Howdy SEOmoz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we’re talking about how to give your content a better chance of going viral, and from virality, what I really mean here is not just getting links, which are obviously very helpful from an SEO perspective, but getting social shares, getting mentions on other blogs, getting talked about, getting emailed around. The virality of content determines how successful that content is going to be in the broader Web, in the scheme of all things that are inbound, not just SEO, not just social, not just community stuff, but overall. There are a few things that you can do that will significantly help your efforts to earn that content virality. So let’s talk about a few of them.

Number one, the right format or the right UI or UX, user experience. What I’m talking about here is a lot of people think that they can take the same way that they produce content normally, keep on doing that, and sometimes that works, especially if you have a very, very clean site, maybe it’s in a blog format and it’s got nice width. It’s not too hampered by advertising and surrounded by that kind of stuff. But oftentimes you will see that content can perform better when it’s in a separate type of format. So let’s say you’ve got a traditional page layout that has content section here but a big header up here and a top ad and a bottom ad and a bunch of sidebar stuff. And maybe you think, “You know what? I’m actually going to clean that up to something that has branding but minimal branding, got a great headline, got the content right in there, and that’s the focus of the page.” So the users who come to it can easily, above the fold, find the content that they’re looking for, that there’s compelling visuals.

These visuals are particularly important because both Google+ and Facebook, if you do any sharing on either of those platforms, remember that they’ll automatically insert an image from the post, and oftentimes the user can select which image. If you’ve got a couple compelling images that look great when scaled down, that look great when you’re going to share them on Facebook or on Google+ or that somebody else who is going to copy those images and put them on their site, oh man, much, much more successful.

Even if you have literally just a piece of writing, if you can have some sort of a visual element that is compelling, that’s interesting, that draws in the reader, that’s relevant, you’re going to do much, much better. Flickr Creative Commons is great for this. Drawing your own stuff is great for this. Charts and graphs are great for this. Even licensing out someone to do a tiny amount of work for a few hundred dollars around building a visual for you, taking some of the data or some of the insight that you’ve learned that you’re putting into that content can be really helpful to help it go more viral.

Then doing things like, you know, you’ve got to have the design look and feel professional. It has to be modern and updated. Clean is very, very good for getting that sharing principle. You can see this happen all the time with content that’s shared on major media websites, where it’s the print friendly version that gets emailed around, that makes its way around Twitter and around Google+ and Facebook and goes on LinkedIn. It’s almost always the one that people will link to in a Reddit or a Hacker News or on Stumble Upon. Print friendly versions, just make that the default for content that you want to have virality.

Then finally I’d also be looking at the title friendliness itself, and the URL actually matters a lot now too. So if you’ve got a pre-existing CMS, when you go to bit.ly or you to goo.gl or whatever your URL shortener is, you might want to try something like this, getting the customized one. So for example, you’ll see that when I have content that I like to share a lot, I might say for example, “Oh, let’s make this content say inbound startups, and that’ll be my slide share presentation.” So now you don’t have to remember some long URL. It’s just bit.ly/inboundstartups, and that will take you right to my presentation here, that URL functions. Customizing this portion of the shared URL can be very helpful if you can’t control it. If you can though, go with something easy, simple, short, not too many parameters in there. This will also help you. I might even, for some things, recommend dropping the slash articles or the slash blog and going just with /catchy-subject, whatever that subject line is. You ‘re going to shrink down the title so that it’s easily understandable so if somebody ever sees that URL or hovers on it, they think, “Oh, that sounds interesting. I should click that link. That might be cool.”

Number two, great, fantastic way to make sure that your content is going to at least perform decently on the Web is to get buy-in from your influencers, the influencers in a community, before, not after, not during, but before you ever publish it. So I’ll give you a great example. I got an email last Friday from a guy in the search world and he said, “Hey Rand, my company, we produce this big report. We’ve got this cool infographic, lots of interesting data about stuff that’s happening in the world. Would you take a look at this? Tell me what you think. Do you think your community would like it?” And I wrote back and said, “Yeah, I really love this. I think it’s excellent. I don’t even have any changes. I think this is going to do great, and I’d be happy to share it.” This person didn’t specifically ask me for a share and I think that’s why. What they asked me for was feedback.

That feedback, coming from people who have a powerful forum, 6,000 RSS readers, 500 people following them on Google+, you can find these people. You probably already know about them in your niche or your sphere, who they are, the key bloggers, the key Twitter accounts, the key Google+ accounts, the key people on LinkedIn, the people who run popular websites, the influencers. Then you can essentially draw them back to whatever it is that’s your content in here, and they will be much more likely to share if you ping them about it beforehand. They’ll also give you feedback like, “I don’t really think this is going to play well,” or “If you did this, it’d be very interesting, but I don’t see what you’ve done as particularly unique or valuable. I probably wouldn’t share it.” Or no response at all. If you get lots of those, you know that you’re not hitting it out of the park with this content. You’re going to have to do something else, try something else. That’s great to know before you hit that publish button.

There’s a bunch of things you can get from them. So if you’re thinking, boy, I just can’t get these people to share what I’m producing. I don’t know what I can do, get them involved in the actual content itself. So rather than you writing an opinion blog post saying I like this particular thing and that particular thing, you can instead go and gather. Hey, can I solicit your review and opinion on a subject, and then I’m going to gather that from several experts and publish that. I’m going to run a survey of you and 20 other people who are influencers in the field about particular things, about some data from your sites, your projects, your experiences, your businesses, whatever it is, or your opinions on this matter. I’m going to interview you or do some lessons learned stuff. I shared a great link last week that was a bunch of video interviews of entrepreneurs, and this type of stuff performs tremendously well because all of those people who are involved in the project, from an interviewee perspective, they are all going to share it after it’s produced because you write back to them and you say, “Hey, the interview is now live. The data is now live. The review is now live.”

You can request input from their communities. For example, when SEOmoz does the SEO Industry Survey every two years, we always ask, hey, would you share this with your community so that we can get the input of people who read Search Engine Land or Search Engine Watch or SEO Book or Search Engine Journal, a variety of these places. HubSpot, etc.

If you can’t directly reach out, you can always mention these people. So if you, for example, gather things that they’ve tweeted, said on their own blogs, you’re getting quotes from them, you’re getting data they’ve shared, you’re using numbers from them, anything like that, you can say, “Oh, by the way, we mentioned you or we’re going to be mentioning you in an upcoming piece, would you like to take a look at it and review and let us know if it’s appropriate or okay, if this is accurate?” That process of interacting in an authentic way, both to confirm that you do have accurate data and that you’re doing the right thing with them, gives them a buy-in to, “Oh, I’m going to go check out this article. Huh, this is interesting. Yeah, this looks great, thanks very much.” Or, “Oh I have this little bit of feedback for you.” Then when you publish, you can say, “Hey, we hit publish. It’s now live. Thanks again for reviewing. If you would share with your community, that’d be great. Here’s the shortened link or here’s a tweet you could retweet.” This kind of stuff works phenomenally well. This process of getting that early buy-in ahead of time is so powerful, and it just makes sure that the content does much better than it normally would.

The third and final thing that I’m going to mention here – topic, timing, and seeding. So this is essentially the process of figuring out what works best in your community, and that’s from a topical perspective. Copyblogger has a lot of good posts about how to write a compelling headline and what’s going to be popular right now. But I would think about it this way. If it’s being mentioned in the news, so for example if I go to, let’s say this is Google Insights or Google Trends or the news timeline, and I see mentions it is at the steady state point but has a spike here, this is where I want to be writing about that topic. Or maybe right after, when there’s usually that second bump of people having a discussion about it. If you can, you might even want to catch it here, before it goes hot, and then you’ll have a chance to appear in things like Google News and you’ll have a chance to be mentioned in all the articles that talk about that subject thereafter. This is great for anytime you have a timely or trending type of topic.

You also want to, in addition to all these influencers you talk to, there are likely a few people, these are your buddies, your friends, people you connect with on a regular basis, you’re emailing with them, you follow each other on Twitter. Do them a favor. Start sharing some of their content. When they tweet things, retweet them. Build up those relationships. Almost all of you probably have a few of those already. Leverage those. Email them in person and say, “Kenny, I know you’ve got a small Twitter account. It’d be awesome if you could share this. If you ever need the same favor from me, just ask.” Almost always, especially if those are close relationships, personal relationships, you’ve hung out in a bar before, you’ve bought each other dinner, you know each other well, you’re going to get that. I think that’s a great way to leverage the real world social network for online social networks. Obviously, you have to be careful not to abuse this. You want to be sharing stuff that these people would ordinarily want to share and be interested in.

Then finally timing stuff. I can tell you for B2B content, Saturday and Sunday are just straight out. However, the reverse is true for Facebook, where the most sharing and the most time spent on Facebook happens on the weekends. Now, not surprisingly, that’s not B2B Facebooking. That’s personal Facebooking. So it better be the kind of stuff that’s going to play well with your mom and your grandma and your brother and that kind of stuff. B2B, Tuesday through Thursday. Don’t do Monday. Don’t do Friday. With the exception of, it appears that some of the best content or most successful tweeting happens on Friday morning, sort of Thursday night going into Friday morning. That’s when people seem to be tweeting and retweeting a lot of stuff. This is from some research from Dan Zarrella over at HubSpot. You can look into that. The timing of social media, I believe, is his presentation.

So don’t necessarily take my word for it. Test, test, test. If you’re sharing content and producing content on a regular basis, you will figure out the right times to share, who you can start seeding things with, who’s reliable and helps you get that content out there, what topics work well, what sorts of headlines work well for your audience. It’s going to be different for everyone. So don’t just trust these. But do test and observe and watch your click through rates, using something like a bit.ly, watching your analytics, seeing what works when you share things and how long it takes for them to go and what sources indicate. Sometimes you’re going to share with this one guy and he’s going to populate it to tons of places. One of my favorite features for this is Google+’s ripples, where you can actually see, it’s almost like this. It’ll actually show you a timeline of this person shared and then these 13 other people shared and 1 of them produced 10 more shares. That stuff is very powerful, and you can observe it on the regular Web, on the rest of the Web, across platforms if you’re carefully watching analytics or your bit.ly click throughs.

So hopefully, using this methodology, you can produce some content that has higher chances, better odds of going viral. I wish you luck. I hope to see lots of great stuff out there on the Web. Take care. We’ll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/ftsFD313Fdk/how-to-increase-the-odds-of-your-content-going-viral-whiteboard-friday

The title of this post may come across a little contentious, however I hope by the end of it you understand where I am coming from.

Over the years, I have been privileged enough to work with some large businesses that can afford to throw big budgets at online marketing. One of the first tasks I undertake is a meeting to discuss previous strategies. As my main focus is natural search, one of the things I always find interesting is discussing link building strategies carried out by previous agencies and internal SEOs. This can be quite enlightening, but really worrying at the same time, you begin to realise fairly quickly why SEO gets such bad press.

One of the things that always makes my head spin is companies who invest in pumping out online press releases through well-known services for the sheer purpose of building links!

“So, what’s your link building strategy?”, “Well, we send out press releases every week and get thousands of links!” fantastic. You realise at this point the road ahead is a long one.

This is my opinion and you can disagree with me in the comments, sending out press releases through services such as PRnewswire or Marketwire is not a link building strategy, in fact paying for these services alone is nothing but a waste of time and money.

So, I did a little research as I wanted to confirm my long held belief, asking 20 different SEOs to give a rough figure as to how much each of their clients spend on Online press release distribution. I have to say even I was shocked by the figures (a quick thank you to all those who responded, cheers guys).

As you can see 40% of clients were spending £2000 – £3000 a month on press release distribution alone, even at the most expensive rates that’s 6 – 10 per month. Do you really have that much to talk about? On top of that, 2.5% were spending over £5000 per month on press release distribution, that figure is staggering!

I work with some very big brands and they would struggle to fulfill that quota. When I asked why this amount was being spent each month, the same answers came back, “The MD/CEO/Marketing Director believes it to be a solid link building strategy”. I know this isn’t large enough to be a meaningful sample, but it gives you a slight insight into the minds of some fairly big organisations.

Why is it a Terrible Strategy

I’m sure you’re all aware that a good link building strategy should:

1. Follow natural linking patterns
2. Be aimed at acquiring links from unique domains
3. Incorporate social signals

So let’s go through this step by step:

Is it natural?

You’re sending the same content out to multiple hubs, with the same links in the same anchor text which automatically updates within seconds. Natural? Nah, at least not on its own.

Links from unique domains?

Sure, the first time you send a press release out all your links will be from unique domains. Maybe if you use multiple distribution services you will get plenty of links from unique domains. However if you use these services month after month, all you’re doing is acquiring low quality links from the same domains over and over again.

Incorporating social signals?

Erm… nope. The only way this could develop social signals is if someone actually read these releases and referred back to your site through twitter or Facebook etc…

So alone press releases are not a good link building strategy. To emphasise the point a little more I monitored a recent press release that I distributed:

Out of just over 300 hubs precisely 299 were in my report from the distribution service. A month later I checked OSE where I found 36 unique linking domains, out of these only 11 were indexed in Google and my Google alerts account only picked up on four of them. Personally I think this is some indication as to how Google value these types of links.

It’s not All Doom and Gloom

I guess I better get a little more positive before I start receiving nasty emails from some of these distribution services and press release fan boys . I honestly believe that press releases can be used to benefit rankings!

I am sure some of you won’t agree, but I am a firm believer in creating ‘noise’ links, but we’ll go into that in a little while. Press releases can be used effectively as part of an integrated link building strategy.

Now I know there are other elements but I just want to cover a few of the basics:

1) Creating the Bait

So many people think link bait has to be absolutely amazing, never before seen, wonderfully awesome content. Slight exaggeration but let’s continue… Link bait in my opinion has more to do with the site publishing the content than the actual content itself. Sometimes really average content can garner tons of links simply because the site publishing it has some authority. I have seen terrible content flying around Twitter or Facebook for the simple reason that it was published on the Telegraph or New York Times etc…

So as budding SEOs, the first step to creating link bait isn’t thinking up the idea, instead it is making relationships and reaching out to the right people. Getting great content on the right publication just about guarantees some decent links, of course the article published will have to refer/link back to the site you are targeting.

2) Creating noise links

What’s the first thing that happens when you get an article published on a well read and well respected publication? It gets scraped hundreds of times.

A very quick example:

I had a link from the White Board Friday on ‘Links in Old Content’ (Thanks Cyrus). My site went on that same day to receive over 50 pingbacks! Up to date it is over 100! Thanks SEOmoz

In my opinion all these type of links (scraped links) help to raise the link profile and authority of my site. So what is the harm in giving them a push once in a while?

Google knows these popular websites get scraped and creating more of them if you have a link from a strong site, is not going to harm you and in my opinion it helps.

So provide some unique commentary of your own on the article and publish to your favourite newswire, article directories and content hubs. My personal advice would be to use plenty of variation with your anchor text as not to upset any of the algorithms.

3) Guest posting

Yes it’s old news, but a really important aspect of link strategy; you should be constantly building a list of blogs you can write for whenever you want to push a new peice of content/link bait. Be proactive in reaching out to relevant bloggers. Feed them genuine content, not just a rewritten article you copied from ezinearticles. You want to make sure that when your story goes live on Fox News you have plenty of friends who will cover it and link back to your site as well as the publication. Guaranteed link bait

4) Social signals

Last but certainly not least is creating the right social signals and utilise all your resources.

As well as regularly reaching out to bloggers you should also be reaching out on Twitter and Facebook. When the time comes your new friends will be more than happy to tweet, stumble and share your ultra link worthy content.

You will also notice that content on highly authoritative resources is almost always more likely to get shared, and more sharing = more links.

So back to press releases…

Using them as a one dimensional strategy = waste of time, money and energy.

Incorporating them into an overall link building strategy, utilising them only when the content is worth sharing = winning formula.

Heading a team that builds thousands of links every month through viral and social promotions gives me some tremendous insights and I have seen the above strategy work time and time again in boosting rankings and overall organic traffic to a website.

One caveat I’ll add – If you’re the super industry authority and have a large readership, keep your best content for yourself.

There are lots of tools, tips and techniques out there that will help enhance a link building campaign. However we need to figure out how they fit into our overall strategy and not just throw budget mindlessly at well sold services.

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/FjRbKxuN-M4/are-you-wasting-budget-with-online-press-release-distribution-14595

For the past year retargeting has been getting some serious attention. I’ve been fortunate enough to speak on it at a variety of shows, brainstorm over coffee with some cool companies and even blog about how to use it and how to leverage it for SEO.  No matter who I am talking with or what the venue the number one question asked is “Who should I use for retargeting?” 

Over the past two years some retargeting companies have really emerged as leaders. While we haven’t used them all personally here at Moz, I thought it would be valuable to compare the companies in case any of our readers are considering retargeting. I really wanted to focus on what services each offer, what separates them from the pack and what they have planned for 2012. Luckily for us quite a few worked with us so we could really jump in with some great screenshots and specifics. For those that didn’t reply to my tweet (ahem) or my email (double ahem) … I tried to fill in best as I could based on my “research via the Web” skillz.

Okay let’s get on with it. Below I compared the following companies;

• AdRoll
• Retargeter
• Fetchback
• Chango

If there is anyone you’d like to give feedback on that isn’t on the list (or is for that matter) feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments!

Who are they?
Adroll has been around since 2007 rocking the display advertising world and pushing the limits on targeting capabilities. They have a hot shot team with decades of experience in optimization and creative strategy. They are based out of San Francisco, and have been making some serious waves in the retargeting space.

What do they offer?
On their basic plan they offer site retargeting with both contextual and behavioral targeting built in. They have a complete self-service interface, transparent conversion tracking, and excellent customer service.

How much do they cost?
Their Starter package has no minimum spend, if you are going to go with Plus (which gets you a dedicated account manager) you have to spend around 10k, and if you are going Pro with them (you get creatives, an engineer, and product development help) you need to be spending around 20k.

What’s their secret sauce?
They are best known for their dashboard offerings and experienced team. They are truly focused on providing complete transparency into your campaigns (which a lot of other vendors are missing the mark on) and coupling it with lots of controls and options. Last year and the year before when many companies were still trying to make their platforms easy to use, AdRoll raised the bar by launching a platform chock-full of metrics and top-notch reporting options. AdRoll gets a lot of buzz because they are founded by targeting junkies who are striving to bring complex, sequence targeting capabilities to the masses. Impressive to say the least.

What’s the downfall?
For those that are looking to do search retargeting this isn’t really their bag. They focus mainly on site retargeting and contextual targeting (which is targeting based on category of your site and similar sites rather than search query). I also think it’s worth noting unless you are spending at least 5k a month in media spend you don’t get a dedicated account manager, much creative guidance, or A/B testing capabilities. All of these are available at the Plus and PRO levels, but those come with higher spends. For those just starting out if you go with AdRoll you’ll need to do a lot of those things yourself.

What’s up for 2012?
When I asked AdRoll what they were working on they sent over a laundry list of specific action items they have set their sights on. I really appreciate the transparency. These include – focusing on making their UI even more friendly, making the dynamic creative opportunities easier to use, adding more reports to keep up their high bar of transparency, and continuing to grow the team so each advertiser has the attention they deserve.

Some screenshots for the curious cats out there…

Excellent visibility into each ad’s performance, and the data you need to succeed.

Tons of options to help you intelligently build out audiences you can sequence.

You can tell from the screenshots that AdRoll has done a great job of making the data the heart of the platform. As they continue to add features it will be interesting to see how they keep the platform uncluttered and streamlined. I think it could prove challenging.

With that said, we currently use AdRoll and are loving the product and team. I think for the moderate to advanced paid marketer, AdRoll is a great option for retargeting. You have a robust product with an innovative team of minds behind it. Exciting to say the least.

Disclaimer: SEOmoz does currently use AdRoll for our site retargeting efforts.

Who are they?
ReTargeter was founded in 2009 by Arjun Dev Arora, and in three short years they have really made a name for themselves. While their roots are in site retargeting they spent the last year really branching out and now offer services around social retargeting and email marketing. They also have chosen to integrate closely with a number of other big-name products out there like KISSmetrics, and SlideShare. Also based in San Francisco, the ReTargeter team has big hopes for 2012.

What do they offer?
They have two main packages — one for site retargeting and one that is mostly display focused for visitors that are targeted via demographics, location, or content verticals. 

How much do they cost?
Both packages start at $500, and scale up from there based on the number of visitors you target and impressions you serve up.

What’s their secret sauce?
Time and time again when you hear their name come up you hear they have amazing customer service. Arjun and his team are best known for being available and willing to help you out every step of the way. In fact, every client, regardless of their spend level, will have access to a dedicated Account Manager. They have taken leaps and bounds this past year in product, but their bread and butter is their dedication to account management. You can see this reflected in this awesome Thank You Letter their CEO issued at the end of 2011.

What’s the downfall?
I’ve actually used ReTargeter in the past and enjoyed working with the team, however I did have pain points with the platform. They lacked transparency into the revenue model on their side which left me leery. I know they’ve worked hard over the past year to build transparency into the platform, but they still have a little ways to go here. I should also mention their pricing is a bit off-putting. While they only start at $500 (which is great) they scale up very aggressively. For a site that has 50k visits a month you are at the $2,500 range. For bigger sites, you better be ready to spend some serious coin to be working with ReTargeter.

What’s up for 2012?
I asked ReTargeter what they will be focusing on and was happy to hear they are hoping to streamline their display and retargeting services into one platform, for targeting multiple devices. Companies have told them how exasperated they are working with multiple online partners, dashboards, etc. and they are planning to give that issue some serious time this year. I, for one, and super excited to hear this. I know we see this quite a bit internally and we are always look for ways to be more efficient in our channel management.

Okay here is some dashboard eye candy for you (please note this is there “soon-to-be” released dashboard):

This is a great summary view, I wish there was some more cost data in there though.
 

 It’s nice to see the different reporting and view options.

Who are they?
The Fetchback guys have been around since 2007 under the direction of Chad Little. They’ve been growing the brand steadily with lots of great content and conference appearances ever since. One of my favorite things from their site is this little nugget of gold: “Let’s be honest — you don’t put dogs all over your Website if you take yourself too seriously.” I think that very much embodies their culture, and it’s refreshing to see. They also pride themselves in working under seven pretty great core values, we of course can relate with out TAGFEE tenets here at Moz. *Highfive* FetchBack.

What do they offer?
They are all about site retargeting. They even have a patented technology named FIDO, which promises to analyze information on your visitors sent by smart pixels. Ohhh fancy.

How much do they cost?
You have to contact them to get a quote. I contacted them to get a ballpark range but they said they are so customized to the advertiser that would be a challenge. I have my doubts but they did say they have a variety of pricing models available, and they even work on rev-share if it makes sense. Sounds pretty flexible over there.

What’s their secret sauce?
They are often praised for their full-funnel approach to campaign management. They take a pretty aggressive stance that retargeting works best when integrated with site behavior and full-picture strategy rather than just serving ads at the end of the sales cycle. They call this “1 to 1 creative,” which I can only assume means each creative is tailored for that specific visitor based on their behavior, location, etc. FetchBack is hyper focused on this detailed approach to management, which for more experienced marketers is a really exciting selling point.

What’s the downfall?
First off, no pricing on their site. rant Man that gets under my skin. If you are going to sell a solution on the Web, you should allow me to research you in my discovery phase, instead of force me to call you guys or fill out a form. /rant Other than that the only thing worth noting is they really have positioned themselves as an enterprise solution. For those just getting started or for those that never plan to invest too heavily into retargeting, Fetchback probably isn’t for you.

What’s up for 2012?
I reached out to hear what was on their 2012 horizons. I was a bit surprised to hear they will be focusing on “As display grows from a direct response mechanism to include branding, we are focused on being able to provide solutions for not just conversion based campaigns, but also branding ones as well.” Uhmm. Sounds a bit odd to me. In my experience display advertisers are too caught up in branding buys and maximizing impression share, while not focusing on conversions enough. It will be interesting to see how this strategy plays out in their services, and platforms. It could be useful for the ever growing social retargeting applications.

I couldn’t get you a screenshot but you can click here to watch a live demo.

Who are they?
Chango is a media buying platform that speclializes in Search Retargeting (rather than Site Retargeting like the above vendors). Want to know more about Search Retargeting? Here you go. Basically rather than target those who have come to your site already you are targeting visitors that have performed recent searches on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. They are based out of Toronto (eh?) with offices in NYC and San Francisco.

What do they offer?
Full-service search retargeting options, with limited site retargeting and engagement retargeting capabilities as well.

How much do they cost?
Unfortunately, you have to contact them for a quote as well. I did find out they minimum IO (including media costs) is 10k, and they have some clients spending up to 500k a month. Wowzers.

What’s their secret sauce?
Well they really are the only end to end solution for search retargeting available right now. So there is that. At least I had a hard time finding one out there, let me know in the comments if I missed someone. They collect data, optimize, and bid on media at the keyword level which could make a strong argument for some really awesome targeting options. They also claim to have a 90% renewal rate on clients, with over 30 of the top 500 retailers out there. I’m gonna go ahead and give them a high five for that…speaks volumes about their product and service. When you ask the Chango what makes them special they all say “the people working there.” They’ve staffed the team with agency types with a passion for innovation.

What’s the downfall?
Honestly for those considering search retargeting it sounds like Chango is one of the first places you should look. With that said, I often tell advertisers they should play in site retargeting before they jump into search retargeting. With site retargeting you get self-service platforms, data visibility, and the controls to test creatives and messages so much easier. Chango is a full-service option. There is no platform you log into, and you are putting a lot of trust in them. Before you commit your budget there I’d get more familiar with what works for audiences through site retargeting and walk into search retargeting with a better understanding of the landscape.

What’s up for 2012?
While they do offer some site retargeting, Chango is committed to pushing the innovative limits on search retargeting options. They believe “Search Retargeting 3.0” is already here and their 2012 plans revolve around pushing targeting options, data reporting, and more. Also something cool they will be expanding is called “Instant Search” for Search Retargeting, which allows you to target individuals immediately after arriving from Google, Yahoo or Bing based on the search they just performed. Cool stuff huh? Me thinks so too.

Since I couldn’t get you a screenshot I thought I would get you something just as fancy–Chango’s infographic on the Seven Types of Retargeting. They have advertising options for all of them, but focus mainly on (1) Search.

How many of these are you trying? #getafterit

So Let’s Wrap It Up

When it comes to picking the right retargeting solution for you there are a lot of great options out there. There are a number of questions you should be asking yourself. In fact there are so many, I have compiled a list of “Interview Questions You Should Ask When Picking a Retargeting Agency/Vendor.” This list can be your nudge to really investigate who is best for you. I cover topics like reputation, services, set-up, pricing, innovation, and resources. Hope you find it useful!

Whatever your needs are around retargeting, there is an option out there for you. The industry has matured and its time to expect more from both the tools and the services. The four companies above are just a few of the companies out there, but they are great starts. If you have other questions about these companies feel free to leave them below. Also if I left out your favorite company, please add those too! I’m excited to hear what you are using and what is working for you.

* It’s worth mentioning I didn’t run through Google Remarketing because we just launched this internally for a test and we are going to be posting some juicy good stuff soon enough. So sit tight! 
 

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/3Pq-SW2s5x0/comparing-the-top-4-retargeting-companies

Videos Indexed in the SERP

Did you know that major search engines want you to make video sitemaps for all of your embeds, even if you’re hosting on Vimeo or Youtube?

Not only does it help them spider your website by giving the search engines clues as to where to look for video embeds, it may also earn your site a click through boost by giving you a picture in the SERP. Below I’ll show you how I managed to index my Vimeo video embeds to include a thumbnail. Don’t worry, the same steps should work for Youtube as well.

Benefits of a Video Sitemap

There are several reasons why you’ll want to add a video sitemap.

• It makes it clear to Google what your content is.
• You have the opportunity to provide a range of details through schema.
• Additional presence on video.google.com search.
• RAD picture thumbnail, which is a pretty great call to action.

Video Embed Code

It’s important to pay special attention during this part. Video embedding is largely done using iFrames these days and that poses a problem if you want the search engines to index your videos. For whatever reason Google doesn’t currently spider iFrames. This is frustrating as iFrames are great for playback compatibility on mobile devices, iPads, and the like. There is a workaround, but first, let’s discuss how a video sitemap works.

A video sitemap is simple guide for the search engine bot. Think of it as a map to treasure, it just makes it easier for the bot to find the treasure. If you use an iFrame, the bot can’t find the video making the video sitemap useless. However, Google can find and spider standard object embeds, AKA the old fashioned way of doing things. With this in mind, I’m going to describe the safest way to get your videos indexed by using old embed code still available on Vimeo and Youtube. Here is a picture to help you find it:

Embed Code

If you found it correctly your embed code should look something like this. (vimeo example)

You don’t have to cleanup your code like I did above, I only did it so we could easily see what’s happening. Pay special attention to the embed src line, the URL inside looks like this..

vimeo: http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=35117351

youtube: http://www.youtube.com/v/VMeXGE_a8Gg

This is the RAW video player link, it tells google/bing where to find the original video file. We’ll need this information later when building the video sitemap.

Nested iFrame/Embed *OPTIONAL*

There is one thing worth mentioning. Some people have developed a technique to trick google and still use an iFrame. I haven’t actually tried it myself as I’m happy playing it safe with the old method and showing up in the SERP.

Anyhow, the idea is that you use the new iFrame code and the old embed code at the same time with the noframes tag. This essentially nests the two videos, such that end users will see the new html5 iFrame version and google is served the old embedded version.

A couple drawbacks worth mentioning.. First, this is technically cloaking content as you’re serving one thing to the user and giving google something else. Second, your page will take longer to load as the original embed starts to fire up before the iFrame gets control. Lastly, noframes wasn’t designed to work like this, it’s a hack. With that in mind here is what it’d look like:

Video Sitemap Requirements

Now that you have your embed code all sorted out, it’s time to start working on the video sitemap. Google requires that your video sitemap MUST contain the following information and that it should MATCH what is on your webpage. 

• Title – This should be the same as the title of the page your video appears.
• Description – Make this exactly match the meta description of your page.
• Play page URL – The canonical URL of the page your video appears.
• Thumbnail URL – By thumbnail they mean a high resolution image up to 1920×1080.
• Raw video location – This is the embed src link noted from above pointing at the clip.
• More Details: Google: Creating a Video Sitemap

Example Video Sitemap

The best way to learn how a video sitemap works is to see one. First start by creating a new file, name it something like: video-sitemap.xml

Then fill it in so that it looks like the example sitemap below, except replace the white text with your own information. For every video you have copy/paste the url/url block. In the example below there are two video URL blocks, the top block has descriptors for the fields, the bottom block is exactly what my video sitemap looks like. I prefer to keep mine in chronological order with the newest video on top. Once you’re done you’ll upload it to the root of your website ex. http://yourdomain.com/video-sitemap.xml

Tweak Robots.txt

This isn’t absolutely necessary, but it doesn’t hurt. Add your sitemap to your robots.txt file. Don’t worry about being redundant, you can have a video sitemap describe the same page as a standard article sitemap. To add your sitemap to robots.txt place the following line at the top:

Sitemap: http://yourdomain.com/video-sitemap.xml

Update Google Webmaster

Once you’re ready with your sitemap head over to Google Webmaster Tools and submit it under site configuration. Google will crawl it and report if there are any errors. If everything looks good the videos will be queued to be spidered and you should see them online after about a week.

Conclusion

This is actually the bare minimum to get you started. There is a lot of depth to the schema and you can include a range of details in your video sitemap including tags, categories, and author just to name a few. Hopefully with the above information you can get your embedded vimeo/youtube videos indexed with a picture. Feel free to contact me if you get stuck or check out my video sitemap at http://winefolly.com/video-sitemap.xml

Article source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/1Mhc7F1rtAk/video-sitemap-guide-for-vimeo-and-youtube