Digital Landfill

After years of paying lip service to search engine optimization (SEO), the time for enterprises to seriously consider this online marketing channel has finally come. The traditional online marketing channels - paid search, display advertising, and email – are all experiencing saturation, fierce competition, and lower returns on investments. As a result, marketing organizations are discovering SEO to be the most promising alternative for acquiring new customers. But there is some heavy-lifting that needs to be done before SEO can become a consistent revenue generating channel with positive ROI. 

8 Tips for Converting Your SEO Operation into a Key Online Marketing Channel

1 -- Take SEO Seriously - Now.

There is a significant first mover advantage in SEO – if you can take a position at the top of the natural search rankings, the search engines will give you higher authority and more exposure, making it very difficult for others to dislodge you. By jumping into an SEO strategy now, you’ll likely have a leg up on your competition for better placement in search rankings.

SEO is not a part-time activity. It is naturally competitive and requires constant attention from specialists who really understand SEO. Typically, the best performers among enterprises have one-to-three dedicated staff, but there are certainly corporations with many more. 

Many enterprises think they have SEO covered with just 10 or 20 keywords. However, even a modest SEO operation should consist of 50 to 100 keywords. You should think of each ‘keyword‘ as a micro-marketing channel -- every single keyword missed is a channel that you are not benefiting from. 

If you really want to maximize the impact of your SEO operation, you may need to go well beyond the top 100 keywords. The best practitioners have a keyword portfolio that numbers in the thousands, developing what is known as the “long tail.” At the single keyword level, this might not appear productive, but collectively the long tail can produce as much traffic as the top 100.

Whether you’re the dominant incumbent or the aggressive challenger, in SEO, knowledge is power.  You need to constantly monitor your competitors’ SEO activities to see what is working for them and respond accordingly.

It’s time to replace those Excel spreadsheets. When you are managing 100+ keywords and simultaneously monitoring the SEO activities of your top competitors, a spreadsheet is cumbersome and no longer efficient.  You need an enterprise-class SEO platform that delivers an integrated and comprehensive suite of management tools and that can scale as you grow your keyword portfolio. 

Armed with the superior performance data generated from your SEO management platform, you should now hold your SEO operation up to the same standard as the rest of your online marketing operations. That means developing a ROI model for each of your SEO initiatives. Only then can management understand the real return of SEO projects and make accurate budgeting decisions.

Finally, the most successful SEO operations are a company-wide endeavor.  Organic search performance is driven by every employee who touches the web.  This includes marketing managers who decide on messaging, content producers who write the copy, web developers who structure the web site, even the PR team who write the press releases and educate the media.  Each person has to include SEO best practices in everything they do.  It starts with education, but you also need the right workflows and technology in place.

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Jim Yu is the founder and CEO of BrightEdge, the leading enterprise-class SEO platform that helps marketers drive organic revenue in a measurable, predictable way.

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You’ve got thousands of pictures saved on your computer, and probably thousands more sitting in boxes and bookshelves all over your house.  The question is could you find that picture from your 1987 trip to the beach with you and your wife in it?  The answer is probably no, or at least not in a reasonable amount of time.  There are a lot of ways to organize your pictures and make them more accessible as well as protected, but to start you off here are 8 things you should know.

[For a forum with more info and space to share ideas check out our .]

First things first.  Remember that personal scanner you got for getting your documents onto your computer?  It’s time to get it back out and start scanning your old photographs.  Whether you have a document scanner, a scanner specifically designed for pictures, or some sort of printer/scanner/faxer/coffee maker combination, take advantage of it by scanning in old pictures and preserving them along with your newer digital stuff. 

Just because you have a digital camera and you can take thousands of pictures without blinking an eye, doesn’t mean you need to keep EVERY picture.  As soon as you are going through your pictures, you should make a point to delete any and all pictures that aren’t worth keeping.  Get rid of the blurry pictures; the family photo where your dad’s mouth is open, your sisters eyes are closed, and your mom is looking the other way; the picture you tried to take of a sunrise, but instead got a big glob of orange and a half covered lens where your finger got in the way.  You don’t want these pictures taking up space on your computer or external hard drive.  Can you imagine paying to backup these photos?  Me neither.

Every time you load a new set of images onto your computer make sure you are organizing them in folders that have titles that make sense.  Use dates, locations, etc. as the folder title so when you go back looking for a picture it is easier to find.  You may even want to tag your photos as well.  All this means is attaching a set of words to a picture that will help you find the picture when searching for it in your computer. 

I know you’re thinking this sounds impossible, or at lease implausible. I’ve got 6,000 pictures and that means thousands of faces in thousands of different pictures.  Well, I’ve got some good news.  There is software out there that will help you do this much quicker than you think.  Photo software is available with built in face recognition technology.  What this means is that not only does the software help recognize where faces are in your pictures and pull those faces out for you, but once you start naming who the faces are in the pictures the software starts finding these people in your pictures automatically!  Then you can search for pictures of a specific person, or of a few people together.    There are a number of programs incorporating this type of software, but one that I have tried and enjoyed is Picasa, available online and FREE of charge. 

One method of helping to sort through your photos is by rating them.  The simplest way that I have found to do this is in the folder containing the photo if you are using Windows.  There is a space for rating a photo based on the number of stars you think a photo deserves.  Once you do this, you can sort your pictures by rating and then you create another great way to get right to that fantastic shot of the crystal blue ocean in Bermuda you took last fall.  That is if you have rated it with 5 stars.

Creating a digital photo album is not only a great way to organize your pictures and make them easier to locate, but it is also a great way to story tell via photographs.  This could mean through facebook, flickr or some other social networking site (be careful what you post!) or it is also possible to create photo albums using software such as Picasa or HP Photosmart.  Some of these programs will also create collages for you as well which is a pretty cool feature. 

So, you’ve got all your pictures edited, tagged, and organized on your computer.  The next step is making sure that they aren’t JUST on your computer.  Similar to your digital documents, pictures need to be backed up and stored on an external hard drive, through an online service, or possibly both.  The bottom line is just having your pictures on one computer, in one location is just not enough.  Anything from catching a computer virus to a cup of coffee being spilled on your computer could mean waving thousands of pictures goodbye.  In reality you need to have the pictures in multiple physical locations, that way if something were to happen such as fire, flood, etc you know your thousands of digital memories are safe in the backup location.  It’s definitely worth the time and money to find an image backup solution that is effective and works for you.

Even without your laptop/iPad/whatever your device of choice is on you, you can still do a lot of organizing on your camera itself.  Go through your pictures after a day of shooting pictures and delete the pictures that didn’t turn out well.  There are even memory cards out there that will upload pictures online wirelessly and automatically! 

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Chris Palmer is a senior business marketing major at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.  After spending the past semester studying business abroad in Antwerp, Belgium, he is now working at AIIM as our summer intern, helping to manage the “8 things” blog among other AIIM related projects.  Check him out on !

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In this day and age we are faced with more and more electronic receipts, contracts, bills, etc as the paper ones continue to be phased out.  However, what about that garage full of old documents you’ve been collecting for the past twenty years?  

As we start to integrate electronic personal information and hard copy personal information, here are 8 important things you should know. 

This list isn't intended to be the final and definitive list. There are lots of other creative ideas that should be considered as well. This is also not intended to be a "perfect" list -- but for many, trying to create a "perfect" system will forever keep you from creating a workable system.

[Note: This post, for example doesn't address the question of those thousands and thousands of "priceless" digital photos on your hard drive. They aren't backed up, are they? Admit it. It's OK. It's the first step on the road to recovery. But more on that in a future post.]

For more information -- and to share your own tips -- become a fan of our Facebook page at

8 Things You Need to Know About Managing Your Personal Electronic Information -- Too Much Paper, Too Little Time

1 -- Know What You Need to Keep and Why.

Whether you are thinking about paper or electronic personal records, most people tend to save more than they need to. So the first step in developing a personal information plan is to identify what needs to be saved in the first place. In the business world, these kinds of plans are usually called retention schedules. 

Here are some of the basic assumptions you should use when it comes to thinking about what needs to be saved.

Very basically anything that you currently have, and paid a lot of money for (home, car, large appliances), you should still have the mortgage, receipt, etc.  Health documents--same deal.  Bank statements or credit card statements, however, you can toss after a year.  So go ahead and throw out that bank statement you've had since 1982.  For a more extensive list check out: http://www.sosorganize.net/Documents/Personal%20Records%20Retention%20on%20Letterhead.pdf  

2 -- Get Rid of as Much Paper as You Can.

With information about retention schedules in hand, head to those paper files cluttering up your office and basement. Go through all your paper files with an eye toward your new retention schedules. Get rid of EVERYTHING YOU DO NOT NEED.   Whether this means sending the paper off to a professional shredding company, or sitting in front of your own personal shredder for hours upon hours feeding paper into the “instant confetti maker,” it’s important to destroy unneeded documents that could be compromising to your personal security. 

3 -- Decide What to Do With the Paper That Remains.

Now that you have the paper down to something more manageable, think about whether it is worth digitizing everything (a fancy word for scanning) or just leaving it as is. In the business world, this is often called backfile conversion. Organizations frequently get so caught up with trying to do something about the past that they never get on with managing the future. 

So decide how you want to approach this question of backfile conversion. What you actually decide is probably less important than actually making a decision.

You should also decide at this point whether there are some core paper documents that would be better off stored off-site, say in a safe deposit box (and likely scanned as well).

4 -- Clean out your digital garage.

You may have cleaned the dozens of boxes that were cluttering up your garage for years, but if your computer and email inbox have become the new “storage bin” then you need to do some spring cleaning.  Going through your email inbox to organize mail and delete items that are no longer necessary will not only improve your email systems capacity and speed of operation, but it will also make your digital workspace easier to navigate through.  This same philosophy should be applied to all your personal records.  Keep your external hard drive up to date and discard old outdated documents.

So, your file cabinets in your home office are now mostly empty. What next?

An important factor to think about when digitizing documents is organization.  This means creating folders on your computer and filing documents in a way that you are actually able to navigate through it. To start with, simple is better than complex. Just keep saying this over and over again.
For example, you might start with folders structured around the document types mentioned in point 1 above. The point here is that for a simple home filing system, your folder structure should match your retention requirements. This will eventually allow you to get rid of information by date once it is no longer needed. This might mean top-level folder with names like…

• Accident Reports/Claims
• Bank Statements
• Checks (canceled)
• Contracts (expired)
• Contracts (current)
• etc.

6 -- Invest in a personal scanner with an automatic document feeder.

Just do it. If you don't, waiting around for a flatbed scanner will drive you crazy. Thinking of it as a small investment in a paperless world.

A nice side benefit of a scanner with an ADF is that you can amaze your friends by scanning old photos at like 10 per minute. You can be popular with your friends by loaning your supercool ADF scanner to them when they are creating photobooks for their relatives to celebrate some special occasion.
Once you have your scanner in place and your basic file system in place, make a commitment to scan every piece of paper that comes in as soon as it comes in. Commit also to making an immediate searchable PDF of every electronic piece of information that comes in that needs to be saved.

7 -- Don't neglect network security.

Now that you are digitizing your personal information, take another look at those pesky wifi settings. Is access passworded? Again, be honest. Most people don't bother. You can tell by just taking your laptop out into the neighborhood and walking around and watching the available wifi networks change. Note how few of them are secure.

8 -- Invest in off-site back-up.

Backing up to an external hard drive sitting next to your computer is all well and good for protecting against hardware crashes, but does nothing to protect you if the house burns down or the pipes leak or…

Off-site encrypted back-up is usually available for a small monthly fee. It operates in the background. You don't even need to think about it. An example is Carbonite, but there are lots of other companies out there. Just do it.
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Chris Palmer is a senior business marketing major at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia.  After spending the past semester studying business abroad in Antwerp, Belgium, he is now working at AIIM as our summer intern, helping to manage the “8 things” blog among other AIIM related projects.  Check him out on LinkedIn!  ()

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