Last week, Google make a fairly techy-sounding announcement. If you’re like me, you saw it, but didn’t pay a lot of attention. As I re-read the announcement today and some corresponding blog posts, the light went on. I get it now. The new “authorship” authority impacts what we do every day as PR people.

Let’s take a step back. Here’s an excerpt from Google’s announcement:

Today we’re beginning to support authorship markup — a way to connect authors with their content on the web. We are experimenting with using this data to help people find content from great authors in our search results.

…

We know that great content comes from great authors, and we’re looking closely at ways this markup could help us highlight authors and rank search results.

In other words, it sounds like Google will now consider who authored a piece of content when determining relevancy and search rankings. What does this have to do with PR? According to Steve Rubel, it’s all about validation:

Businesses that activate thought leaders across the media cloverleaf will be primed to stand out more in search. In the future you must publish to stand out.

In PR, we’ve always known that there’s value in being seen as a thought-leader in the industry. The direct impact can be another one of those tricky things to measure, but contributing bylines to key industry trade publications, speaking at high-profile conferences, and blogging can boost a public relations effort. PR 2.0 already includes blogger outreach and creating content to share on various networks and sites. Now, Google is saying that authoring content across the web can also strengthen search rankings. Previously, SEO in PR may have meant focusing on PageRank, fine-tuning anchor text keywords or collecting inbound links. Now, PR plays a much larger role in SEO by helping to establish “authorship authority.”

6 Ideas to Help PR Leverage Google’s “Authorship”

• Guest blog. Guest blogging comes with many benefits, including opportunities to connect with new audiences and sharing expertise to establish credibility, generating inbound links, etc. But, now guest blogging, more specifically, the opportunity to associate yourself with being an “author” in Google’s eyes, becomes even more important.
• Write op-eds for “traditional” media’s websites. Sarah Evans recently wrote an opinion piece for CNN.com about online privacy — a perfect example of how to get “author” credit via traditional media. Local newspapers, magazines and trade publications could be appropriate outlets to consider for these kind of author opportunities.
• Become a regular contributor. PR blog Waxing Unlyrical features a regular lineup of contributors. Seek opportunities like this to regularly produce content for existing bloggers.
• Join a group blog. Some blogs, like PR Breakfast Club, are true collaborative blogs, written by a group of authors. Seek opportunities to join a group blog that connects with your target audience.
• Think more seriously about YouTube. As a Google property, all YouTube videos have been updated with this new author language. Are you publishing YouTube videos? Knowing that these pages have implemented the “author” coding, how can you be more strategic about creating content for YouTube?
• Create an “author” page on your own blog. Every time you write a post on your own blog, that’s an opportunity to create an “author” link. Create an “About the Author” page on your own blog that adheres to these new Google recommendations.

It’s worth noting that all sites won’t automatically incorporate this “author” HTML language. The aforementioned five ideas are solid tactical recommendations, but you get “bonus points” in search rankings for taking implementing tactics to sites that are implementing the author markup.

Certainly, this is a technical topic. (My brain hurts a little after reading up on this topic!) In PR, we don’t need to understand all the HTML coding details, but we should know what to look for and where to turn if you have questions or need help. It is our job to understand how our PR efforts can support SEO … further proof that the “silo” mentality (ie., I do this. You do that.) just doesn’t work anymore.

What do you think about this modification to Google’s algorithm? Is it something you’ll think about when looking for online opportunities for clients/brands? What other ideas do you have to help PR people influence search rankings?

How do I leave a comment on my brand’s Facebook Page as myself, not as the Page?

I’ve been getting this question a bit more often lately, so I figured it might be easiest just to share it here.

First, being able to switch how you use Facebook is a handy feature that has been available to Page admins for several months now. Previously, anytime an admin of a page left a status update or a comment on the page, the comment would look like it came from the brand, not from the person. (For example, if left a comment on the 30 Lines page, it would always appear to come from 30 Lines, not from my personal profile. I’d often sign posts with my initials to let people know it was really me.)

Well, this is fine, but I had a number of clients who wanted more personal interaction with their audience. In some cases, a couple staff members would purposely be left off as admins to be able to comment on the page as themselves. In other cases, some people would remove themselves as an admin of the page, make the comment as themselves, then get added back as an admin — repeating this anytime they wanted to comment from their personal profile. An annoying, tedious process … but really the only option available if you wanted to add that personal touch.

Well, Facebook fixed this. You have to update your settings to be able to do it, but it’s actually pretty easy to do. Here’s how:

Update your settings

Head over to your page settings (Click on “Edit Page” in the top right corner), then select the very first option in the left menu, called “Your Settings.” It should look like this:

Uncheck the top checkbox. It will say something like “Always comment and post on your page as My Awesome Page even when using Facebook as {your name here}.” Make sure to save your changes.

BAM.

That’s it. You’re done.

Well … sort of.

Switching Between Personal Profile and Page

Once you’ve changed this setting, you’ll *always* comment on the page from your personal profile, unless you make the switch to use Facebook as your page. Now when you visit your page, you’ll see an admin panel in the top right that looks like this:

If you want a status update or comment on the page (or other pages on Facebook — see Admins Can “Use Facebook as Page”) to come from the brand, you need to click the link to “Use Facebook as My Awesome Page.” If you don’t make this switch first, any comments on the page will come from your personal profile, and they likely won’t end up in the newsfeed of many of your subscribers. Make the switch, then share your update or comment. (I’d recommend a big Post-It plastered to your screen reminding you to switch until it becomes habit.)

NOTE: This change doesn’t affect how you use third-party tools like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck or Postling. If you have authorized these tools to post to your page, the updates you share will come from the brand without the need to switch how you’re using Facebook.

OK, now you’re done. You’ll be able to share updates with all of your subscribers by posting as the page, and you’ll be able to get into more personal conversations by posting and commenting as yourself. The end result will look something like this (post from the page, comment left by me):

So now that you can do this, does it change the way you use your brand’s page? Have you seen any good examples of companies that have been able to “get more personal” with their audience?

Well, Google stepped further into more “social” search results this week by introducing their own version of the Facebook Like, a social sharing button dubbed +1. They describe +1 like this:

Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1′s can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.

Take a look:

View the video on YouTube.

Here’s what your search results will look like if you see a result that has been +1′ed by one of your connections:

You can see that Mark has +1′ed his property, which is now reflected in my search results.

Google hasn’t rolled this feature out to everyone yet. If you don’t see the +1 button next to search results, you can head over to Google Experiments and request to join the +1 “experiment.” Once you’re “in,” you’ll see the button next to the title in search results (and next to AdWords, too … but that’s a topic for another day).

There are a few things that you can do to make sure you’re getting the most out of this new feature to benefit your online marketing efforts:

Update Your Profile

Start here, because you need a public Google profile in order to use +1. Your profile is also one way Google learns about where else you are online (and who you’re connected to there), so make sure your profile info is up-to-date and that you’ve added links to all of the social profiles that you use on a regular basis. Take advantage and feed the machine as much information as possible.

Don’t have a profile yet? Get one here. (Here’s mine to give you an idea of what this looks like.)

Do Something Worth Talking About

I think this one should be a given, but I really can’t emphasize it enough. Social sharing is all about word-of-mouth. You need to do something so interesting, funny, unique, etc. that people will want to tell their friends. (Or you could just sing an incredibly bad teenage pop song.) Be worth talking about at the water cooler or over a beer, and some of that conversation is bound to happen online.

If you’re not doing this in the first place, why would anyone want to recommend you or your website?

Build a Strong Social Presence

There are lots of other reasons why social media can benefit your business, but your prospect’s online social circle is influencing the search results they see now more than ever. Expanding your networks on Facebook, Twitter and other social sites will increase your opportunities to start working your way into these “social” search results. Sharing links to resources besides your own website will help you build a broad, almost-ambient presence over time in your connections’ search results pages.

Get +1 for Your Website

Of course, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to make a recommendation for a web page before you’ve visited the page. I’d imagine the only people who will be clicking on the +1 button from the search results will be marketers and SEOs. (Um, guilty.) For everyone else, including the vast majority of your brand’s audience, they’re much more likely to make the recommendation once they get to your site.

That’s why Google soon will be rolling out the +1 button for websites. I’m sure it will be very similar to the Facebook Like, Tweet This and LinkedIn Share buttons … you’ll be able to place it on any page on your site. And yes, you will want to add this to your site. Make it as easy as possible for visitors to your site to share your content with their network.

It’s a bit odd that Google didn’t roll out this feature as part of their initial launch, but you can sign up to get notified when it does become available for your site here.

In any case, when Google makes a move like this, it’s worth watching. It’s clear that social networks will have a huge impact on search, and more importantly, how your brand’s online presence appears in search results. Keep pumping out great stuff, keep growing your network and make sure you’re giving Google as much information as possible about what you’re doing. Do that, and it’ll be +1 for you and your brand.

And while you’re here, why not click that “thumbs up” button below? I’d like that a lot.

All that said, Quora isn’t necessarily doing anything new (but they are doing one thing really well). Lots of people have questions about all kinds of things. They probably have questions about the subjects that you know best. That’s an opportunity for you and your organization.

Not everyone is on Quora yet, and they probably won’t be for a while. But there are plenty of other sites where you can find questions about your area of expertise. Here are a few places where you might want to look:

• Yahoo! Answers: The granddaddy of the category. Yahoo! Answers are open to anyone and indexed by the major search engines.
• LinkedIn Answers: Open to any LinkedIn member. Follow categories that interest you most, and get recognized for providing the best answer to a given question.
• LinkedIn Groups: Groups can be very targeted by industry or interest group, but they can tend to get self-promotional. Find the groups with proactive managers and get active in the discussions.
• Facebook Questions: A fairly new feature in Facebook (some people still don’t see this option in their status bar), the size of the userbase alone makes this one worth watching.
• Twitter: Twitter is full of people asking questions and pondering various subjects. Use the Advanced Search feature, plug in a keyword term related to your industry along with a question mark (one example I use is “wordpress help ?“) and see who you can assist. Plug the terms into your Twitter client of choice, or grab the RSS feed and check back a couple times a day.
• Local/Industry Networking Sites and Forums: If your business is focused on a specific region or industry, there’s a good chance there are already discussion boards and networking sites where people are seeking information. Be there to help. (And if such a site doesn’t exist for your industry yet, start one here.)
• Your Website or Blog: If you’re already blogging or getting a decent amount of traffic to your site, consider taking questions from readers and answering them in future posts or a dedicated area of your site. What better place to make sure that potential customers can find the answers they need?

That’s Just What I Needed!

The difference, and the advantage for Quora at the moment, is the quality of the experts answering questions and the answers being provided. You’ll quickly find that Yahoo! and even LinkedIn are full of spam, while Quora provides their community with tools to help vote the best answers to the top and suppress the self-promoters.

Whether Quora makes it or not, people will always be searching for useful answers. If you’re going to spend some time answering questions on any of these sites, here are a few things to keep in mind to make sure you stand out from the pack:

• Be a resource, not a sales clerk. People want answers, not sales pitches. If they reach out to you, you’ll get the opportunity to reel them in.
• Be clear and concise. We’re all busy. We don’t have time to sort through pages of manuals. Get to the point, and fast.
• Be a connector. Sometimes you don’t have the answer, but you know just the person who does. Rather than making something up, make the referral. Provide a link to reach the other expert.
• Look for ideas to incorporate into your own site. If you see a trend, leverage it. Write a blog post, add some content to your FAQ or record a quick video to address the question that keeps popping up.

The bottom line is that being helpful is be a great way to gain trust. And when people trust you, they’re more comfortable doing business with you. I can tell you from experience — helping people on LinkedIn and Twitter has led directly to several wonderful, long-term clients. Give it a try … you might be surprised at the results.

Have a question for me? Post it in the comments, reach me here, or ask me on Quora. I’ll be sure to answer as soon as I can.

More Resources:

• 9 Ways to Get More Out of Quora

I want to post something on this other brand’s Page, but I want it to look like it’s coming from my brand, not from me. How do I do that?

You can do this using a feature called “tagging.” Tagging other brand Pages is a great way to give credit to the other brand, and it also can get your brand some extra exposure, because your post will appear on your Page and theirs (assuming they allow others to post to their Wall). It’s perfect to use when you’re sharing a link or announcing some kind of partnership marketing effort. And it’s actually really easy to do.

Here’s how:

1) Navigate to the other brand’s Facebook page and make sure that you have “liked” the Page from your personal account. (If you want to “tag” a person, you need to be personally connected to that person.) As an example, I had lunch last week with Christian Adams, a great guy and fellow online marketer, and now I want to “tag” his business to give him credit whenever I share one of his posts on Facebook. Here’s a look at the Facebook Page for Christian’s business, Sigma Creative:

2) Now that you’re connected to the Page, head over to your own brand’s Page. Do not go to your feed or your personal profile. (Note: This assumes that you’re already set up as an admin on your brand’s Page.) Go to the top of the “Wall” tab just like you were going to share any other update, photo, link, whatever. It will look like this:

Start typing what you would want to post on the other brand’s site. Make sure the text of your update has the name of the other name of the other brand in it. In this case, I’m going to share a link from Christian’s blog.

3) When you get to the point where you want to mention the brand by name, you want to “tag” their page. Start by typing the @ symbol, then immediately start typing the name of the business or person you want to link to. Don’t leave any spaces between the @ and the characters of the Page’s title. You’ll see that a list of names will start to appear where you’re typing. Once you see the Page you want to tag, scroll down and highlight it. It should look something like this:

Finish the rest of your update and hit “Share.” The update will post to your Wall, complete with a link to the Page you’re referencing:

Looks good, right? You bet. But wait … there’s more!

Depending on the other Page’s privacy settings, your post will also appear on their Wall. Here’s what I mean:

Now, when readers are viewing that Page’s Wall, they’ll see the post from your brand’s Page. It’s a great, simple way to share the spotlight with another brand on your Page, while getting some extra exposure on their Page, too.

(Note: Don’t abuse this. Overusing this feature can easily be seen as spam, so use the tagging feature sparingly and wisely, especially if you don’t have direct relationships with the brands you’re tagging in your posts.)

How else are you using Facebook to connect with and promote other brands of interest to your audience?

UPDATE: As of August 18th, it looks like Facebook has made it even easier to tag other users and business pages in your posts. Now, Facebook will automatically suggest links to Facebook pages, groups, interests and other users, offering a drop-down list of suggestions as you type, even if you don’t include the @ symbol first. More on this from ReadWriteWeb and InsideFacebook.

The Pitch

First, let’s take a look at the billboard. It’s an ad for American Family Insurance, as part of their “Do you have the {insert everyday catastrophe here} policy?” campaign (Other ads in the campaign ask questions like “Do you have the what’s that dripping noise policy?”). This particular sign asks the question, “Do you have the hail sure gets big around here policy?” What’s interesting about it — what caught my eye initially — is that they don’t just use the side of the building as their canvas … they’ve taken it a step further and used cars in the parking lot to help get their message across. Take a look at these photos to see for yourself what I mean:

(Viewing this in a reader? Check out the photos on Flickr.)

If the 3D hail attached to the side of the building doesn’t catch your attention, then the smashed cars in the parking lot surely will. It certainly made me do a double-take the first time I saw it. There’s no doubt it’s fun and creative.

But does this work? Does it resonate? Is it the best way to move the needle? Does it even help to build brand awareness (especially considering that the parking lot is positioned almost directly across the street from Nationwide’s world headquarters)?

Breaking It Down

There’s a lot going on in this ad, and I think that prevents the piece from working as well as it could. After seeing the billboard the first time, I had a hard remembering who it was promoting. Great ad … no idea what they’re selling. It’s very creative, and it ties in well to their overall campaign (which is focused on out-of-home, as far as I can tell), but I’ve seen very little to reinforce the campaign through other channels. Even the AmFam website doesn’t reinforce the overall theme of the campaign.

This is a huge miss in my opinion. Others in their industry (most notably Nationwide and State Farm) have taken the extra steps to reinforce their latest campaigns with microsites. (Here’s what Nationwide is doing … and State Farm is currently promoting at least two landing pages to reinforce their TV spots.)

Measuring Success

There’s very little to speak of in terms of a call to action on this piece. The consumer can either take action by visiting the company’s website (AmFam.com) or by calling their main toll free line (800.MY.AMFAM). Which means they can probably measure an overall increase in calls or traffic to their site, but they have no way of knowing whether it’s related to this or not. To make matters worse, the message isn’t reinforced on the homepage of the site; instead, the visitor sees AmFam’s regular messaging … my guess is that this is causing confusion that’s probably leading to an increase in their bounce rate. (Data from Compete shows American Family’s overall website traffic trending down significantly over the past year.)

If the objective is brand/image building, there’s a good chance this campaign might be helping, but I don’t see any way they can measure a direct correlation here.

A Good Start

In general, I think this billboard is extremely interesting and eye-catching, and I like the idea of the overall campaign. However, I think there’s a lot more that AmFam could be doing to give the campaign more ‘legs.’ Here are just a few things they might want to try:

• Create a specific call to action. You’ve caught my eye … now what do you want me to do? I get that I might want to make sure my car insurance is up to date, but besides that, is there any incentive to pick up the phone and call AmFam (again, especially considering that this particular sign is located across the street from Nationwide headquarters)? The offer probably doesn’t even need to be terribly compelling — something like a free consultation or a review of my current insurance might be just enough to do the trick.
• Give the consumer a specific place to go. Directing someone to the main number (hello, automated receptionist) or the homepage of their website doesn’t make a lot of sense here, especially considering that the website doesn’t reflect the message the consumer just saw on the billboard. Instead, provide a custom phone number, a landing page/Facebook page/microsite (GetMeThatPolicy.com, perhaps?) that reflects the campaign messaging or even better, a unique shortcode so I could text to receive a special offer while I’m standing there in the parking lot. Keep the next step consistent with what the consumer just saw. (This will help AmFam track the success of the campaign, too.)
• Throw in a social element. “Do you have the {insert everyday catastrophe here} policy?” is a great question and potentially, a great conversation starter. I’m sure there are a lot of people out there who have really interesting stories that would tie into this campaign really well. To complement the outdoor ads, why not ask people to share their stories about crazy, “can-you-believe-what-happened-to-me” stories, and how their AmFam policy and/or local agent saved the day for them? A Facebook page, a hashtag on Twitter, YouTube Direct incorporated into a blog — any or all of these options could be an effective way to let their customers tell the story for them in testimonials, photos and videos that reinforce the idea behind the tagline.

In this case, a good tagline and creative “out-of-the-box” execution provide the foundation for a great ad, but it still might not be enough to help AmFam achieve the reach they want. Thinking through the complete strategy, looking for ways to integrate their efforts across multiple channels (ideally getting their customers involved along the way) and understanding how to measure the success of their campaign will likely produce much greater results in the long run.

Your Turn

I’ve said my peace … now it’s time for you to weigh in.

What do you think of AmFam’s billboard? What do you think of the overall campaign? How would you improve on what they’re already doing?

Foursquare allows users to earn points by “checking in” at various locations around town. Users can connect with their friends from Facebook and Twitter, and the user who checks in at a location the most over a 60-day period can become the “Mayor” of that location. (Here’s how Foursquare describes some of their opportunities for businesses.)

But what if you’re not a restaurant or coffee shop or bar or other venue ideally suited for a service like this? Are there still ways you can use a location app like Foursquare for your business? Absolutely. Let’s take a look at how an apartment company could use Foursquare:

• List your business location so it shows up in results when users are nearby.
• Add unique tips and to-dos for local restaurants, retailers and other venues.
• Track Mayor deals and check-in coupons for other businesses in the area, and post them on your website.
• Get out in the neighborhood and help more businesses create their own Foursquare deals.
• Create a referral special for Foursquare users, or offer a freebie for stopping by your leasing office.
• Link your Foursquare account to Twitter, then check in around town to share local hidden gems with your network.
• Encourage as many people in your community as possible to join Foursquare, then share their best tips and to-dos on your blog.
• Offer a reserved parking spot to the “Mayor” of your community.
• Use the “Shout” feature to let locals know about upcoming parties or other open events at your community.
• Partner with a local coffee shop or bar to offer a special discount to their customers “brought to you by XYZ Apartments.”

What else would you add to the list? Are you using Foursquare? Have you tried it for your business?

Connect with Mike on Foursquare.

I’m going to cheat a bit on this first one, because I’ve selected an app that I had a small hand in creating, called TurnSocial. TurnSocial is a social layer that you can add to any website — in fact, you can see it in action at the bottom of this page.

To understand the tool, I think it’s important to know what problem we’re trying to solve. We saw that lots of people and businesses were creating profiles and connecting with people on multiple social networks. These sites make great ‘outposts’ where brands can connect with their audiences. But once you get a lot of these outposts going, it can be a major task just to let people know where and how they can connect with you. So we saw sites like Friendfeed, Chi.mp and a number of others, that helped us aggregate this content on their sites. One more site, one more profile to manage. Ugh, right?

But let’s say you’re doing a nice job of driving traffic to your website. Maybe it’s your blog, maybe it’s PPC ads, maybe it was that great deal in your last e-newsletter. How do you let people know about all that time you’ve spent making connections and building relationships across all of those social media sites? You could use an online profile widget like Retaggr, or you could add rows and rows of social media icons in the sidebar. How many times have you seen this before?

Except every one of those icons takes the visitor away from your site. It takes a lot to keep someone engaged on your website … you shouldn’t lose them just because they want to click on some icon they’ve never seen before! Twitter badges and a Facebook fan box provide more information, but each only pulls content from one site, and it’s not long before you have a sidebar full of widgets that may or may not be relevant to your audience.

THIS is why we created TurnSocial — it’s intended to keep your socially engaged visitors on your site. You’re already creating content on your website, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Flickr, on YouTube, in lots of places across the web. You don’t need another site to manage. You need a better way to show a more complete snapshot of your online presence to your reader. Provide context. Show some personality.

TurnSocial brings all that social content back to your site. And if you’re in real estate or if you’re interested in highlighting local content on your site, we threw in some bonus features for you. Add your location, and TurnSocial can pull local content from Yelp, WalkScore and RentWiki, as well as posts from local bloggers on Outside.in. There’s are a bunch of other cool features for brand marketers that we hope to announce soon, so stay tuned. In the meantime, play around with the bar on this page and let me know what you think.

You can sign up for your free TurnSocial bar here. Would you use this on your site? What other apps would you want to see included in the bar? What are some other ways you are featuring your social content on your website? What other social media tools would you like to learn more about?

What does this have to do with me?

Social media has made it much easier for us to spread the word through blog posts, status updates, photos and videos. Unfortunately, it has also increased the amount of noise that you need to cut through to ensure that your message is heard. You need to work harder than ever to get your message in front of the right people … there are just too many other options that are pulling at them for their attention.

The best email marketers have known this for a long time. It’s a basic formula, really — segment your database by interest, deliver relevant content to each of those niche audiences, watch open rates go up and unsubscribes drop.

So how can this translate to social media tools? Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Blogs: Some blogging systems like WordPress allow you to create separate RSS feeds for each category that you write about. You may want to publish these feeds (maybe using a tool like Feedburner) to give readers the option to only hear about topics that interest them most.
• Facebook: You’re only allowed a single account, but you can broadcast your message to a specific list of people, or you target your message by age, location or several other categories. Set up well-defined groups or fan pages to make it easier for your audience to find the information and the like-minded folks they’re looking for.
• Twitter: You can’t send tweets to specific lists (yet), but there are many companies that are successfully using multiple accounts to target specific customers or communicate from different parts of the organization. A great example of this is Dell, which has over 35 different accounts — as well as the employees who manage those accounts — on their corporate Twitter page. These accounts range from the Dell Outlet to small business offers to investor insights. It’s a good bet that your current customers might not be interested in the same deals or updates as prospects who have never done business with you. Why not have separate accounts to cater to both groups equally?
• Tools like Ping.fm and Posterous allow you to choose the individual sites where you want to send a post, or you can post a single message to all of your affiliated accounts at once.
• Targeting current customers or employees exclusively? Try a private group on LinkedIn or Facebook, or start a private networking site using a tool like Ning. Put up the velvet rope and cater only to their needs. (I think I first came across the velvet rope concept here.)

The bottom line is that it’s harder than even to grab someone’s attention. Even the smallest of organizations may have many different audiences, each with different needs and objectives. A shotgun approach almost guarantees that you’re missing the target for at least two-thirds of your audience. You don’t need to reach everyone with each update. Instead, try focusing on one group … give them something that’s incredibly relevant to them, then do it again. Practice targeting.

What else can you do to better target your message and engage your audience? Have an example of a company that has effectively segmented their marketing efforts? Let’s hear it.

There is one message that works for all audiences — THANK YOU. Thanks for stopping by, and thanks for all you do. Have a great Thanksgiving, everyone!

Photo by viZZZual.com

Visibility matters. It’s critical that readers can find your site through search engines, but it’s just as important that you know which terms those readers are using to find you. So it’s good not only to keep an eye on the keywords that you think are important, but also other terms that are similar to the ones you think of first.

Google has a TON of great resources to help you learn more about keywords, including Google Trends, Google Insights, Google Analytics, related searches and Conversion University. One of my favorite new(er) tools is something Google calls the Wonder Wheel … it’s sort of like a mind map for related keywords.

Here’s how it works:
First, try your original search. In Jonathan’s case, here’s what his initial search would look like:

(Kudos to my #AptChat co-host Lisa Trosien for owning the #1 result! Also note that Training Factor’s YouTube videos show up in the top results, even above their own website — a great example why you should be using multimedia to increase your visibility online.)

Now, let’s see what Google thinks are some related terms. Just click “Show Options,” then click “Wonder Wheel” in the sidebar that appears on the left. Here’s what you get:

You can see that some related terms include “conservation programs,” “nwp services corporation,” “utility management” and “operational efficiencies.” If you’re writing about multifamily training, these might be a few good terms to include on your website or in blog posts (assuming that they’re relevant to your topic).

Don’t forget to try synonyms for your original search, too. Instead of “multifamily training,” Jonathan might want to try “apartment training.” A quick spin on the Wonder Wheel shows that related terms include “apartment leasing training,” “apartment maintenance training,” “apartment classes” and more. (Litter box training? Who knew?) Keep digging, and watch the Wonder Wheel expand quickly to discover new subjects. Here’s an example:

As you can see, you can use Wonder Wheel to easily find terms that are related to your original search. If you’re blogging or maintaining a website, this can be an excellent way to discover popular terms and brainstorm new topics for future blog posts. So take the Wonder Wheel for a spin. You might be surprised at what you find.

Have you tried Wonder Wheel? Has it helped you? What other tools are you using for keyword analysis?

UPDATE: (July 2011) It appears that Google has disabled the Wonder Wheel in their latest redesign. We’ll keep you posted if we see that Google brings it back in the future. (We sure hope they do!)