seo: monitor the web with google reader

• Catch people talking about your company or products

• Find potential customers

• Find influencers or partners for future outreach

• Find blog ideas• Find things to RT

• An RSS feed reader (we like Google Reader)

• Twitter• Google Alerts• Google Blog Search

• Look for RSS icon on industry sites

• Search for “INDUSTRY blog”

• Search for “top INDUSTRY blogs”

• Find competitors’ blogs

• Try adding /feed to blog’s URL:http://blog.hhcolorlab.com/ http://blog.hhcolorlab.com/feed

In Google Reader, click “Subscribe”

Paste RSS feed URL

Click “Add”

• Click the arrow on a feed and then “New folder…”

• Organize by audience (customers, competition) or by source (Q&A sites, blogs, video)

• Create RSS updates from Google searches:www.google.com/alerts

• Search for keywords, product names, company names

• Real-time notification of new Google search results

• Can also send automatic email as results are found

• Tip: try alerts that will find people asking questions

• Trial and error!• Use “quotes,” or you’ll

get weird stuff • Try OR, AND• Group terms with ( )• Weed out junk with “-”• Use “-

site:example.com” to filter out spammy sites

• Cast a wider net: Pull tweets in too!• Hear from consumers who don’t blog• Look for…

• Tweets that suggest buyer intent• Tweets from related businesses, targeting

your audience

• Twitter removed link to search RSS• Direct link still works:

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=YOURKEYWORDS

• Replace “YOURKEYWORDS” with target terms

• Paste URL into Google Reader

• Monitor tweets from or to any account

• Browser will replace spaces and special characters, giving you this URL:http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=from:hhcolorlab%20OR%20@hhcolorlab

• Filter tweets by latitude/longitude:http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=wedding+photos&geocode=38.966673,-94.6169012,70km

• Use this to find your latitude and longitude: http://itouchmap.com/latlong.html

• Use hashtags to pull relevant tweets:http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=%23photog

• In this example, replace “photog” with your hashtag of choice

• Use the following for hashtag research:• http://hashonomy.com/hashtags/trending/• http://hashtags.org/• http://twubs.com/

• Remove retweets with –rt• Remove tweets w/ links with –

filter:link• Example:

http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=wedding photos -rt -filter:link

• Leaves you with actual conversations, not just links to blogs

• Remove tweets with any keyword by adding “–keyword”

• If not comfortable modifying URLs directly, try http://topsy.com/• Simpler, but missing some options

• Create an assortment of feeds w/ brands, hashtags, and keywords

• Test something, then modify query• Filter out spammy results• Remove any feed that isn’t useful

• Subscribe to a page’s feed using this URL: https://www.facebook.com/feeds/page.php?format=rss20&id=57676989295

• Click profile image to see page ID in URL:

• Put ID into above URL and paste it into Google Reader

• No built-in method like Twitter – use Google Alerts:hhcolorlab site:facebook.com -site:facebook.com/hhcolorlab –rt

• The above returns...• Mentions of hhcolorlab on Facebook• Not including their Facebook page• Excluding all Twitter RTs posted to Facebook

walls• Copy that text to Google Alerts to test

• Brainstorm ideas just for video!• Set “Result type” to “Video.”• Create a folder just for video

searches

• Monitor Quora, Yahoo Answers, Wiki Answers, others with a single search:(site:quora.com OR site:answers.yahoo.com OR site:wiki.answers.com) best DSLR camera

• Add queries to Google Alerts!

• Follow blogs in 1 location• Comment on interesting posts• Follow interesting people on Twitter• Respond to brand mentions

• Create a bundle from a folder in Google Reader

• Generate RSS link for entire bundle• Paste URL into

http://thegramanator.appspot.com/

Add ?n=70 to URL to get more results!• Credit for original idea and Gramanator tool: Ian Lurie,

Portent Interactive

• Paste the raw text into www.tagxedo.com or www.wordle.net

• Spot trending topics• Visualize blog and twitter activity• Google blog search trending topics

you’re not familiar with• Plan blog posts around what’s hot• Blog ideas from this example…:

• School senior posing tips• Wedding close-up tips• Photography wall displays• Photography business tips

• A feed with 500+ new posts per hour is not a great feed

• A feed with 3 new posts per day is also no good

• Make sure your queries align with your objectives

• The output will only be as good as the inputs• Find/create at least a dozen quality feeds• Filter out spam and noise• Think like a business – what do they write

about?• Think like a customer – what do they write

about?

• This is merely a tool for listening and monitoring

• Should be used to inform a content strategy

• This fits into step 3 of building a content marketing machine:http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-build-and-operate-a-content-marketing-machine

• We can…• Develop the strategy• Create the content• Measure the results