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The talk of the search blogosphere lately is Google’s addition of SearchWiki, a bold new product that has search marketers and website owners wondering what it will mean for them. We talk about this, as well as the contentious claim that bounce rate affects your search rankings.

SEO Audio: Week on November 21, 2008

photo credit: Shanta

I’m gearing up for tomorrow’s webinar on how search works on a technical level.

We’ve spent a lot of time as of late focusing on the people side of the web, and tomorrow’s webinar takes us to the other end of the spectrum — code and server language and indexing and algorithms, which should serve as a hearty reminder that it’s robots, not humans, who make all of this stuff work!

(Okay, it sort of takes two to tango)

Seriously, though, the heart of all of the human-powered web is hard-working, fearless robots who ceaselessly index the internet, delving into some deep dark quarries where most of us humans would never dare go.

And while we and Google agree that you should make websites for users, trying to make a successful website while not understanding how search engines work is like trying to build a best-selling car without understanding how engines, tie-rods and fuel injectors work (which I don’t, for the record).

Slick design and the features that consumers want is great, provided you can get up and get there in the first place.

UPDATE: This webinar is now online! Check out How Search Works in our webinar archives.

This morning I attended Social Media Breakfast 10 at the Ryles Jazz Club in Cambridge Massachusetts. The room was full of really smart professionals who all got together to discuss the ROI of Social Media, a topic that often can get even the best Social Media expert tongue-tied.

We know Social Media is valuable and we know it is good for your company’s growth but how do you measure that?

As David Meerman Scott says the equation for calculating the ROI of your social media campaign is like calculating the ROI of putting your pants on in the morning.

Andrew McAfee, Matt Cutler
and Brian Halligan at SMB10 Boston

The event Featured 3 speakers:

• Brian Halligan CEO and founder of Hubsopt
• Matt Cutler - Vice President, Marketing & Analytics at Visible Measures
• Andrew McAfee – Associate Professor with Harvard Business School

Brian Halligan started the morning by showing the crowd a presentation on how his team at HubSpot measures the success of their social media campaigns. He had charts and plans on how HubSpot was getting traffic to its website. Where each visitor came from and of those visitors who turned into buyers. He showed us his way on how they constantly measure and reevaluate their strategy.

Brian Halligan shows his stats
on inbound marketing to Hub Spot site

We here at Hall recognize along with Hubspot and thousands of other companies that the way people are doing business is changing. The way people shop is changing and the way people learn is changing everyday.

With Social Media the goal is to have a conversation and relationship with your customers before they are in a buying position, so that when they are ready to buy, they come to you.

Matt Cutler took the floor next to talk about the ROI of Viral video. After showing a few of my favorite clips Matt broke down how video is a social medium due to all the comments and sharing of popular and interesting content.

After not even 2 weeks our very own SEO Werewolf from Halloween has been viewed over 360 times (between youtube and IM Broadcast). To find the value in a viral video you have to again measure everything you can.

The average viewing time of the famous Kobe Bryant video was almost a minute and a half. The video itself is less than 60 seconds. Viewers viewed, rewound and watched it again! Then they shared it with their friends which is why it has easily clocked a couple million recorded views on youtube.

Andrew McAffee was the final speaker about measuring your success with your social media campaigns. He mirrors Brian Halligan in his approach of tracking all the data you can and charting your results. By keeping track of your campaigns and the amount of money it costs you to run these campaigns you will be able to tell what is working for you and what is not. Is your social media campaign bringing in more leads than a commercial you ran last year? Which one costs more?

I was happy to be an information sponge this morning. I think all three speakers did a great job and they laid out a strong case for making social media a reality.

When creating your social media campaign you always have to set goals and chart your progress towards reaching those goals. You also need to gently build your relationships and remember to provide people with interesting content, or your social media campaign will fall on deaf ears.

Thank you to Jay Bull for Photos

Hope you aren’t burnt out by election fever yet!

In this very fun and semi-tongue-in-cheek webinar we - er - “dig” into social media news sharing sites like Digg and explain what they are to the novice user and provide some tips on how to create awesome content that might get popular.

This is, as you may notice, the first time we’ve pushed a produced webinar through the blog but we figured it would be a good way of letting our RSS readers know what’s going on.

Also going up in our webinar archives today is “Tweeting for your Business,” a fun webinar we did about the use of Twitter and the power of conversation it gives you.