As she explains to WebProNews, most people try numerous tactics when their conversions drop. However, if the problem is with the website’s foundation, then conversions will continue to drop. The foundation consists of elements such as business requirements, keyword research, user behavior, mental models, and more.

When users factor in these elements, they can build an information architecture based on new information they have found and on some they never knew they had. As a result, the website flows better and is easier to use.

She says users should, “create an experience, not just a bunch of web pages.”

In addition, she advises people to not put everything on the home page. If the website is built properly, the users should not have any trouble with the navigation. She suggests creating links other than the usual Products, Services, About Us, and Contact Us tabs. When SEOs are creative, it motivates users.

On a different note, Krause Berg also discusses the idea of social behavior in regards to offline and online human behavior. Society is obviously adopting more to social media and social networking. She believes the key is providing something other than what is already available offline. She goes on to say that both Facebook and Twitter did this.

A great deal of research is being conducted related to social media and human behavior. Krause Berg believes SEOs and marketers should pay attention to it since they need to use social media to increase their search presence.

Have you considered these components pertaining to information architecture and online social behavior and how they affect your online success?

As the economy continues to turn around, there are some elements that retailers should apply to better leverage the comeback. From a paid search perspective, Gibson recommends that retailers update their keywords based on incoming inventory.

During the recession, many retailers cut back on their inventory. Now that the economy is starting to improve, they are ordering more products. Gibson says retailers need to make sure that their new inventory is represented in paid search. He also adds that retailers need to optimize pages to guarantee that they are found in the search engines. Ultimately, no one will benefit if the new inventory cannot be found.

Gibson also tells WebProNews that The Rimm-Kaufman Group is adding products. In the past, the company focused primarily on paid search. As Gibson explains, it is now adding an attribution management component that will help its clients understand what is happening outside of paid search. RKG will talk with clients about the data it collects and help them build an attribution model.

Because Google cannot tell every advertiser all the factors that go into quality score, it often results in confusion. However, if Google did reveal this information, advertisers would get an unfair advantage. As he explains to WebProNews, there are so many other elements that are involved with quality score that the aforementioned factors play a minor role.

Google uses quality score as a rewards system since it wants to provide relevant answers to search queries. The advertisers that are able to help it do this not only receive a better quality score, but also receive a lower price for their ad position.

“Basically, Google rewards advertisers with better quality score and a lower price to do what they should be doing anyway,” says Szetela.

He goes on to say that good quality score has two parts: great ads and acceptable landing pages. People think that by improving their landing page, their quality score will improve as well. Szetela points out that this is not the case. Instead, he says the landing page component of quality score can only hurt, not help.

Overall, having great ads are the key to having good quality score. Szetela recommends including the following elements in an ad:

1.    Keyword in text (preferably in headline)
2.    Reader addressed in first person
3.    Features/Benefits
4.    Call to action

Are you using this information to help improve your quality score?

As she explains, marketers need to ask themselves if their videos, images, and graphs are doing their jobs on pages. These elements should be reinforcing the brand and pointing people in the right direction. If not, she advises marketers to conduct keyword research to determine if the users even want the universal elements.

However, if users search for an item such as video, they need to see that video on the landing page. Thurow takes it one step further and says that they need to see it above the fold. This user behavior is referred to as “scent for information” and marketers need to validate it.

Thurow also discusses information architecture and, surprisingly, points out that most SEOs aren’t good at it.

“The reason SEOs are terrible information architects is, mostly, [because] they don’t see the big picture,” she says.

Users often have to browse multiple pages on a website because the search engines are not always accurate. Thurow calls this action navigating, not querying. Unfortunately, many SEOs still spend most of their time focusing on querying. She says SEOs aren’t objective and don’t see navigation in the way that it should be seen.

On the other hand, information architects focus more on navigation and ignore querying. Although a balance between the two is ideal, it is not likely. Thurow says if SEOs and information architects work together, a good website could be produced.

Are you addressing these eye tracking and information architecture needs?

Speaking on sitemaps specifically, Watlington tells WebProNews that people still do not understand how to use them, even though they have been around for 5 years. She has recently encountered multiple sites that have thousands of pages that are not getting picked up by the engines. The problem is that many of their pages have not even been visited.

To correct this, she suggests that site owners rethink their strategy for pushing content. In other words, it is better to have less content that is high quality and link-heavy, than to have lots of content that the spider cannot see.

Watlington goes on to offer advice for situations pertaining to when a company makes changes to its site. She says by pushing a sitemap with content that has new urls or urls that it wants to be found through 301 redirects, the company essentially makes the spider notice the changes faster. She compares this process to sending out change-of-adddress cards in bulk.

“One of the most important things is to use the sitemaps as a strategic tool, not as a blunt club,” says Watlington.

Sitemaps are very powerful and useful, if utilized correctly. Are you creatively using sitemaps to push your content?

On a side note, Watlington also advises marketers to make improvements to their site in order to take advantage of the “early bird” opportunities that will occur when the economy recovers completely.

As he explains to WebProNews, these ways were buying advertising, the media, which he calls begging, and a sales force. These tactics work well for generating attention offline, but online, it’s a different story. Generating attention online requires marketers to create content just like a publisher.

Scott says the old rules make it hard to generate attention. However, the new rules allow any organization to earn attention, if it creates valuable information. He points out that organizations need to stop thinking like marketers, advertisers, and public relations specialists, and instead, think like publishers.

Once businesses create content, what can they then do to get people to share it? According to Scott, most companies talk about their product, which is not what users want to hear. He advises businesses to create content for their target market, or as he likes to call it, their buyer personas.

“It gets an organization away from talking about themselves in an egotistical way,” says Scott.

In reality, consumers only care about themselves and solving their problems. As a result, Scott suggests that marketers create individualized content for each of their buyer personas.

Once this is done, he recommends creating trigger points to encourage users to share. These trigger points could involve contests, humor, blog posts, videos, and many other ideas. If the content is good, then users will naturally share.

Lastly, Scott says marketers need to point users back to a place where some type of action can take place. Once again, as long as the content is valuable, it will draw users back to make a purchase.

Are you creating valuable content for your buyer personas?

As he explains to WebProNews, digital asset optimization is essentially the optimization of non-text content within web pages and the role it plays in search engine rankings. In other words, it pertains to content such as video, images, and even rich, Internet applications like Flash.

This type of content is becoming increasingly popular in certain verticals including retail and health care. For instance, “how-to” videos that explain a process or provide insight into a condition are continually growing in value for consumers.

“There are a lot of reasons that people may look to the Internet and do a type of search that lends itself better to a video result, or an image result, or even an interactive application,” says Boggs.

He goes on to say that the search engines have recently updated their landscape to allow more of this non-text content in the top pages of search results. Although people often view digital asset optimization as a way to get additional listings in search results, Boggs points out that there is a better way to utilize it.

By taking a holistic approach, he says users have the opportunity to have all their web pages gain rankings. Since it gives users a greater chance of ranking, it is very important that they have non-text content on their web pages. In many cases, Boggs says the non-text content is described as a web page in the search results.

Are you taking advantage of the opportunities of digital asset optimization?

She goes on to tell WebProNews that businesses are just now grasping how they can use social media. If they create valuable content, she says people will share it, which will expand their reach.

Contrary to some beliefs, effective social media marketing is a lot more than simply having a Facebook page. Evans says businesses need to, first of all, understand where their audience is. Although Facebook and Twitter have exploded in popularity, it doesn’t mean that your audience is there. If this is the case, these platforms will not be effective for your business.

It could be that message boards and forums are where your audience is. Although these areas have been around since before the term social media was even coined, Evans believes they are still very powerful, have a large reach, and rank in search engines. Other effective platforms include ratings and review services and location-based sites.

Secondly, businesses need to understand what their resources are. It is important to realize what you are capable of doing before you jump in. Otherwise, you could quickly get overwhelmed, which could lead to failure.

Thirdly, businesses have to listen to what their audience is saying. Just as businesses need to understand their resources before embracing social, they need to do a lot of listening too. If not, Evans says it could be compared to petting a shark. Businesses should know what is acceptable and what is not before they embark on a social media campaign.

Once a business applies these 3 steps, she says it can build a social media strategy.

Content is just one of the fundamental areas of SEO. Not only is the content itself important, but the structure of the content is also important. Bailey says content needs to be scalable, readable, and allow users to understand the content on the rest of the page by simply looking at the headline. This is significant because numerous studies show that the majority of people scan content instead of reading it.

There have been many recent debates pertaining to long content versus short content. People often say they tried blogging, Facebook, or Twitter and found that they didn’t work. However, Bailey believes users need to examine their efforts to see if they are utilizing them correctly.

“The what is going to change daily. The why will never change,” he says.

He goes on to say that if you have a purpose, the “what” doesn’t matter and can always be applied.

Marketers also struggle with the challenge of creating content for both users and search engines. Bailey says the key to this dilemma is in the analytics. For example, it is very possible to have the right ranking with the wrong page. As a result, marketers need to look at their analytics to see which metrics work. He tells WPN that marketers can celebrate when they determine what is profitable, not when they rank high.

Although there will be many more changes for SEO, the job of driving people to a destination will always be constant.

Are you focusing on getting the fundamentals right or are you distracted by the “shiny, new object syndrome”?

“Not all, but a lot of the search industry tends to be kind of search geeks who are trying to figure out what marketing is,” says Bill Leake of Apogee Results, formerly Apogee Search.

To make a long-term difference in customers, he believes effective marketing is key. Factors such as determining what the customer wants to do, how you can make it happen, and how you can transfer business objectives into strategies that can be implemented, are all instrumental aspects of marketing. He goes on to say that search is just one area of marketing that is important, but it works best when used with the other aspects.

Some people focus heavily on search, since it is easily measured. Other challenges of marketing could result from all the departments in companies and, particularly, within marketing itself. Due to the lack of communication these departments create, many opportunities are missed.

As online marketing increases in awareness, there is also the danger of neglecting offline channels. Online marketing is very valuable for businesses involved largely in the consumer space and B2B. On the other hand, online isn’t as valuable when reaching enterprise level companies and government agencies. Essentially, Leake says businesses need to market wherever their customers are, whether it be online, offline, or both.

He also discusses the recent re-brand his company made and the reason for it. As noted earlier, Apogee Results was formerly known as Apogee Search. Leake explains that the company began doing a lot of social media and didn’t want consumers to think they were limited to search. After tossing around many ideas, the company decided on Apogee Results to let others know that it could return measurable results no matter what it was marketing.

In regards to apps, she points out that many people use them for search, which essentially takes away from search engine traffic. For this reason, she advises local businesses to optimize for apps in addition to optimizing for mobile search.

Krum also discusses the idea of augmented reality, which is typically in the form of an app. If a user points their phone toward an object or location, it puts a digital layer over it that provides information. One example of this is Wikitude. It lets users know if there is a Wikipedia article on the object or location.

Geolocation is another hot mobile area with sites such as Foursquare and Gowalla on the rise. Krum believes these platforms can be very valuable for coupons, loyalty programs, and more.

To compile her mobile ideas together, Krum also recently wrote a book entitled Mobile Marketing: Finding Your Customer No Matter Where They Are. She says it provides a comprehensive view of how mobile marketing is more effective when all aspects are used together.

Linking offline marketing with mobile efforts is just one area of importance that she covers in the book. As she explains, when people are offline, they don’t have access to their computers. However, they do have access to the Web. As a result, marketers can incorporate elements such as QR codes to tie the two areas together, which will ultimately, reach consumers.

Are you keeping up with these mobile trends?

First of all, he suggests using Google’s Webmaster Tools to know for sure if you are banned. The dashboard offers very helpful information in this type of situation.

To make sure that your site doesn’t get banned, Stebbins tells WebProNews that you should think like a search engine. In other words, you have to realize that they are looking for genuine relevance and genuine popularity. If you try to fake either of these elements, Google will not want to partner with you.

Some people fake relevancy and popularity by linking to questionable websites, taking advantage of JavaScript redirects, and selling links. All these factors could result in Google banning your site.

To get re-included in Google’s index, Stebbins says you need to first decide if it is worth investing time in the re-inclusion process. There are some cases in which users commit so many “mortal sins” that is nearly impossible to rebuild a relevant and popular website.

At this point, he advises users to invest in another a site and apply a 301 redirect from the old site to the new one.  However, if you have not violated many of the guidelines, Stebbins says you could send a letter detailing what you did wrong and how you have fixed it. By doing this, it increases your chances of getting back into the index.

Are you taking preventative measures to make sure your site doesn’t get banned?

If social media were about numbers, then the “shiny object” syndrome might work. But, luckily, it is not. Social media is about value and longevity. Odden says people need to understand who their target audience is and what their needs are. This is often challenging since people think they know what the customer needs, but in reality, do not.

Odden points out that there is a steep learning curve in the online world as opposed to the offline world. Just as writers struggle to find their voices, people who are trying to be successful in the Social Web need to find their social voices too. To do this, he encourages people to engage, interact, and think in terms of the customer’s wants and needs.

“You can’t speak like a native unless you’ve spent some time amongst the natives,” says Odden.

In addition, interaction helps people understand social media etiquette beyond the network’s individual rules. As a result, businesses will not only find out what customers want, but they also have the opportunity to gain new customers through the value they provide.

To do this, she suggests that marketers, first of all, optimize press releases for news search. She also recommends using tools such as PitchEngine. This tool provides an additional place for marketers to post press releases. Buyer says this effective tool practically guarantees that users will show up on the first page of Google’s search results. Although it does not always stay in the top spot, it does provide instant gratification.

She also points out the importance of interacting with media, especially through Twitter. Specifically, she tells WebProNews that “#journchat” is a great way to do this. The chat takes place weekly and brings journalists, bloggers, and professionals together.

Additionally, Buyer offers advice in regards to promoting content. She says one of the keys to successful promotion is avoiding spammy and pitchy messages. Although it’s easy to take the headline and tweet it out, it is not the most effective approach. Instead, Buyer advocates more creative methods such as using quotes, statistics, questions, or other interesting nuggets of information that will draw traffic back to the release.

Are you utilizing these opportunities to show up in news results?

As Kennedy points out, a big SEO challenge is language. However, she believes the biggest challenge is enculturation in matters such as finding the right keyword set for a different country. This could be a problem since it may not translate directly. For instance, soccer cleats in the U.S. are called football boots in the UK and something completely different in France.

It’s also important to think about these cultural matters in regards to content, link building, graphic design, and more. Although localization and enculturation are the most important areas, Kennedy says understanding the language barrier is the first step in getting these areas right.

Although Nordic eMarketing is based in Iceland, Mar Hauksson says it has found ways to market its products in a multilingual environment. He also points out that the company understands the impact of culture and realizes that not everyone speaks and uses English.

“When you understand that, you have a much bigger market that you can market towards,” says Mar Hauksson.

At the time of the recording of this interview, Google had recently made the move to stop censoring its search results on Google.cn and was redirecting visitors to Google.com.hk, which it does not censor. While some developments have occurred since that time, it is far from being over. Just last week, Google reported that its operations in China were partially blocked and that Chinese officials were allegedly reviewing its application to operate in the country.

Today, the company released this statement, “We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China.”

Both Kennedy and Mar Hauksson believe it is important to pay attention to the Google/China situation from both a SEO and marketing standpoint.

Kennedy also offers some tips for doing social media globally. Just as understanding culture is critical to SEO, it is also critical to social media. She says marketers need to be aware of what social networks are popular in each country and how the people use and interact with them.

“Social media, by its very definition, depends on the nature of the society where it’s doing business,” explains Kennedy.

Are you embracing marketing on a global level?