Whether the final death knell for search engine marketing has been officially rung is a debate we’d rather not get involved in. What we do know is that some of our old SEO marketing practices are still incredibly valuable, especially in blog management and blog marketing. Keywords, for example, are one tool from the golden days of SEO that hasn’t gone out of style. But even after all this time, many folks new to blogging might wonder, “What are keywords and why the heck should I even care?”

A keyword, to put it simply, is that word which pops up in bold when a search engine like Google or Bing returns a list of results. At the top of the search engine result heap are the sites which use the keyword in question. Google wants bloggers to use keywords and wants readers to click on sites that use them too, so by putting the keywords or phrases in bold it makes the decision of which search engine result to click on even easier. Every blogger should give a hoot about keywords because they are incredibly easy to use and help make finding your brand online a snap.

To dip your toes in the keywords waters, start simple. With branded blogs and blogging for business, the best place to start is keywords which reflect what you do and where you do it. If, by chance, you are a landscaper in Atlanta, Ga., something like “Atlanta landscapers” or ” Georgia gardening experts” would do the trick. More keywords can go deeper into your specific services and topics that your blog talks about.

Once you’ve picked out keywords, start sticking them in your posts. Coincidentally, a good list of keywords makes planning your posts less stressful, too. As you map out your posts for the week, peruse your keywords and pick out the magic word you want to discuss and optimize. Use this word in your headline and throughout your post, but also use it in tweets and other social media marketing platforms. And don’t worry about packing your posts with tons of keywords. Keyword density isn’t as important as we once thought. Plus, using keywords over and over looks awkward to readers (and for good reasons).

As blog creation changes and SEO morphs, keywords remain a powerful and easy tool. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised to see keywords flourish even further with the continuing explosion of tablet blog reading and ongoing Google algorithm updates.

Content marketing gurus and SEO mavens alike were in a tizzy earlier this week as Google rolled out its Penguin update. Penguin, like Panda, is an algorithm update aimed at catching webspam. Sometimes these updates, which Google routinely does, do really have an impact on online marketers outside the SEO world. But Penguin is unique. Being smaller than Panda, its focus is more direct and strict. And if blogging for business or article marketing is your thing, you could get bounced by Penguin and not even know it. Luckily, there are ways for your blog to play nicely with Penguin and they come straight from Google’s mouth.

Google’s top 8 things to avoid via WebProNews on Penguin are:

1. Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
2. Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.
3. Don’t send automated queries to Google.
4. Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.
5. Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains or domains with substantially duplicate content.
6. Don’t create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans or other badware.
7. Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.
8. If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

These are all great tips — especially the keyword stuffing — Penguin or no Penguin. We’ve seen clients eager to jam as many keywords into a blog or article as possible and it never seemed like a good idea. Now we know it isn’t. Things like sneaky redirects, hidden links and multiple pages of duplicate content have always been looked down on by Google and now Penguin is better way combat it. In short, Google is getting smarter all the time and updates like Penguin are on a mission to take out bad, spammy content.

The good news is that these updates actually help those of us who create original, non-shady content. By playing along with Penguin, instead of against it, your content can now be found faster and read by more people!

Freshness is a word we preach often in the custom content biz. Fresh and timely blogs, articles and social media updates are king in online marketing because they help readers and consumers find brands. Now Google’s latest algorithm overall includes a freshness update which is bound to confirm the power of keeping it fresh.

Google conducts hundreds of algorithm updates a year, but this current batch of ten updates is creating a buzz in the content marketing world. The freshness update in particular is causing marketers to salivate because of its proposed power. The update will impact 6 to 35 percent of web search results and it includes searches for up-to-the-minute events, news stories, blog posts and hot topics. For small business owners, the update is titillating because it will also push up the ranking of product and service reviews. According to Google’s official blog, the freshness update will allow searchers to find the latest information about a topic first. This means if you typed in “online marketing” the most recently updated blogs and articles would rank higher. Likewise with current news stories. If you searched for Demi Moore, news stories about the newly single actress would appear before biographical information, with many of the items being just a few minutes old. Basically, your new Google searches will have faster and more recent results than ever before.

Freshness is now not only ideal for our businesses content but a necessity. In order to stay relevant, our content has to be fresh and interesting — and this a good thing. Bloggers and article marketers and small business owners now have the opportunity to keep their followers up to date with the latest happenings in their world. Content creators are now not only spreading the word about their business but providing news.

When it comes to online marketing, Google is sort of like Mary Poppins’ magic purse. There is seemingly no end in sight to the amazing marketing tools and products that stretch beyond the company’s signature search engine. And while we all love Google AdWords, Google’s many analytics tools, Google Reader and now Google+, there are even more valuable tools for digital branding gurus. Here’s five of our favorites that you might not be using. Yet.

5.) Google Trends: Need to know how popular your client’s brand is on Google? Itching to find out what all the kids are yammering about and searching for online? Then Google Trends is your one-stop-shop for the latest in online trend info.

4.) Google Docs: Google’s online version of Word is uncrashable, unflappable and unstoppable. Google Docs continues to get easier to use and beats the heck out of trying to open documents from clients or coworkers using some ancient version of AppleWorks. Plus anybody with a Gmail account can use it!

3.) Google Feedburner: This is an essential tool to help your site and blog expand its audience. Easy to use and to navigate, Feedburner lets your site’s visitors subscribe and receive updates.

2.) Google Groups: This is an easy one to slide under the radar, but one you might seriously consider if you’re working on something that needs collaboration. Google Groups has previously been wrongfully placed in the silly chat room category, but the tool can be wisely utilized by marketers with a vision. Google Groups can easily be transformed into a private-invite-only spot where members can freely post documents, ideas, links and videos. Groups can become an always-open, easily-accessible board meeting without having to have the board meeting!

1.) Custom Search: Google Custom Search is under-used and not talked about for a reason. It’s time-consuming to set up and kind of a pain — not to mention subject to charges and ads from Google. But if the time is taken to create custom searches, the benefits are abundantly clear: Marketers don’t have to waste time on plain old Google with Custom Searches. Plus, now that Google Analytics has gone platinum, users of Custom Search can tap in on all the analytics goodies easier than ever before!

You gotta love a guy who follows up on a bet by posting a video of himself (below) getting a new hairdo by his fellow office mates on YouTube. It’s even more impressive when you are  Google’s SEO guru. Here’s the bet; Matt Cutts wagered with his team that they couldn’t keep up with an undisclosed turnaround time for a full quarter. Needless to say, Matt lost the bet.

The coiffure began as a chrome logo delicately chiseled into the back of Mr. Cutts’ head, but soon gave way to a full-fledged Telly Savalas … viola! It was an entertaining way to celebrate a milestone in a company; one million video views on the official Google webmaster video channel.  Again, nice work. Now maybe Matt would consider a future bet with the eyebrows included? Just a thought.

Your entire organization is going ga-ga over your hot new instructional video on how to manufacture a better widget without going overseas. Now it’s time to post it on the Internet so you can get it in front of a larger audience and put your brand name out there. Where you post your video is almost as important as what your video says. Do you post on YouTube or do you post on your company website? That’s the big question. Before deciding which route to take, weigh some of the pros and cons to help you decide what’s best for your company:

PROs FOR POSTING YOUR COMPANY VIDEO ON YouTube:

“¢ YouTube instantly allows you to tap into a huge audience. YouTube gets literally billions and billions of video requests per month. How many visitors do you get to your site per month? Probably not nearly that.

“¢ If you’re video is good enough, YouTube may feature your video on its homepage. This could mean exposure to more eyeballs than you ever dreamed possible, which puts a lot of pressure on how good your video really is.

“¢ Youtube has some pretty cool analytics tools allowing you to collect data on who’s watching, how long they are watching, where they live etc. For more info on this subject, click here.

“¢ No need to pay for extra bandwidth. YouTube keeps all videos on their servers which means that videos that suck up bandwidth won’t cost you a dime extra for server space.

CONS FOR POSTING YOUR COMPANY VIDEO ON YouTube:

“¢ You can’t build link juice to your site by posting on YouTube. YouTube gets all the credit. This may change in the future, but for now, they ain’t sharing.

“¢ If people are searching for your products or services online, by and large YouTube entries will rank lower than text-based sites. If your strategy includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO),  you may want to consider housing a transcript of your video in text format on your company site.

“¢ Why relegate your video to just one network? There are lots of other distribution channels out there (although none as popular as YouTube). For more info on other channels, click here

“¢ For more cons, visit “You Shouldn’t Use YouTube for Building YouLinks” on linkspiel.com

No matter which route you choose, know that digital video gives your company additional exposure and can ultimately produce a wider online footprint. Keep in mind that the content of your video is of importance. If you’re doing a viral video, you had better make sure it is entertaining enough that someone will want to pass it around. Make sure that your content fits your strategy for making a video. Digital video can be a big plus if you’re the only business in your industry who offers it. If this is the case, not only will your videos help you rank higher in the SERPs, but you’ll look like a more dominant player in your industry. So what are you waiting for Scorsese? Grab a camera and a megaphone and get ready to roll.

———-

If you like this post and are interested in getting intelligent brand strategies for your online business, sign up for the The Brandcast Report. You can also follow us on Twitter.

As digital video is becoming more and more accessible to Joe Interweb, more websites are adding video to their user experience than ever before. Let’s say you are one of the lucky few who have figured out how to produce, edit and convert an eye-catching video to post, but you’re not really sure what is the best way to get it out there. The most common question we get here at Brandsplat is whether to post videos on YouTube or to keep it housed on the company website. The answer often relies on the strategy for having a video, the size of the company, and the budget. If the strategy is to build traffic to the company site, often times we suggest doing a bit of both by having two versions of your video; a longer format for your site and a shorter one for YouTube. Or, we encourage companies to incentivize a visit to the company’s home site in the video itself.

There are definitely pros and cons for posting your company’s video on YouTube. Check out our next blog for more on this.

———-

If you like this post and are interested in getting intelligent brand strategies for your online business, sign up for the The Brandcast Report. You can also follow us on Twitter.

Do you ever wonder how much weight meta tags carry? According to Matt Cutts, not much when it comes to ranking. The reason for this is probably due to spammers who have tried to game the system by packing meta tags into their code. Google, being the number one search engine, is always going to be one step ahead by trying to change their technology so it’s is difficult to game the system. In a recent blog post, Mr. Cutts says that Google uses over 200 hundred factors when it comes to ranking. But he isn’t about to tell us what those 200 things are. In the meantime, he does tell us one factor they do not put much weight in. Rather than hear it from me, click on the video below. Or, if you like reading, visit Google’s official webmaster blog

Why spend your precious time hacking away at the keyboard writing blog entries or white knuckling it through original articles when you can video yourself delivering your brand with the flick of a video-enabled smart phone. In the nonstop world of online offerings, video is proving to be the desired choice for attention deficit disorder type consumers. Video is often times effortless for the viewer and entertaining to boot. If you don’t believe me, just check out YouTube the next time you’re trying to figure out how to fold a t-shirt in 2 seconds , or how to piss off a telemarketer . How-to videos are swelling online and may be the reason why Google had the smarts to gobble up the video site YouTube in the first place. In many ways, video content really is in its infancy but is gaining momentum every day. For example, YouTube just recently announced some very powerful analytics tools that are geared to help video gurus get a handle on who’s watching their videos, where they live and how long they watch. Video is a great way to distribute content and can help you discover who is interested in what you have to say and may lead you to uncover hidden target markets that you may have never thought of. Link your videos to YouTube or eHow and have access to millions of eyeballs for literally pennies. Of course the cost depends on how much you spend on producing your videos. But sometimes all you need is a camera and your talking head. Even Matt Cutts, Google’s Search Quality Guru , includes video blog entries along with his written content. Are you shy in front of the camera? That’s no excuse.  Go to eHow for public speaking tips now and you’re on your way.

O.K., that’s it for this week. I’ll be back on Monday with part 6 and finish up on Tuesday with part 7, the final entry on Brandcasting. Have a great weekend and see you next week.

Young-Bean Song, senior director at Microsoft’s Atlas Institute, has recently posted a directive for online advertisers to take a good hard look at the metrics traditional advertisers use and adopt them in order to sync up with the world of traditional advertising. According to the post, reasons to shun traditional metrics (like Reach, Frequency and Gross Rating Points) fall into three categories: arrogance, fear and ignorance. While current metrics for online advertisers may be powerful and instant, results tend not to be stable and predictable and often don’t make sense in the offline world. Mr. Song goes on to say, “digital folks snicker when they hear advertisers make statements like “TV works” . Turns out, TV does work and there is plenty of quantitative proof that TV advertising drives sales.” It’s easy to want the sexy new shiny thing like digital media to drive marketing budgets, but the truth is, old media is tried and true and still garners most of the media dollars that clients are willing to spend on marketing each year because they know what to expect. Because the digital space is fairly new and often in flux, it’s important to play nice with traditional forms of communication so that marketers can compare apples to apples. Or, you can put all your oranges in one basket and hope the rest of the world follows suit.