtracker

Language
Gen-Y doesn't talk much different from any other demographic in conversation, yet when it comes to texting, instant messengers, e-mails, Twitter and other short forms of QUERTY communication, a whole new language has been born. How does this translate into search? Let's take a look:

I first looked at some typical texting terms and looked at the AdWords tool for relevance. The first was "message vs. msg."

(click the image for larger view)

Text messages is clearly a more searched phrase when compared to the short hand txt msg, and text msgs - although they are not terms I would completely rule out in a targeted search campaign.

Knowing if certain terms have shorthand, mispellings, clever spellings are other tactics can be a key strategy in creating copy for search in targeting Gen-Y and looking at creating keyword lists.

Places we hang out and associations
Knowing "hot spots" and hangouts online and off can help in generating keywords for Gen-Y. Looking at SocNets like Facebook and Myspace and how Gen-Y talks and acts can be a good indicator of what key searches are. Look at groups and see which have a large number of members to find what Gen-Y is being a part of.

Gen-Y is also a very socially aware generation. Knowing what topics may impact your business and gain some pull through content creation for search can be a big one up for your site. Knowing that your business is doing things to bring the "green" lifestyle to your business or the recent election can bring significant search traffic to your project. The key to remember here is to be authentic. Just because a cause or issue is popular to your target audience, does not mean you shold run, jump and force yourself into the conversation. It can cause more harm than good if you are not authentic or providing content that is relevant to the searcher.

Trending
Gen-Y loves to jump on trends and flavors of the week. This can be tricky for SEO but can be great for social outreaches that have search implications. Some places to look for trends include:

• YPulse - Teen and Gen-Y Marketing, News and tips (look for the YPulse essentials that are updated daily)
• Google Trends - Hot searches at the moment
• YouTube - look at featured videos, most discussed and most viewed to see what content is hot among the younger demographic

How to capitalize on trends with search? This is a hit and miss topic but if you target strong keywords, have great content and even better timing your stories can land great search traffic from Google due to Universal Search.

The screenshot below shows the first page for the term "obama election." It shows you the top 10 organic results, the AdWords that made the first page but also Blog Posts related to the terms show up at the bottom of the page. In terms of sites that I have worked with I alwayds say that its best to be #1 or #10 and not in between. Eyeballs like the bottom of the page and Google knows that. It's a good opportunity for Google to show relative results for that search before you look for another term. The posts below were written in the last few days and have to do with the topic of "obama election."

(click the image to enlarge)

So for a term that is getting somewhere around 12,000 searches a month, your blog post that was written today can get 1st page notoriety very quickly. Just be sure that your blog is being spidered quickly and frequently.

(click the image to enlarge)

I've written some blog posts on the hurricanes for local Florida sites and seen search engine traffic spike through the roof and then written about Fourth of July parties and seen in thud. The key is timing, writing great content and making sure Google stops by in the nick of time to spider.

Conclusion
When building your keyword list for a Gen-Y targeted search campaign, there are many factors to consider. I am sure that I left out a few factors and there are endless possibilities that can be used when gathering relevant keywords.

As an overview, be sure that you are taking the keyword research you gather and relate it to content that Gen-Y is willing to take action upon. Do not use slang for the sake of using slang. Do not jump on trends because its hot right now, jump on the train that your business has created track on. Having top rank for strong, demographic based keywords can turn into giant profit when done right, or it can create a bounce rate consistent with an Allen Iverson crossover.

The next post will revolve around an overview of market and competition research and apply it to a search campaign for Gen-Y.

For a complete look at keyword research beyond these short tips, check out Stoney deGeyter from Search Engine Land's 12 part series on Keyowrd Research. Or Rand and the SEO Moz guys have a beginner's look at keywords.

-Greg Rollett

Gen-Y SEO Series

There is more than a fair share of marketers using Social Media to entice Gen-Y buyers and dollars. Whether you are developing Facebook and iPhone applications, advertising on social sites like YouTube, iMeem or Pandora or creating contests, blogs and content to attract our eyeballs, there is no shortage of your efforts.

But what about search and SEO marketing for Gen-Y?

I saw an interesting article from Andrew Wheeler on Search Engine Land last Wednesday dealing with B2B and Gen-Y. Andrew, a search marketer at iProspect, goes on to list the growing number of Millennials in the workforce and those that have decisions to make regarding work related purchases. He also goes on to say:

...choose your keywords appropriately as they can make a big difference; they should definitely be words that your audience will relate to. For example, if you are a PC hardware reseller, you might traditionally target keywords that include cost specific adjectives like “cheap,” “discount,” or “affordable.” And you might even include feature/benefit descriptors like “low maintenance,” “guaranteed,” and “light-weight.” However, are you forgetting product comparison keywords to account for the fact that many Gen Y’ers rely on what other consumers have to say about these products and their experiences?

I know it was a random example, the PC hardware reseller, but Andy didn't explore any hard facts or numbers or real time examples of Gen-Y searches and the language barriers and differences that we have.

Over the next week or so I will be exploring Gen-Y an SEO in a mildly in depth review of the following areas.

Gen-Y Lingo and Keywords
I agree with Andrew that language is a key factor. However like any search campaign, doing the initial keyword research is key. Looking at competing sites and the language they use, the article titles that attract the most comments, the commonalities in the slang and the long tails in the content are key factors when targeting Gen-Y.

Gen-Y Market and Competition Research
Look to Gen-Y marketing leaders and see what teens are into. See the tv shows, the products, the sports teams, the music and celebrities that are "hot" today. There are some good tools to use as well.

Gen-Y Linking Campaigns
Getting links to your sites with Gen-Y in mind is just as tough as any other SEO link building campaign. The same rules apply and they should be dictated by your keyword assessment. Making sure to have organic links with great anchor text without being cheezy is a tough task.

Gen-Y PPC
This one is tricky as is any PPC campaign as you are playing with real dollars and cents and can blow a wad of money when targeting the wrong terms, misleading clickers or not generating clicks at all. I started to look at some cases to see what advertisers were using to attract teen and Gen-Y eyeballs. I got some interesting results.

This will be a fun series of exploring, testing and playing with a hot topic of the moment. When the posts are done, this report will be put into a white paper and will be available for free download to anyone that wants one.

Please be sure to add in your thoughts, arguments, ideas and tactics as I will be adding them to the guide as well. I want this to be a great resource for anyone looking to target Gen-Y with an SEO + SEM campaign.

Let's start the week off with a question: What are some ways SEO's can look at targeting Gen-Y in search campaigns?

-Greg Rollett

Track Star Tuesdays, but its Wednesday

I actually did get Track Star Tuesdays up on Tuesday (yesterday for those that are counting).

It has moved though to its new home at the Skatterband Blog. I haven't talked much about SkatterBand and will get into more depth as it becomes closer to a full launch.

All you need to know today is that it will be a Music Marketing version of one of my favorite sites, SEO Moz, complete with tools, tips, e-books and a killer daily blog. (We are looking for contributors!)

Any musicians that wish to get into the site early are encouraged to sign-up at SkatterBand.com. The blog is up and running and getting some great traffic from Digg and StumbleUpon.

Also, for those that like my Music Marketing posts, they have moved over to that site as well. I am trying to be the Rand Fishkin of the Online Music Marketing world and have been putting up some of my best work to date over there.

More on SkatterBand to come later on. For now, go watch the latest Track Star Tuesdays featuring Orlando's own hip-hop-pop-rock quartet, Daylight District over on the SkatterBand Blog today!


Thanks and if you enjoy either of my sites, please be sure to subscribe to the feeds, it is much appreciated!

-Greg Rollett

Facebook Profiles in Organic Results

I knew that Facebook was beginning the process of showing up in search engine results. Today, while stumbling through search results for a client a ran across the Facebook Page I created for them. What blew my mind was that it was for a term that was listed only once on the page and through an application. Here is a quick screenshot:

The term was "job outlook in Orlando, fl" The landing page was the actual Facebook Page for the Orlando JobSpot.



It ranked 9th for that term. Pretty sweet I think. So I dugg deeper. (No pun intended)

So next I searched for my name. Pretty simple search. Here's the results:

I pulled my Facebook page number 7 in the Google searches. The landing page took you here:


Great for privacy, its the same as if someone searched for me within Facebook with the addition of some of my friends showing up for the party as well. I do not like the randomness that these friends appeared. In all honesty, I do not think that I have spoken to any of the 5 anytime recently. Maybe a system of top friends, a la Myspace, or even the most recent activity between friends, just a thought.

So my digging continued. I looked for Rock For Hunger. They have 2 Facebook Groups and one Facebook Page. Nothing in the first 7 pages for their name resulted in a Facebook listing. The groups and the Page have a great deal of member and incoming links, where the JobSpot Page has only 1 incoming link.

So far I have seen no relationship between incoming links, number of friends/fans and the organic rankings of these Facebook pages.

Mind you that I have only searched for local terms. So I decided to look for 'Stephen Colbert for President.' There group boasts over 1,000,000 members and has been linked to from blogs to large news networks. The first Facebook related search result:

Number 61 it is. Ouch and it is for an Application, not the group! Another interesting clue in the puzzle. In the first 100 results there were 3 Myspace related results. Facebook failed to return the group with over 1,000,000 users in the first 100 results. Hmm, Google spider problem or Facebook problem.

How is a Facebook Page spidered? What gives it the rains to show up on page 1? Is this just a test? I don't remember opting into anything to get my results listed. Will Facebook results show up as often as Myspace results for bands, brands and entertainment?

Thoughts anyone?

Greg Rollett

Music Marketing - Meet SEO

I spend a great deal of time working up proposals and talking to bands, musicians and creative types about blogging, Social Media, Myspace and all these other great tools that can help you create an online brand, get people talking about you and creating a Google search for your band name that you can not only be proud of, but be truly and completely informational to your fans, labels, prospective business partners or anyone else typing into the world's most famous search bar.

Recently Aaron Wall, one of the most respected SEO guru's around announced that he was taking open interviews, where you could ask him questions about search marketing and his experience in the business. Problem was, there were a few guidelines and my blog failed one of them (it's hosted with blogger and not on my own domain, something I need to do anyway).

Luckily, a blogger friend and fellow internet music marketer, Eric Hebert of Evolvor Media, met the criteria and jumped at the chance to talk with the master of SEO and author of SEO Book.

Here is a quick look at the interview:

Eric: A lot of my time is wasted explaining the pros of having a optimized website versus a real flashy one (which many, many bands and acts have). The flash heads always argue that you have to be “interactive”, and they do so with all kinds of moving objects, sounds, and other nonsense. Could you elaborate on what YOU think works on a website as far as interaction is concerned?

Aaron: If you are marketing art or music you at least need to have some static links to text pages on the site if you want to use text to connect with readers. The homepage can still be mostly flash but it helps to have at least a few text rich pages so people can buy your concert tickets on your site, buy posters from you, buy cds from you, and subscribe to your newsletter as well.

As the search marketing world is coming more and more into the mainstream, and the music industry becomes even more flooded with acts and competition, these artists are going to have to take a look at SEO and Social Media Marketing as part of their complete package. You know the saying content is king, well in the music business, great songs are king. The problem is that a great song that no one hears is as good as a tree falling in a deserted forest.

Head on over to Eric's post and if you want to know more about SEO, subscribe to Aaron Wall's blog and learn something or 2. I promise that it is worth your time.

One last sentence from the interview:

Every artist who wants exposure is either a promoter or a failure.

-Greg Rollett

Oh and Eric did just name me and this blog one of the top 7 blogs that every musician should be reading. Thanks man!

Why Your Company Needs to Hire an SEO

I came across this article today by Ashley Graham in my RSS. Most of the time, I simply scan and move on. This article just put it out there so plain and simple. This is why you need to SEO your site.

Here's my favorite line:

With the right site this is like handing in a job application with a reference from the President or Donald Trump. Without having other important webpages linking to your various webpages your website is sitting in the cafeteria by itself and Google is the popular kid who won’t make eye contact.

Thanks Ashley. Visit E-Marketing Performance for more great SEO and Link related articles.

Why, SEO

Facebook Profiles to be Found on Goodle, Yahoo, MSN, and the others…..

Straight from the Facebook Blog:

“Starting today, we are making limited public search listings available to people who are not logged in to Facebook. We're expanding search so that people can see which of their friends are on Facebook more easily. The public search listing contains less information than someone could find right after signing up anyway, so we're not exposing any new information, and you have complete control over your public search listing.

Above is an example of how a public search listing appears. It contains your name and current profile picture thumbnail. If you do not want this listing to appear, you can change your Search Privacy settings.

In a few weeks, we will allow these Public Search listings (depending on users' individual privacy settings) to be found by search engines like Google, MSN Live, Yahoo, etc. We think this will help more people connect and find value from Facebook without exposing any actual profile information or data.”

Here at Rollett Marketing, we are very excited for this to roll out. Facebook is now embarking on a great strategy that Myspace currently held hostage. When all is said and done these profiles will start popping up at the top of search engines for namesake of the profile. This puts you out in the open to be found, which if using Facebook for Marketing, can be a great added bonus.

I am seeing some fuss from Facebook members, but you can already do a search by name on Facebook if you are not a member, this just lets Google or whatever search engine do the searching for you. Facebook is taking the right step in making only the name and picture available to the public and also allowing you to block this all together.

In the long run this could increase Facebook memberships, with the increase in the visibility of who is on Facebook available to the searching public. If you search on Google for a long lost relative and their Facebook profile shows up, you may be inclined to join the network as well. Great strategy all around for Mark and the boys in the Valley.

I’m sure this will be covered by everyone and their mom, so I’ll let some time settle and come back to this subject when the search goes live to the search engines in about a month. Myspace get on your game, or this could be more of the beginning of the end for the former king of Social Networking land (Even though I’m still not sure whether companies will get great market ability with just a Facebook profile vs. a Myspace profile. More on this to come later).

Check these related articles:
Riveting Rosie
Mashable.com
Search Engine Journal

-G-Ro

The Lebron of SEO: Content!

Content is King. That’s been the driving force of SEO since search engines have ruled the online world. Nothing has changed. You can link build all day, use your great flash skills (said like nunchuck skills form Napolean Dynomite), or whatever new strategy that is the hotness and the talk of message boards from Warrior to whatever else. What everything comes down to is content. What does your page say and does it say it better than your competition.

So what can you do when you are starting from scratch? Here’s some quick tips I use everyday when writing bios, articles, ads and posts for companies across a gamut of industries form small businesses to musicians to large corporation and beyond.

-Write a damn good bio or about me(us) section! Write about yourself. Include everything that you can think of that you have accomplished with your company, business, band, music. Do not overlook anything as too small or irrelevant to write about yourself. Yea some people don’t wanna read every detail about your life or business, but you know what, that one person that came across your profile and sees the non-profit you volunteer for, or band you opened for, etc can become a reader, customer, ally for life!

-Start up a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Page or a Statistics Type Page. FAQ’s are great pages because they address every facet of your business from a customer’s standpoint. Bands can put clubs or bars that they frequent, or bands that they love playing with. Restaurants can have questions about hours, their staff, how their menu is put together or how they prepare the food. The list goes on and on and is super huge is relative content.

-Write a blog. Google that. Amazing results if kept up, consistent and has relative content for your readers.

-Write articles. Writing articles shows expertise in areas that are relative to your brand. These articles can further be used for press stories, press releases, on free article sites like freearticels.com for other website owners to use (which gives you an incoming link btw) and so much more. Writing isn’t hard, it’s just the start that is difficult.

-The more you write the better the chance to find long tailed keywords that you previously didn’t even know exist. On one bog I write for, someone found us from google with the search query “Orlando jobs with car benefits and green.” I swear!

The more content the higher the possibility of being found. No gimmicks, no get rich quick shit. Get out and start writing. You might find out that a) you’re good at it or b) you enjoy it. For me it was both and business has never been better!

-G-Ro
grollett@tmail.com for on the go access