The elephant in the room for any SEO firm or individual consultant is that SEO has a massive reputation problem. The issue is part lack of regulation, part scale, and part perception. As an industry we can’t hunt down every person who claims they’re an SEO who will get you “first in the search engines, guaranteed!” We can’t stop the mountains of spam that fall into small business owner’s email inboxes daily. The Internet is a very large place, with a lot of hidey-holes.

One of the few things that we can control as an individual or company is how we talk about ourselves, how we speak to our clients, and how we speak to other industry professionals. When your industry is the Internet, nothing is private; the only face that we have is our public one.

Allow me to step on the soapbox here, just a little bit, and say–as someone who has studied the English language extensively–what you say and how you say it matters. “RCS” or “link juice” may be a term that will catch a person’s ear and become “buzzworthy”, but it is not a term that will leave potential clients impressed with your authority, knowledge, or business acumen. We need to elevate our language as well as bridge the disconnect between Internet and traditional marketing.

Here are a few ways to sound like the more mature SEO industry we’ve become:

• Black hat, white hat, gray hat, and everything in between: Let’s stop talking about hats and instead discuss risk tolerance. Are you using high-risk link SEO tactics, low-risk or something in the middle? Hats make us sound like evil villains not savvy marketers.
• Link juice: This term has made me wince since I started in the industry. Link “juice” is the associative authority of a link. Call it link authority, or call it passed link value. We want to explain our industry and how it works while still sounding professional.
• Link condom: I hadn’t actually heard this before until Rhea mentioned it when I was initially brainstorming–a link condom is the rel=”nofollow” attribute, which as SEOs know, kills any passed link value. (See, look at me, following my own advice!) We don’t need sexual connotations to get attention, SEO is an established enough industry that (most) people listen to us without the shock and awe routine.
• Link love: Quite the opposite of a link condom, a “loved” link is a link to an external site that is fully followed. While this is a term I use internally with my co-workers, I would say a more appropriate term to whomever you’re reporting to would be “citation” or “co-citation.”
• Linksploitation: (from SEO-Theory)This is targeting links in a “formulaic process according to precise criteria.” Don’t use made up words! A more appropriate term would be “targeted link building.”
• RCS (Real Company Stuff or Real Company S**t): While it may have been a trending hashtag on Twitter during Mozcon and it’s easy to throw around the virtual water cooler, RCS is a very industry specific term. It’s more than fine to use internally, but when walking into a Fortune 100 boardroom “RCS” is tough to explain quickly. Use marketing terms that resonate better like an integrated marketing campaign. Avoid unnecessary barriers to understanding when you’re speaking with a client or potential client.
• Splog: Can we stop word mashing? Especially random words with blog? “Vlog” should be avoided, too. A splog is a spam blog. Someone who doesn’t know what “splog” is will probably go somewhere at least vaguely sexual. Even the impression of derogatory language comes off as unprofessional. Clean up the connotations and call it a low-quality blog.
• Linkerati: This is an old school SEO term that few new marketers hear anymore. The linkerati are the people who control web properties that you want to get links from. Today the majority of us just say, “link prospects” or “potential contacts” and let’s keep it that way.
• Blacklisted or penalty: Neither of these terms are inherently wrong, but they’re used incorrectly everyday. Let’s be more cautious when talking about what may be happening with a site. Blacklisted means the site is literally out of the index. A penalty may be manual or algorithmic and causes a noticeable drop in rankings. Not every site that experiences a loss has been blacklisted or penalized.

SEO is a maturing industry, and our language should mature along with it. While I have no inherent objections to most of this terminology (expect for “link juice”) the industry reputation is what it is partially because all of this SEO jargon alienates those who want to educate themselves. Satire has its place, but we seriously need to re-vamp our communication habits. While so many of us are advocating the importance of understanding a client’s brand message and aligning our work with other departments, we are helping to create and establish the divide between SEO and traditional marketers when we use the expressions that we do.

We need to present a uniform front, eat a slice of humble pie, and acknowledge the inheritance of the SEO industry. We are marketers. Marketing was around long before the Internet was a glimmer of an idea. Why are we not using marketing language with more frequency? To really move forward, SEO needs to speak the language of traditional marketing and branding, not the other way around.

For many, Google Analytics is constant background noise in their browser. Unfortunately, not all of us are Google Analytics pros, number crunchers, or programmers–sometimes we avoid the more complex applications of Google Analytics code.

I know there are times when I’ve been afraid of breaking something on a site so I’ll hesitate to implement the code I hoped to. Without mistakes we can’t grow and this is why there are “undo” features, local backups, lots of online tutorials, and professionals you can consult with like analytics evangelist, Avinash Kaushik.

Through reading and experimentation I’ve found that there are a lot of elements on any given site that can provide major insight into customer retention, conversions, and goal funneling if properly tracked. But, these elements aren’t out-of-the-box ready for Google Analytics, they require the addition of event tracking.

A lot of sites tend to avoid event tracking implementation, because of an assumed lack of knowledge or skill. Well, I’m here to tell you that as scary as Google Analytics code can look, more often than not, putting this little snippet of code on the site is a fairly painless process.

There are two things to be mindful of when implementing event tracking:

• Use consistent naming conventions
• Give a day or two to test the code and make sure it’s properly tracking

Wary of building the event tracking code yourself? Raven offers a tool that can build the code for you! No excuses—we can do this.

Let’s talk about three potential event tracking actions you can start using today.

1) Downloads

Most sites do not have a “Thank you for Downloading” page that can be tracked as a goal, especially if what is being downloaded is a document (rather than a plugin, extension, or a program). So, how do you know how popular your download is? Event tracking! Tracking a download simply requires the addition of the onClick command after your “Download” link, e.g.:

‹a href=”/downloads/example-whitepaper.pdf” onClick=”_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'download', 'whitepaper', 'orm whitepaper']);”›Download PDF‹/a›

Since this tracks people who click the download link (and don’t necessarily save the file), it still won’t be 100% accurate for unique downloads. I know I have downloaded the same document numerous times because I kept forgetting to save it! Just keep that in mind when using event tracking, and analytics in general. Nothing is completely accurate; it’s all relative.

2) Video

Video can really increase click-through rates from search results and benefit user interaction and time on site, which can affect customer retention (positively). Once you’ve created that great video, what do you know about it? Perhaps not much, especially if you aren’t using YouTube embeds.

Google Analytics will tell you how many people viewed the page the video is on and average time on site, but you can’t assume that everyone who came to the page viewed the video. You know what happens with assumptions!

If video is a large part of your on-site content strategy, you’ll want to work to include more granular tracking of video views, plays, pauses, and exits. Relying on data from YouTube Analytics (if you’re using YouTube embeds) won’t necessarily be accurate for the number of views on your site.

For example, if you have the same video in multiple locations, or want to see how many people exactly (rather than a percent graph as in YouTube Analytics) left your video without finishing it, you’d need to use event tracking. Through even tracking you also don’t have to switch between YouTube Analytics and Google Analytics–and not everyone uses YouTube.

Rather than hazarding a guess as to how many people viewed a video, why not know for sure?

Warning: event tracking with video can get pretty complicated, because you usually end up having to modify JavaScript or flash files. If you use a video host like Wistia, though, they streamline the event tracking code integration for you. Otherwise, I would defer to and/or loop in a programmer, at least for the initial implementation.

3) Calls to Action or Site Elements

Whether you want to track a subscription signup or a button for the contact form, calls to action can be sorely neglected when it comes to measuring their effectiveness. Maybe you have two different calls to action on different portions of the site and want to know which phrase creates more clicks without setting up A/B testing for the same page?

Event track the two options and compare after you have a large enough pool of data.

A few other elements that could be worth tracking (depending on your KPI’s and goals) include:

• Number of visits to your social profiles from the website
• Blog article click-throughs or navigational elements on the homepage
• RSS subscriptions
• Newsletter subscriptions

Some of this data could be pulled in through Google Analytics in other ways–blog article click-through rates from the homepage could probably be determined through the Navigational Summary report in the Content section of Google Analytics, but event tracking allows more pointed targeting. Since you installed this specific code where you wanted it, generally you can be more confident about the accuracy of the data you’re gathering.

Data should always be the basis for decisions made about your website and event tracking is one way to get more data points to use. How do you use event tracking on your website?

While there are numerous industry experts who have covered
the topic extensively before, one of the most overriding statements is that relationship building “takes time.” Yes, it does, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t break it up into smaller chunks of time that don’t inadvertently consume your entire morning, or day, or week.

I’m here to offer you ways to build a relationship with your target in just 15 minutes a day. That’s right, 15 minutes. Put on your egg timer, or the alarm on your phone, or whatever you use to keep yourself on track. The team here at Outspoken Media can tell you I’m crazy deadline-driven/time-aware, so when I say 15 minutes, I do my darndest to mean it. While in sum, these strategies could eat up your day, this is my advice: choose one target a day to focus on, and use a few tactics. By the end of a month, you could potentially have 20+ relationships in the works. All for a measly 5 hours.

I’m going to present this from probably one of the hardest positions to work from-an in-house marketer, many of whom I work with every day. I am assuming there is no access to social media accounts (or at least not without a massive headache from legal or the social media team constantly asking “Why?”). All I am assuming is that there is a branded email that you have access to, and maybe that you can get content on your company blog, as, more often than not that is what I’ve seen in-house teams be able to easily access. As an agency SEO or consultant, these tactics are also still relevant and useful.

Initial Contact

Comment

Yes, commenting. Not comment spam purely for a followed link. Take two minutes and actually read a recent article (that may or may not be related to your company) and leave a thoughtful comment.

And just to clarify for those of you out there that may be wondering, no, I am not categorizing commenting on a person’s blog post as a link that would be reported to the boss or the CEO. All of these tactics are vehicles for the relationship (and link) that you want.

Email

While there are some people whose email inboxes are sacred; I’ve been pretty fearless personally with my own sites when conducting outreach, and had great success. It may not be the easiest thing to hear, but when you’re building a relationship, get rid of canned responses or templated emails.

• Be charismatic and genuine (even if that means using improper grammar)
• Use their language
• Ask a question that doesn’t involve the words “guest post” at all

Respect Their Time

Do you like reading your email when you have 70 unread messages in your inbox?

No?!

Then don’t expect anyone else to, either. Take a guess based on the size of a given publication how busy whomever you contact is going to be and craft your message accordingly. The editor of a smaller, niche website may appreciate your long, gushy, email, but the editor of TechCrunch will not.

This also means not following up every two hours pestering them to see if they’ve read your email. Simple answer: No, they haven’t. They have a job. And a life.

Mentions

I’m not talking about tweets, re-tweets or Facebook shares, or even egobait, I’m just talking about simply mentioning (and linking) to whomever you’re interested in within a blog post on your company blog. A third of all the Internet is on WordPress-and WordPress allows Pingbacks. Chances are, if you mention a person in a blog post, they’ll notice.

Become a Contributor

Sometimes there will be sites that don’t accept guest posts because they are looking for more long-term writers. A lot of pure “link builders” have historically shyed away from opportunites like that because it would build a footprint (if said link builder was working from an unbranded persona) or because it was too much time invested when becoming a contriubutor to a site wouldn’t build diversity in linking domains or C-Blocks. But! For building a relationship, it’s a great opportunity. If it’s within the scope of your responsibilites and you can take on writing with the frequency they desire, do it.

Connect

This is yet another reason why going after irrelevant targets is a lost opportunity. When you’re looking at a site that is in the same industry you are in, you can talk shop with them! You both got into the industry for a reason – you both have a passion for it somewhere, somehow. Let that show!

Continuing Relationships

Follow Up

Follow up matters. While people have a life and don’t want to read an email, the flipside of that is: people have a life. Email clients break and lose emails. Sometimes things just get lost in the shuffle, nothing personal. Don’t be afraid to follow up-though usually I give it a week of hearing crickets before I send a second email. A week can be a long time in the world of an email inbox, so schedule yourself a reminder when you send the initial email, whether that’s using a plugin like Boomerang or setting a deadline on a task through Trello.

Referrals

This is more appropriate after you’ve been in communication with someone for a while, but again – you’re in the same industry, and if you’re doing it right, you’re reaching out to and talking with a LOT of people. If you’re in touch with a blogger who is working on a project and needs help, reach out to some of your own contacts on their behalf to see if they’d be interested in helping said blogger. You’ll generate goodwill both with the blogger and with everyone as a whole. When you help others out without expectation of something in return, it tends to work in your favor.

Rinse and Repeat

Just because you’ve gotten past the “getting to know you” phase, that doesn’t mean you should stop commenting, mentioning, emailing or connecting with them. Keep it going!

What quick things do you do to build relationships online?