August 2007 Archives

Let’s face it, everyone has to start somewhere. You’ve done your homework, created your blog, wrote posts, spread the word, maybe even had a few positive comments but alas, now all you hear are crickets.

The truth is, even the most experienced and successful bloggers have been there. All I can say is the experience of not being “read” brings about a lot of deep introspection. If anything, this is a good time to hone your writing skills and feel less inhibited in your views. No one said that blogging would be easy, and this time is certainly a test of your “sticktoitivity”. If you truly believe in what you bring to your blog audience, this isn’t the time to give up.

Darren Rowse’ post “What to do when it feels like no one is reading your blog” tackles this conundrum and gives you his thoughts based on his time at the pulpit.

Seth Godin’s If no one reads your post does it exist? gives a more holistic view on this.

The act of writing a blog changes people, especially business people. The first thing it does is change posture. Once you realize that no HAS to read your blog, that you can't MAKE them read your blog, you approach writing with humility and view readers with gratitude. The second thing it does is force you to be clear. If you write something that's confusing or in shorthand, you fail.

Finally, I suggest you gather inspiration from those that have “made” it , you might be surprised at how entertaining they are as well…

According to Technorati the most linked to Blog is engadget, and next in line is Boing Boing

Sara Ost’s healthbolt was ranked number one by MedGadget and under the “you have too much time to kill category” you can always read more tips on blogging with 113 blogging tips

The popularity of online video is surging, but video and search engine optimization aren't easy to mix. SEO specialist George Ajazi explains how to optimize video for natural search.

Speaking of surges, from Silicon Alley Insider, statistics that confirm the surging popularity of online advertising. While traditional media spending continues to shrink, online market share increased 7% in one year--astounding.

We've written about blackhat SEO and whitehat SEO recently, always taking the position that blackhat is to be avoided like the plague. But Mark Jackson takes an objectivel position and explains when marketers should wear the white hat, gray hat, and even the black hat.

Thomas McMahon reports from SES 2007 on the latest thinking on Web analytics. Web analytics, already a mysterious art, promises to become even more complex with the need for tools to track social media and other online activities.

Along those lines, read Susan Esparza's The Impact of Social Media on Search Rankings for a better understanding of how our complex online world is becoming more complex.

Keywords are the starting point of any SEO campaign, so care must be taken to assure the proper keyword usage and proper quality. Using the wrong keywords won't get you the results you want, and plastering the right keywords all over your site will not work any better. Below are readings and tools to help you maneuver your way through the sea of keywords:

Specifically for those of you with a pay-per-click(PPC) ad strategy, the post “Ultimate Guide on Dynamic Keyword insertion” Gives some tips on increasing your visibility when advertising on Google. Here is what he has to say on dynamic keyword insertion:

On most major Pay Per Click platforms, there is a little known feature called “Dynamic Keyword Insertion”. Dynamic Keyword Insertion is one of those “dirty little secrets” used by PPC marketing agencies and is the cornerstone of the millions of Internet marketing eBooks written by self proclaimed “gurus”. Dynamic Keyword Insertion needs to be fully understood before it can become marginally effective and when it is, it can increase your ads click through rate (And subsequently quality score) massively.

For more on Keyword focus from search engine land’s Aaron Wall. According to Aaron, the method of placing keywords on your title/text is evolving now that search engines such as Google are changing the way they trawl for results. Simply plastering keywords all over your site is not enough anymore. In fact, it may even be detrimental to your overall ranking as Google is now moving towards being able to detect natural versus unnatural patterns in web pages. Aaron mentions a couple of ways to make sure you optimize your site’s use of keywords effectively, such as- Mix things up and change your word order and "leverage" keyword modifiers in page content.

Google has a tool that can help you come up with a variety of keywords that relate to your main keyword. Although there is no guaranty that you’ll rank better with use of this tool, it does give you more ideas of different words that your customers might use that relate to your business.

I found this story of Stephan Spencer’s (CNET’s resident blogger) daughter quite interesting. Her successful launch (albeit humble in relation to some major blogs/websites) of her Neopet site could definitely be a benchmark for how a small business should go about planning their site/blog. Here is a bit on how she got started:

In early 2006, when Chloe was 15, she decided to devote a blog to Neopets, a virtual pets site popular with kids the world over. After performing some keyword research through WordTracker and Google Suggest for her blog's title and section headings, she discovered that "neopets cheats" was a hugely popular search term to target for her blog. So she settled on the name: the "Ultimate Neopets Cheats Site." She then used the free WordPress.com service to start the blog. Chloe's site was able to ride on the coattails of WordPress.com's trust and authority in the eyes of Google, thus sidestepping the "Google Sandbox" and jumping to page 1 in Google for the term "neopet cheats" within two weeks of launch.

Pretty good for a 15 year old! Here are a couple of key learnings—

- Define your niche, market, and “product” well
- Do start off by checking out tools such as Wordtracker or Google Suggest and see which keywords are being used the most as it relates to your business/industry. Pick one that you find works best for you and integrate (if possible) into your url or blog name
- Create a site that answers the needs of your market – strong content and navigation being at the top of the list.
- As your visibility grows so should your site. Be flexible with changes that you may need to implement in order to continue being relevant to your market.

Finally, it may be good to tell yourself – “If a 15 year old can do it, so can I.”

More tips that may get you started on the right foot--

Successful Blog Tips
21 Tips

Matt Cutts recently gave a talk on “Whitehat SEO tips for Bloggers” at a WordCamp 2007 conference. Who is Matt Cutts? He is the guru of all things Google; he currently heads Google’s Webspam team and has been working at Google for 7 years.

There are some important new points that he brings up in his lecture.

- Underscores (found in urls) are now going to be treated as word separators by Google. Previously, urls that you would think were keyword rich would actually be the opposite if separated by underscores – so www.americas_best_pie would only be taken by the googlebot as literally Americas_best_pie – but not anymore.

- The only way to get your blog into Google News is to have multiple authors- this being a Google News requirement for inclusion.

- Use relevant synonyms when you can in your blog – they can be as good as your more “obvious” keywords.

For more tips and comments -- Stephanie Booth provides a more detailed recap of the lecture in her blog

For the video on the talk check this post by John Pozadzides . You might be interested in reading Matt Cutt’s own comments on his talk in his blog . For those who don’t have time to disseminate the presentation or sit through an hour of the video it might be worth your time to refer to Stephan Spencer’s post on the lecture.

"Conversion rate" is a deceptively complicated term in search marketing. Kevin Gold explains the nuances of conversion rates in his detailed and informative post.

Some folks love to use frames in Web site design. Pandia explains why frames and SEO don't mix.

In many quarters, Google is under fire for invading our privacy. The issue is complicated for consumers, because there's a trade-off between protecting our personal information and effective searching. In his thoughtful post Google, Privacy and You, Stuart Brown offers a much needed balanced view.

Everybody's talking about conversational marketing. Search marketers need to pay attention to how it evolves, because conversations may someday become more effective than interruption marketing techniques and even certain forms of paid search. The big question, posed by Nic Brisbourne, is this--will conversational marketing scale? Like the rest of us, he doesn't have the answer, but kudos for asking the right question.

But then again ... is scalability the right question? Tony Hung makes the case that when you scale conversational marketing, it's no longer conversation.

Not everyone has the time to write thought provoking posts every day, especially if you’re running a business. Yet blogging has become mainstream and is still worth the time and effort, especially for a small-medium business trying to be heard above all the Internet “noise". Here are four tips for new business bloggers.

- In the main, keep your business blog focused on business. It's more professional, and most likely your customers don’t really want to know what your dog had for lunch the other day (unless your business is selling dog food).

- Write posts that are pertinent to your industry/niche and feel free to react on current trends or issues – your views will reflect on how your company operates or is managed.

- Publish lists of your favorite industry Web sites or references. People are always interested in adding to their own list – keeping it updated will also give people reason to come back for more.

- Take a step back and look at your topics- Do they position you as an expert? Are the topics relevant and interesting to your market? Your blog will only be as successful as it is useful.

For further details on starting your business blog--

Blogging Baby Steps

Blog Review Checklist

WorkZ New Blog Checklist

What if you really want a company blog, but fear your customer base isn't reading blogs? One thing I wouldn't do is give up on the idea, because even if today's customers aren't following blogs, tomorrow's customers will be. Here are some ways you can draw your customers into conversations on your blog.

1. Become a blog evangelist. Whenever you have an opportunity, talk to your customers about why you have a blog and how it can help them.

2. Display your blog URL off-line everywhere--business cards, letterhead, proposals, invoices, newsletters, e-mail signatures, storefront windows, etc. Repetition makes the message stick.

3. Develop a tag line for your blog that describes its value to your customer. Make the tag line part of your off-line messaging as well as the URL.

4. Send customers e-mails with links to specific blog posts they may be interested in, and invite them to comment.

5. Write a post on a specific product or service issue, soliciting customer input. E-mail a link to the post to your customers and let them know you really want and need their help.

6. Interview a client or profile their company. Besides being flattering, this will arouse interest within the client's company (thus attracting other readers) and give them material for their own marketing and public relations.

7. Offer e-mail subscriptions. Not everybody understands RSS feed aggregators. Again, invite customers to subscribe via e-mail in an e-mail and/or a postcard mailing.

8. Publish content that is informative, relevant, and begs for conversation. In the end, solid content is the only way to inspire readers to come back.

9. Be persistent. Don't get discouraged if your blog is not an overnight success. Few marketing programs are. It may take many repetitions before your blog message takes hold--but eventually, it will.

(This post is part of ProBlogger's 31 Days to Building a Better Blog project.)

What is in store for SEO or SEM? A number of forums and blogs try their hand at gazing into the SEO crystal ball.

E-gain’s Peter Young takes a pragmatic view and quotes the following from Andy Jeal of Mediavest :

“I think the growth of search engines will slow - particularly when people realize that in many ways these search engines simply act as telephones”. Specifically he believes TV advertising still had a role in encouraging people to search for particular brands in the first instance.”

Search Insider’s Search Engines Innovate, Why Not SEMs? By Gord Hotchkiss was able to talk to some of the industry’s top movers and shakers and he has this to say –

“I realized I haven't seen a lot of innovation lately. Certainly, the engines themselves are innovating. And I'm seeing innovation in adjacent areas (Web analytics, competitive intelligence). But I'm not seeing a lot happen in the search-marketing space. After a raft of proprietary bid management tools hit a few years ago, there's been little happening to move the industry forward. In fact, I've noticed a lot of SEM heads buried in the sand. We are not encouraging change; we are actively fighting it… It's a very risky call to spend time and resources developing new tools or technologies that can be rendered useless by an arbitrary change at Google or Yahoo -- or made obsolete by the rapidly increasing pace of innovation.” “The change that's happening in the search space is reflective of the change that is happening throughout marketing and advertising. It's the continuing evolution of a much more efficient marketplace, where connections between customers and vendors are made tremendously more effective through access to information on both sides.”

But a lack of change notwithstanding, what is going to be important and what won’t be? Web Analytics World’s Manoj Jasra goes through a list of what they think will and will not matter for future search engine marketing strategy.

Hard to believe that an industry as new as search engine marketing could be
resisting innovation, or innovating on tactics alone.

At the end of the day, as the old Chinese proverb says “The only thing constant is change” – this is especially true for Internet technology. Try to make decisions based on what your business needs the most now, with the knowledge that things is bound to change in the future.

Here's the glossary of essential SEO jargon from SEOmoz that we mentioned in yesterday's post about how search engines work. Packed with entries, this glossary is one you'll want to keep handy.

How do Google, Yahoo and Microsoft compare for paid search marketing performance? Read this report card from Search Engine Land and find out!

"Advertising Age" interviews Danny Sullivan on local search. See the future, now.

Outstanding tips from Richard Burckhardt on SEO. He takes fairly complicated techniques and translates them into plain English.

More on local search. Search Engine Land reports statistics that confirm the rapid growth of local search and its importance in a fully integrated marketing plan.

Even before trying to strategize the best ways to go up in search engine rankings, designing a super efficient website and planning your way through the maze of search engine marketing tactics, you might be interested in taking a step back to wonder –

How do search engines work?

Here is how wikipedia defines Search Engines:

A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system, such as on the World Wide Web, inside a corporate or proprietary network, or in a personal computer. The search engine allows one to ask for content meeting specific criteria (typically those containing a given word or phrase) and retrieves a list of items that match those criteria. This list is often sorted with respect to some measure of relevance of the results. Search engines use regularly updated indexes to operate quickly and efficiently.

Well, we think we pretty much know what search engines mean, but how do they work? Simply said, there are three steps a search engine goes through – web crawling, indexing, and searching. Search engines store a vast amount of information on web pages- information which they amass using a web crawler (or spider). The pages are then analyzed and indexed based on links and “tags”. So, when you type in your query into the search box of your chosen search engine, the engine then checks all their indexed information based on the keyword you used – and voila they churn out the results ranked according to relevance.

This is of course a really simple way of looking at the search world, but here are a couple of other references you can look into in order to read more into search engines and how they work:

Marci Crane from PromotionWorld also tries to answer that question in her article “Ever wonder how Google Googles and Yahoo Yahoos?”

For those that absorb presentations better than reading long text -- Learn the net has a presentation on how search engines work.

Another good site to visit for more detail is How Stuff Works
where they give a simple to understand yet detailed definition of how search engines work.

Finally, it is always useful to have a glossary of terms for you to use as you try to understand the lay of the land