Optimizing Your Industry Participation Efforts for Increased Search Engine Presence
The following article is actually "Section 5" from A Market Conversation Strategy Guide for SMBs: Driving Search Presence through Industry Participation, which I wrote originally for TechJournal South.

The first 4 sections provide a thorough market conversation strategy guideline for the enterprising marketer, complete with approximate time and resource estimates. I wrote the article with startup B2Bs in mind, though the core concepts and practices have far wider applications.

I submit for your consideration (and for addition of what I missed in post comments :):

Search Marketing and Your Conversation Project:
I break search marketing down into two loose categories – on-site and off-site.

On-site search marketing includes building search presence through things like adding new pages of content, arranging site architecture and link structure, optimizing page tags and ensuring that your site is as usable as possible.

Off-site search marketing includes building search presence through, in a word, links.
Your industry conversation efforts will deliver the highest search marketing value to your company if you observe the following general rules.

To derive the greatest ON-SITE search marketing value from your industry conversation efforts you must:

a) Create a hub section or page on your site that aggregates your industry conversations.

b) At the top of this section include a blog that's updated daily by your "company editor." The purpose of this blog is to highlight especially interesting or relevant bits of conversation you're having online, and to serve as a more general company news resource for journalists and investors.

c) Link to this section from your home page. Include post titles and links from your company editor's blog. Especially brave companies may consider making the conversation-hub section their home page.

d) Encourage article and white-paper writing and syndication. Include a writing directory in the hub section of your site.

Assuming there are no technical issues barring your site from search engine indexes, these efforts will enhance the likelihood that your site appears when people search on keyterms that relate to your business.

Further, if you've determined the terms that are most likely to lead to conversions on your site then you can encourage your publishers to use them in written conversations.

To derive the greatest OFF-SITE search marketing value from your efforts you must:

a) encourage your participants, when they post anywhere off of your site, to link back to your company's site. What page on your site they link to will depend on your overall search presence goals and the nature of their participation.

Worthy pages for linking include key resource pages on your site, your site's home page, or the home page and your info hub.

If you're targeting a specific conversion page on your site then you should make this clear to your participants and ask that, when possible, they use this link.

b) Ask that participants identify that they're from your company when they leave comments on the blogs of others, in industry forums, or in any kind of online participation they're doing (including sites like MySpace). And especially in their personal blogs if they have them.
Be specific about how you'd like the company referred to.

c) Arrange to publish your articles in your industry's media - especially if you can get links from key media sites. This builds your company's brand and drives your search presence. Be sure to reserve the right to publish these articles on your site too if they're accepted.

d) Have your participants alert key industry bloggers/participants when you write new articles or have new resource offerings.

e) Involve your key industry participants in spinning big company news to various levels of your industry. How does your new product relate to the various levels of conversation that are happening in your industry?

Get your team together and let them figure out which aspects are the most exciting and let them reach out to people they think would be interested to have them discuss your new product.

Craft and release a press release that includes links, quotes and contact information from your conversation crew plus a more traditional company contact.

This encourages links from all media strata in your industry.

Read the entire article here.

Please add any other suggestions to the comments, please contact me if you'd like consultation on your conversation marketing efforts (919-433-3139), and be sure to read A Market Conversation Strategy Guide for SMBs: Driving Search Presence through Industry Participation in its entirety.
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |