Blogging Articles by SEO Speedwagon

May 18, 2009

Google Profiles Now Above the Fold?

In spite of that odd numerical URL that persists and 302 hops, my Google Profile has proven to indeed be a climber, for the first time breaking above the fold for the vanity search I have been vainly keeping my own eye on from day one:

Now, as is normally the case with a non-temporary 302--THE problem with a non-temporary 302 you might conclude--I don't know whether to link to http://www.google.com/profiles/John.Lustina or http://www.google.com/profiles/116187582762783426547 when I am referring to it.

Google?

Google Profiles Now Above the Fold?
Posted by john at 10:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

April 25, 2009

Bonfire of the Vanity Search

Although unveiled in the innocuous position last--always, mind you--of the first page for your name, it seems more likely ever-prescient Google has a larger share in mind than the 10th result on a page; namely, a cover page for Socially skitzophrenic above-the-fold situations like the following:

Are they actually after, rather, One Profile to rule them all?

Bonfire of the Vanity Search
Posted by john at 10:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

September 30, 2008

5 Things to Consider When Hiring a Social Media Consultant and/or Company

Here's my take regarding the 5 things a company should look for when trying to hire a social media consultant and/or company:

1 - Company Credibility

How long has the company and/or consultant you are looking at been around? Are they new to this industry or do they have a significant, quality experience under their belts? Who are their current clients? Do they have a list of referrals for clients that have utilized their social media services in the past?

In addition to asking these important questions, you should also get acclimated to what is being said about that consultant within the social media realm to see if there are any negative connotations associated with their name. You will want to ensure you are working with a social media consultant who has a credible name online since his or her reputation will affect yours once he or she begins working on behalf of your company.

2 - Past Projects

Can you view some of their past work? This will give you a good idea as to whether or not they have the creative experience necessary to help you achieve your goals. Seeing what one has done for others will give you a very good understanding of what is possible regarding your endeavors. Has this consultant worked with small, medium, or large clientele? The answer to that question can sway your thinking because your brand may be larger and need someone who has dealt with major companies to truly create synergy for your social media objectives. Lastly, ask questions related to if this consultant has worked with other clients in your particular vertical market? Utilizing a consultant who already has knowledge about your industry can save your social media campaigns an enormous amount of time because a good deal of the learning curve on their end will already have been established.

3 - Strategy Best Practices

Have them define their strategy without asking them to give away the bank. A reputable social media consultant should have no problems letting you know how they conduct business and what they think are the best practices within the social media industry.

Additionally, you should consider the following: How will they interact with community members among social media hubs online? What approach will they take to get community members excited about your brand without looking like he or she is trying to utilize marketing tactics? How many hours will they spend in the “trenches” on your behalf each month? How are they going to measure the buzz being generated about your brand online? What are their SOP’s regarding making their clients aware of reputation management issues surrounding their brands online? Lastly, how have they handled reputation management issues for clients in the past?

4 - Guidance

A company should have the consultant they are looking at hiring give them feedback as to what type of social media campaign can be conducted with their current multi-media resources. It is also imperative to have the consultant give you a taste of what you will get from having them conduct social media consulting on your behalf. They don’t have to create a major social media strategy before starting the relationship, but it is good to see what’s under the hood before you embark on a business relationship with this person. Have them take a look at your current social media assets and walk you through a micro-strategy that could be used to enhance a small area of your business. This will give you the chance to see how this consultant thinks and really how creative they can be with your brand. It also shows that this consultant is willing to invest some energy to get your business--both parties win in this type of relationship!

5 - Like-ability

It all comes down to the amount of trust the social media consultant has created for you up to this point. Your questions have been answered and you have seen their work, now what? Do a gut check and review all of the facts that have been presented by the potential social media consultant. Generally you will have a feeling one way or the other and it’s your responsibility to ensure your company works with a consultant that can be trusted. If you have questions about the information that has been presented to you, then bring them up to the consultant for further clarification. After receiving his or her feedback you should present this information to other members of your company to see if they have questions to be answered. The main point here is to seek insight from others to be sure you are making the right decision by creating a strategic business alliance with this consultant.
Finding the right social media consultant to work with does not have to be a daunting task.

By conducting all of the activities mentioned above, you will be ready to make an educated decision as to whether or not it will benefit your company to work with this potential social media consultant.

5 Things to Consider When Hiring a Social Media Consultant and/or Company
Posted by brett at 11:28 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

July 18, 2008

Reputation Management Tool: Omgili

Another cool tool (Omgili) to aid reputation management specialists in finding a plethora of sites that are potentially influencing their clients brands online. I took the site for a test drive today and found a good number of sites that represented one of my clients. You can now monitor a large number of discussion/review sites in one fail swoop and look like a champ to your clients. Omgili describes itself as "a way to find "subjective information". As opposed to traditional search engines, which search for sites and pages, Omgili finds consumer opinions, debates, discussions, personal experiences, answers and solutions." This site looks very promising and could be a major player in relation to its quasi competitors Twing, BoardTracker, BoardReader, and Twingly.

Reputation Management Tool: Omgili
Posted by brett at 05:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

July 14, 2008

Track Corporate Blog Activities Online

There are a variety of paid tools available to marketers regarding what bloggers are saying about their clients. For people looking for a free alternative to seeing what's being said about their clients in the blogging world I would recommend checking out Trendpedia. It is currently in Beta but offers some basic information to help marketers create a benchmark before they conduct social media marketing activities. Trendpedia is a good starting point if you don't have a large amount of money to put into social media monitoring services and need basic data related to your campaigns.

The only major downside to this site is that users can't download the data that's presented when search queries are conducted. Other than that I think this site can be a good resource for people who looking for a snapshot regarding their social media monitoring campaigns. This can be a good to tool to use initially while you are looking for a professional social media monitoring solution.

Track Corporate Blog Activities Online
Posted by brett at 10:18 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

July 01, 2008

Micro-blogging Submission Tool: Brabblr.com

Trying to keep up with friends across the myriad of micro-blogging communities can be quite difficult if you have many profiles created in this space. Rather than trying to go to each one on a daily basis to keep your followers updated wouldn't it be cool if you could log into one location and zip your messages to all of them. Well, Brabblr is now making that possible through its "Alpha" platform, where users can make submissions to the following micro-blogging communities with one submission:

- Twitter
- Pownce
- Jaiku
- tumblr
- Jabber
- Frazr
- Wamadu
- Mambler
- Boomloop
- Wevent
- gmail
- Roundhousekick

Brabblr calls itself a mashUp for the micro-services and looks like a promising solution for people who are on the go and have little time to keep their friends up to date with the changes taking place in their lives. Here's another interesting way to make sense of our busy lives!

Micro-blogging Submission Tool: Brabblr.com
Posted by brett at 11:34 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

May 21, 2008

Corporate Blogging - Just Say Yes

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has a blog. That's big news. Joe Sharkey's February 10, 2008 NYT article, "Tell the T.S.A. (and Don’t Hold Back)," illustrates how the TSA has boldly begun a blog to help foster better communication between airport security employees and the flying public. The Evolution of Security blog is chock full of useful info and they aren't afraid to tackle tough issues - as in this discussion of a pilot program for screening airport employees - or to provide the latest expert opinion on hydrogen peroxide and Tang bomb threats.

Mr. Sharkey's article quotes Kip Hawley, the TSA's director, on the value of the TSA blog: "We knew we were going to get a big surge of negativity; we knew it would be a very juicy opportunity" for the angry, Mr. Hawley said, adding: "I think once people realize we’re putting substantive content on there and really answering questions, the tone will calm down — and it will lead to the same thing happening at the checkpoint."

While some companies think that they can't risk negative publicity by inviting public comment on a corporate blog, they maybe should think again. If the TSA, surely a magnet for anger and potentially inflammatory public comment can see the value of reaching out to the public, what might a brand gain from doing the same thing?

Corporate Blogging - Just Say Yes
Posted by lisa at 12:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

April 04, 2008

Social Media News: Sprout Review

Here's a site for those of you looking to create widgets that combine many forms of multi-media content: Sprout. They describe their site as "a quick and easy way for beginner and pro users to create living content including websites, banners, videos, music, photos, RSS feeds, calendars and more."

Here are a few examples of recently created Sprouts:

Sprouts can be promotional, personal, or informational and allow creators to integrate RSS, videos, images, podcasts, etc. into their widgets to make them come alive. Sprouts have also been described as "interactive and portable chunks of web content, widgets, mashups or mini-sites."

Sprouts are a great way to get your interactive content into the hands consumers looking for multimedia to consume. Sprouts have many cool features including:

Pre-built Templates-

Easy Asset Management-

Flexible Components-

Functional Publishing Platform-

Advanced Tracking Options-

I have a feeling this site will make major headway in the coming months as corporations and consumers get word of their highly functional widget offering.

Social Media News: Sprout Review
Posted by brett at 10:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

March 07, 2008

Social Media: Why Some AD/PR Agencies Don't Get It

I have seen a tremendous amount of hoopla online over the last couple of months related to social media marketing strategies being implemented by AD and PR agencies. Unfortunately, many of these types of agencies seem to be trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole. Rather than spending time researching for portals to have their clients generate buzz related to their products and/or services, they are taking a shotgun approach to social media marketing.

At the beginning of each social media campaign there should be a great deal of research conducted to find a needle in a hay stack; being a niche marketing opportunity. After a good deal of social media portal candidates are selected then the next step in the process is finding out what type of content the active users will find interesting. This way you can be sure that the most active members within these portals will positively interact with your clients brands, products, services, etc. Building a presence within each social media portal will take time and should be looked at as one of the most important activities one can conduct on behalf of a client.

If you are actively engaged in social media portals and constantly creating content that users can find meaningful, then you will ensure your clients have the greatest impact when they introduce new material to active bloggers, and social media participants. Then your biggest challenge will be monitoring how much buzz you are generating for your clients and not whether or not you are reaching the right target market.

Social Media: Why Some AD/PR Agencies Don't Get It
Posted by brett at 05:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

February 27, 2008

A Global Perspective of Social Networking Usage

A newspaper in France called "Le Monde" recently published a pretty sweet map that describes the usage of social networking portals across the globe, which was originally created by the research firm Datamonitor. The social networking usage graph depicts the number of hours (in millions) users spend at major portals across 5 world wide regions and sheds some light on the diversity of social networking participants around the globe.

In North America it shows that MySpace has a slight lead on FaceBook regarding social networking usage within the states. The users in Brazil and India seem to migrate towards Orkut, whereas in Asia-Pacific Cyworld and Mixi are the top dogs chosen by users. Africa social networking users gravitate towards sites like Netlog, Yonja, and Skyblog, while users in Latin America and Mongolia prefer to use hi5 to get their social networking fulfillment each day.

Considering Myspace and FaceBook has spent a considerable amount of time in the last few months working on expanding into other markets, its only a matter of time until these US focused giants gain proportional existence in other foreign regions. It will be interesting to to see who dominates the foreign social networking landscape in the near future. Time to place your bets folks....

A Global Perspective of Social Networking Usage
Posted by brett at 06:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

February 20, 2008

Search Engine Marketing Myths

One of the questions we get asked is about myths in the field of SEO or Search Engine Marketing. Here are three of the most current SEO/SEM myths:

1. SEO is done once, then you sit back and enjoy the fruits forever.

Running a successful SEO campaign is not like launching a missile. It's more like driving a car. You see you're starting to veer to the shoulder, and you compensate. You make turns when necessary. When we explain upfront to a client that during a campaign, we're going to work, then observe, then work again if the results aren't what we want, most understand it, and it paves the way for a smooth relationship. Often, people think SEO is a two-party vacuum -- the client site and the engine. They don't typically realize that their competitors are also working hard, and that every time the client moves up a spot, someone else moves down -- and typically isn't too happy about it.

2. Flash (or AJAX, or any technique) is universally bad.

Upon starting a campaign, we're often greeted by some pretty hostile and defensive IT and design departments. They've read article after article about how a certain technique spells certain SEO death, and they assume we're going to preach the same doom-and-gloom sermon and tell them their techniques are forbidden. Certainly, we have our coding preferences, but we're not here to dictate look, feel, or overall visual design. Instead, we work very hard to suggest changes to supplement existing site techniques, not replace them. We study all sorts of sites, and we can cite examples of Flash pages that lead their industry with almost no text on the page. So balance is critical. What you lack with one SEO factor you need to make up with others.

3. Search engines love blogs.

This really isn't a myth as much as it is a misapplication of cause and effect. What search engines love is content in its best forms: unique, frequently updated, easy to link to (and from), and easy to access from the root domain. It's merely a coincidence that most blogging platforms meet many of these criteria with minimal tweaking. To say that certain content performs better than other content because it's on a blog is like saying that certain people have lower blood pressure than other people because they frequently park near the fitness center. This misses the bigger picture. Search engines loved news sites long before blogs became popular, because well optimized news sites have the same characteristics. The difference today is that content platforms enable this type of site much more readily than they did 10 or even 5 years ago.

Search Engine Marketing Myths
Posted by doug at 11:49 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

February 19, 2008

Social Media News Aggregator: newspond

Newspond is a clean news site that is now being described as a tireless electronic brain that is an ultimate hub for the latest news stories related to technology, science, and gaming. It has a clean look and is matched by the sites ability to parse stories across news sites and blog hubs online. Once a story starts showing up online Newspond notes all details about the story such as the rate at which people click on or bookmark the article and the size of each of the sites reporting that story. It utilizes a rating system called "Rating Buoyancy" which is described by Newspond as a "measure of the exact upward force exerted on a news story by the internet, in real-time."

I have a feeling we are going to see some really cool things coming from Newspond in the near future.

Social Media News Aggregator: newspond
Posted by brett at 08:59 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

February 18, 2008

comScore and Media Contacts Study Depicts Variances Among Online Video Viewer Segments

A study by comScore and Media Contacts was conducted to understand the consumption habits and mindsets of Internet video users as they relate to online video, TV, and advertising plus content across both media. The findings were very interesting in that the top 20% of viewers averaged 841 minutes of online viewing per month, moderate viewers (next 30%) spent 77 minutes, and the bottom 50% spent just 6 minutes a month conducting the same activities online.

The heaviest users spent most of their time online visiting niche video sites that catered to individual topics with less general videos being displayed.

Moderate viewers sent most of their time visiting specific video content on broadcast TV sites, including WorldNow (ABC), CBS TV Local, ABC Daytime, Scripps TV, and CMT, rather than frequenting more general video-sharing sites.

The study found that light online video viewers are actually heavier TV consumers, with 46 percent of this group indicating they watch more than 13 hours of TV per week. In comparison, 39 percent of moderate video viewers and 30 percent of heavy video viewers watched the same amount of TV.

Although there is a great deal of variance between the types of videos, content, and media sources being accessed online it is imperative to gain a better understanding of what consumers are actively watching to better meet their needs from a marketing perspective. This type of research will lay the foundation for how search marketing companies target online video consumers from a strategy standpoint.

comScore and Media Contacts Study Depicts Variances Among Online Video Viewer Segments
Posted by brett at 11:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

February 08, 2008

FaceBook Now Targeting Spanish Users

FaceBook is now targeting users outside the US by unveiling a Spanish-language version of its popular online social network, in an attempt to catch up with its rival MySpace. This new platform has been created because FaceBook currently has about 60% of its users reside outside of the US. Facebook plans to add French and German versions before April, according to Matt Cohler, the Palo Alto-based company's vice president of strategy and operations. Out of its 64 million active users, 2.8 million are in Latin America and Spain, which is a great incentive for FaceBook to cater to this Spanish speaking population. As of next week, anyone accessing FaceBook from a Spanish speaking country will be routed to the Spanish version of their Web site. There were 1,500 FaceBook users who translated the sites vernacular and applications into Spanish using tools provided by the company. The same approach is currently being used to translate the site into French and German versions of this popular social networking platform.

FaceBook Now Targeting Spanish Users
Posted by brett at 10:56 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

February 05, 2008

Reputation Management: How to Track Corporate Buzz Online

Tracking corporate buzz can be easy if you know the right Web sites to monitor online. Companies wishing to track their corporate buzz online should utilize blog and social media Web sites that have active users who are engaged on a daily basis with a variety of brands from companies across the Web. In an attempt to make this easier for you marketing professionals out there I have compiled a list of the sites you should monitor along with brief descriptions about each site.

Serph - A search engine that crawls online social media sites to find the latest buzz about a company, product, etc.

Technorati - Allows users to search for user-generated media (including weblogs) by tag or keyword.

Digg - A great place to monitor if your clients are in the technology industry.

Reddit - A social news site that was launched in June 2005 and is a competitor to Digg.

ShoutWire - Provides discussion of news, entertainment and videos every day, as well as a provides a free blogging platform with image and video hosting.

Propellor - Owned and operated by AOL LLC, a Time-Warner company and provides news and video online.

NewsVine - Site built with the purpose of allowing users an efficient way to read, write, and interact with the news.

A great way to monitor these types of sites is to set up Google Alerts that use your company name, products and services, or corporate professionals plus the name of the social media/blog news sites as your search query. This way you will be notified via email if Google's search results are displaying any information about your brand at any of the sites mentioned above.

Reputation Management: How to Track Corporate Buzz Online
Posted by brett at 10:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

January 30, 2008

Til Death Do Us Part…Or Maybe Not…

While I'm sitting here figuring new and creative ways to be a better and more frequent blogger, I came across this post on Mashable concerning how to "Prepare For Your Death Online: 20+ Helpful Tools." I really think that if some people can go to the trouble of ensuring that their blogs, online profiles, etc. are managed after their death, then I think I can do a better job of doing so while I am alive.

In this modern age this is a whole area that merits some consideration. What should a person do with their online imprint after their death? Should it be written into your will that you designate an "online executor" to handle all online related affairs?

No worries, if you don't know where to start on all of this, go over to WikiHow and see their helpful tips on "How to Share Your Obituary with Online Friends." A really good tip that the wikiHow article offers is to not include any log on information or passwords in your will, as wills become a part of the public record.

So heck, all of this inspires me. If people can make plans to maintain their online "lives" after death, I can certainly blog a bit more while I'm alive.

Til Death Do Us Part…Or Maybe Not…
Posted by lisa at 01:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

November 28, 2007

SEO Speedwagon Killing In Vegas

Who'd have thought a mere 2.5 years from first post we'd be blogging to beat the band?:

Here's the link for proof this isn't a photoshop job, let's just hope the jump in visits doesn't cause them to wonder what is going on.

I for one am having a T-Shirt made of this, anyone else interested?

SEO Speedwagon Killing In Vegas
Posted by john at 08:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

November 15, 2007

Tagging The Site Organic

We spend a great deal of time on site structural issues with our clients, and one of the first things we usually do with a new client is try and transition them from thinking of SEO as a page-level concern to more of a holistic, organic discipline, one where we must try and understand the site architecture in its interdependent relationship between the whole and its parts. After all, organic is ultimately the moniker that won the day.

Almost invariably the large sites that we recognize are not living up to their potential are what we call top-heavy architecturally, in that the TLD so dominates all things search that even the main folder levels are all but invisible, let alone deeper, longer-tail-rich pages. As we explain the phenomenon we often find ourselves referring to blog structure, and how we might borrow some of the structural characteristics of a blog in discovering how to flatten out the top-heavy site. There are reasons blogs are so eminently crawlable.

One of those reasons is tagging, and I was pleased this morning to find a fellow tag-appreciator in Stephan Spencer, explaining his tag appreciation more eloquently than I have yet seen done to date:

Tagging isn't just a tool for usability (even though it's typically mostly thought of in those terms), it's also a powerful weapon for search engine optimization. That's because tagging allows you to rejig your internal hierarchical linking structure, flowing the link juice more strategically throughout your site. And because those links are textual and keyword-rich, a tag cloud is far superior in terms of SEO to the traditional graphical navigation bar.

Bravo, Stephan. Long live tag conjunction!

Tagging The Site Organic
Posted by john at 07:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

October 13, 2007

Web 2.0 and Social Media Optimization Trends: Memetrackers

I have been scoring the Internet the last few days trying to find resources related to Web 2.0 and/or Social Media Optimization and I came across the idea of “Memetracker Web Sites.” From a Web 2.0 perspective these sites are geared towards collecting information about “hot topics” or things that create a “buzz” in the news or Blogging communities and make this information readily available to the masses. Wikipedia defines the word “Memetracker” as “a tool for studying the migration of memes across a group of people. The term is typically used to describe Web sites that either: A) Analyze blog posts to determine what Web pages are being discussed or cited most often on the World Wide Web, or B) Allow users to vote for links to Web pages that they find of interest.”

The first Memetracker site was most likely Gabe Rivera’s news and politics site called “Memeorandum.com,” which used an algorithm to collect top stories from a plethora of news Web sites and Blogs.

Here’s a list of the top old school Memetracker sites online:

1) Blogniscient
2) BlogRovr
3) Blogrunner
4) Blogsnow
5) Buzzfeed
6) Chuquet
7) Daily Rotation
8) Feedable
9) Megite
10) Newroo
11) Slashdot
12) StrategicBoard
13) Tailrank
14) Techmeme
15) Technorati Kitchen
16) Tinfinger
17) Topix.net
18) TruthLaidBear

How do I benefit from visiting these sites?

Although these sites are viewed as old school Blog news aggregators, they can still be utilized from a “Reputation Management” standpoint. These Blog sites will enable you to see exactly what is being said about your company products, services, complaints, etc. Use these sites as monitoring resources and be proactive in terms of reputation management – don’t get caught being reactive!

Web 2.0 and Social Media Optimization Trends: Memetrackers
Posted by brett at 12:24 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

October 08, 2007

Yes, Virginia(,) SEO Philology

I was quite humbled to see via Link Spiel heute morgen that yours truly unwittingly birthed the SEO Virginia genre long, long ago, circa Summer 2001.

And while they say everything changed after September 11, really the only thing the genre lost in the aftermath was the Really Is convention I thought was authentic at the time. Turns out while I had invented Really completely out of thin air, but not the all-important Is, what we really lost in exactly half of the genre along with our innocence was the comma after the introductory Yes I had faithfully inserted at the time.

SEO Virginia genre history buffs will note Danny Sullivan took less than a year to catch, and correct, his own mistake, the only such self-correction on record. He really is that good.

UPDATE: Reader Brainmuffin e-mails to suggest the genre be officially known as The SEO Virginia Monologues.

Yes, Virginia(,) SEO Philology
Posted by john at 03:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

August 14, 2007

Speedwagon Rolls Out Category Feeds

In an effort to thrust ourselves into 2005, we're happy to announce the rollout of category-specific feeds in addition to our blog's regular "global" XML feed. In other words, if you're completely addicted to corporate reputation management (feed) and Wikipedia (feed) articles but simply can't fathom suffering through another crawling and indexing (feed) lecture, you're in luck.

At the left, you'll see a portion of our list of categories. The full list is always in the left column of the site. As usual, clicking the text itself takes you to all posts in that category. But what's new is the little green RSS button to the left of the text. That takes you to the feed for that category. So to subscribe to a particular category feed, just right-click the button next to your favorite category, copy the link location, and paste it into your feed reader/aggregator.

Big thanks to an old but very effective tutorial that made it very easy to do in Movable Type.

The next step would probably be offering the ability to create "combination" feeds that let users select categories a la carte and merge the selected feeds into one master feed. I'm not quite ready to tackle that yet on an automated scale, but you could certainly set up a Yahoo Pipe and accomplish the same thing.

Speedwagon Rolls Out Category Feeds
Posted by erik at 07:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

April 26, 2007

Rosie O'Donnell's Google Sitelinks Value Meal

An interesting thing happened on Rosie's way out of the door of The View; her sudden, earth-shattering departure caused a quake of an anomaly in the Google result for her name -- namely, the exact same URL appearing twice as a result, both #1 and #2:

What gives? SEO purists might argue that as result #1 is in the Sitelinks formation and Rosie’s site itself links out in the main navigation to her blog, the URL highlighted above exists as both a shortcut that will save users time, per Google’s explanation of the criterion for URLs selected for the formation--

Our systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they're looking for.

--and also exists on its own, as a blog, and thus merits a listing apart from one tied to Rosie's site, ergo the Value Meal Result.

But surely this rare achievement cannot be helped by the fact that Rosie's site itself argues against that very justification with its Title Tag. Aren't those supposed to be quite important, and importantly unique?

Does Rosie's massive influence extend even into the algorithmic sphere?

Rosie O'Donnell's Google Sitelinks Value Meal
Posted by john at 03:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

March 02, 2007

Matt Cutts Concurrence Committee Part Deux

A year after our inaugural ode to Matt Cutts sycophantism, the Concurrence Committee continues to raise the bar to unimaginable heights of fawning flattery. From the mouth of Mr. Cutts today comes the manna of eight (8) words brilliantly crafted into an iambic pentameter gift to the Committee:

I want to play some roller hockey today.

For the poetic purists among us this would actually have to be read as follows to achieve that vaunted meter, though:

i WANT to PLAY some ROL ler HOCKEY to DAY

We're betting the Committee will concur with such a reading.

To be sure, the generous giftiness of the souring gift of phrase did not go unnoticed by the Committee. To date, the eight (8) word throwaway line, albeit beautiful, has received 39 comments!

Our favorite by far:

Hi Matt, as a frequent reader, I was wondering if you could help me out. I know you’re insanely busy, but could you shoot me an email?

Suggested Refrain:

All glory, laud, and honor,
to thee, Redeemer, King,
to whom the lips of children
made sweet hosannas ring.

Matt Cutts Concurrence Committee Part Deux
Posted by john at 03:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

January 30, 2007

Are Corporate Blogs Worth It?

We come across this question frequently and to date it's been hard to quantify an answer. I came across this blog article from Charlene Li this morning and though it won't answer specific questions, it's definitely a good place to start.

So if your contemplating a move to a corporate blog give this article a look and it should help you at least ask the right questions.

P.S. If your interested in more information on a similar topic there was a prior Speedwagon article on Blogging for Big (and Small) Brands a la Forrester talking about the same researcher, Charlene Li, and her insights into "what blogs, RSS feeds, and search engines mean to popular brands"

Are Corporate Blogs Worth It?
Posted by brent at 09:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

October 10, 2006

Romance The Bloggers, But Don’t Forget To Love Yourself

I read an article today in Smart Money called “Romancing The Bloggers�? which details how corporate America is beginning to notice how some bloggers are creating significant positive online buzz for their products. These particular bloggers are not employees of Company A, but enthusiastic disciples of Company A’s products.

PR departments are starting to pay attention to “blogger relations�? and some companies are even wooing popular blogs with free products or even cold hard cash. I think it’s great that some bloggers have created a blog successful enough to garner attention from the company or products they adore. But, what seemed to be missing from the article was why some of these companies haven’t even taken advantage of creating their own blog. Of the companies mentioned, I had a hard time finding a blog that was authored by the actual company.

Let’s face it. Many company blogs are simply “horn tooters�?. But, there’s nothing really wrong with that, especially considering how a good company or business blog can help your performance at the major search engines.

When you frequently write about your company, your business or your industry, search engines like Google and Yahoo give their blessing to fresh and frequently updated content and a double blessing if it’s linked to from other favored sites. Some companies very close to us have seen traffic to their blogs outpace traffic to their web site in less than a year. Some are seeing web site visitors clicking through from their blog approaching 15-20% of their total web site traffic. That’s not to mention how their blogs have improved how their web site ranks for search phrases their target audience frequently uses when searching for their offerings.

I constantly hear about the incredible number of new blogs being born every day, but I’m still surprised at how many companies simply haven’t yet taken the plunge.

If you need to woo third party bloggers to say nice things about your company or products, that’s fine, but don’t miss the blog boat by not doing some of it yourself.

Romance The Bloggers, But Don’t Forget To Love Yourself
Posted by doug at 10:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

September 05, 2006

MSN Loves Blogs Too

We (and our ilk) often talk about how Google favors, at least algorithmically, the blog format. But MSN is right up there in terms of giving preferred treatment to blogs.

"Preferred treatment," of course, is a misnomer and a bit of a joke. After all, the preferential nature goes both ways. Well optimized blogs give engines what they like, and engines respond in kind.

A client started a blog recently that contains posts built of press releases, industry news, pointers to other articles across the web that highlight how his industry's technology is utilized around the world, and occasional links to new content on the main client site. All new material - nothing reprinted.

This client also retains the services of a very smart host/web dev consultant who wrote some nice code to query the blog database, pull the five most recent posts, and link to them statically from the main site's home page. (Often, a "syndication" technique like this would use scripted links to pull the blog's most recent entries.)

The blog began pulling long-tail Google queries within a couple weeks of its first post. But a month later, MSN was out-referring people to the blog. In fact, the blog had taken over MSN's very top spot for a two-word phrase that the client's main site had formerly held.

Too many times, site owners leave it at that - "Search engines love blogs" - and don't grasp that the logical next step is to treat all sites, not just blogs, like blogs. Constant content generation. Generous linking. Smart, keyword-based nomenclature. Be sure to give your "bread and butter" content - everything about your business - the benefit of an archetecture that gets the engines' attention.

MSN Loves Blogs Too
Posted by erik at 11:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

September 01, 2006

Speedwagon Knocks out Its 300th, Joins Elite Club

In a day game on the first of September, SEO Speedwagon put one to straight away center, punctuating its entrance into the 300 Home Run Club! This places the Wagon right on track for the Hall, were it not for those pesky Balco rumors. Although SEO Speedwagon passively denied use of the rub or any other illegal blog enhancer before the Senate Committee, its good name has been besmirched ever since its URL was discovered among Patrick Arnold’s bookmarks.

In a press conference following the game, the agitated player criticized the Intrapromote organization for not publicly acknowledging the 300th post, noting that its publicist had talked to the "head PR guy" prior to the milestone and that he "used an excuse" that they did not realize it was coming up. Intrapromote has since stated that they do not recognize individual achievements in such a manner.

More to come in this story, I’m sure.

Speedwagon Knocks out Its 300th, Joins Elite Club
Posted by tom at 10:23 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

August 21, 2006

More Link Exchange Madness?

If I am missing something here, please call foul.

But if you're trying to get bloggers to join your ad network by offering front page blogroll links to their blogs from your outrageously popular and influential domain, should you then publicize it to the point that an algorthm might get wise to the pay-for-link placements? Wouldn't you at once be undoing what you are trying to do?

I have a hard time interpretting Jeff Burkett, head of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive's sales development team, any other way:

"Some bloggers are open to putting advertising on their site, so why not strike deals with them and help them do that," he wrote last week on his own blog, "Media Landscaping." "The revenue gets shared (in the bloggers favor of course) and we throw in one additional component...A link to their blog on the homepage of washingtonpost.com."

Unless Jeff is planing on throwing in the free condoms, he might be wise to rethink his pitch lest he sully the Washington Post link juice. From the mountainview top at Google, via Matt Cutts himself:

Google’s stance on selling links is pretty clear and we’re pretty accurate at spotting them, both algorithmically and manually. Sites that sell links can lose their trust in search engines.

Scroll all the way down to the bottom and have a gander. At least the folly is honest.

UPDATE: No rel="nofollow�? as of 9pm EST this evening...

UPDATE II: Ominpresent Google is on the scene, and they are trotting out a javascript link blinding precept surprising quite a few in the forums...

More Link Exchange Madness?
Posted by john at 09:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

July 07, 2006

Highlighting the Highlight Post

Call it tooting your own horn. Call it whatever you want. The Wagon prefers to call it the Highlight Post.

Last week, Erik updated our readers on an issue near and dear to our hearts, Google's failure to recognize the Speedwagon due to the fact that "apparently, there's a band with a similar name." The update, of course, was that Google finally welcomed the Wagon! And in closing, Erik expressed his surprise that no one picked up on our post regarding the therapy products results page.

Now, of course we are aware (as most are) that linking to posts yields a very nice search engine impact. That is an important result of the Highlight Post, but the intent should always be the focus. As in Erik's post, the intent was to update one story and to comment on another. And when that focus is met, far greater results can be attained: both stories were picked up by very reputable sources.

So we highlight posts to give further attention to stories that warrant it. And now we understand a little more about its effect on reader behavior. The Highlight Post clues readers in to the fact that we feel something is worth more attention. In this circumstance, our readers agreed and offered further exposure.

Highlighting the Highlight Post
Posted by tom at 02:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

June 28, 2006

Do Moral Victories Count When You Are A Blog?

Alas, we didn't win. But The Wagon is sure proud of the new lustre she gained from shining in front of Annie's 237,000 readers. We admit our wheels will really have to spin fast to catch SEO Roundtable, which took home the SEO Blog prize again this year, making it back-to-back.

Thanks to all who voted for us and congrats Barry!

Do Moral Victories Count When You Are A Blog?
Posted by john at 07:41 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

June 22, 2006

Anatomy of a Blog/Newsletter Archive

Archive, Archive, Archive.

The following transcript is loosely based on many client conversations. For our purpose, we will join this conversation in progress, and leave it in much the same fashion.

Consultant: Oh, so you have a newsletter. Do you archive it?

Client: No. Should we?

Consultant: Absolutely!

Client: Well, we’ll see

. . . And Scene.

The recommendation repeatedly . . . dare I say ritualistically . . . receives reluctance. Why, man, Why? If you go to the trouble of creating fresh, useful content for a targeted audience, why not show it to the search engines? How different is that from a blog? Not too many people argue that blogs do not have search engine value, including newsletter pushers not yet ready to be called bloggers. What they do not realize is that the blog structure is flexible enough for the newsletter pusher to plug in newsletter content postfactum, thus protecting his or her newsletter status.

Enter Jill Whalen. You would be hard pressed to find someone that balances search engine value and user focus better than Jill. When she makes a move, you can guarantee that both parties are justly considered. Jill Whalen has always archived her newsletter, but she did not always archive it like this.

In adopting the blog structure, Jill Whalen has made it easier for humans to peruse her archive, for search engines to index her archive, and for me to advocate such archives. Jill's linking structure is perfect. She drives traffic and correspondence to the archive by linking to the archived location from that article in the newsletter. The article will have a temporary home on the archive main page, as well as permanent homes on its own page, within the monthly and other relevant categories.

With the release of each new issue, the archive will show search engines new pages of fresh, relevant content. And Google loves new content, but Google also loves old content when there is proof of new content, so the older articles will continue to gain steam as new issues are added.

And look at those links, a completely different navigational structure than the main site. Just one link on the left. Jill Whalen is completely emphasizing conversion. And on the other side, she points out the previous issues, beneficial to human and search engine alike. Then she links (with keywords, of course) to her most important sections of the main site. As for the body, every article links to itself in the title, then all categories under which it could be found at the end of the article.

More pages, more fresh content, and more keyword-rich links equate to more relevance, more importance, and better indexability. If you will not do if for me, please do it for Jill Whalen.

Anatomy of a Blog/Newsletter Archive
Posted by tom at 01:16 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

June 21, 2006

SEO Speedwagon Makes the Sherpa Blog Short List

We want to express our gratitude for the nomination of SEO Speedwagon to Marketing Sherpa's list of Best Blogs on Search Marketing.

We're in some great company this year, including last year's winner, Barry Schwartz's SE Roundtable. Despite what Barry says, we're pretty sure he wants the award to go to someone else this year, so true to our mission, we'd like to recommend a site of which we're quite familiar, and of which we're quite proud: Us.

So vote today! (Please.)

Seriously, though, following are the list of blogs in our category. Some you're probably already familiar with, and some might be new:

• Search Engine Lowdown
• Search Engine Roundtable
• Aaron Wall's SEO Book
• Top Rank
• iBlogMarketing
• SEO Speedwagon
• Kieden Blog
• Search Views
• Kelvin Hui
• Make Easy Money with Google and Adsense

Check out the entire list, as well as the blogs in the other categories.

SEO Speedwagon Makes the Sherpa Blog Short List
Posted by erik at 02:33 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

April 13, 2006

Search Engine Management on a Friendly Level

I have long come to terms with the fact that search engine marketing services cannot be of use in the event of most offline emergencies. If a bomb is moments from detonation or my fellow man is stalked by an ugly mob with redcurrants, my ability to optimize a web page seems inconsequential. Our industry, mighty though it is, leaves me with a lower hero quotient when I put on my civvies.

That is until now!

An old friend called me yesterday. More than a few years ago, he gave some quotes to an acquaintance that was struggling to complete an article about an unsavory topic. She, in turn, made the article about him. This has been the source of great embarrassment, as anyone – friends, family, business associates – who googles him sees this article at #1.

My friend needs search engine management just like McDonald’s, but not on a super sized scale, although You would think the two entities were reversed in terms of respective concern. He’ll jot down Doogie Howser nightcaps on a well-named blogger account for a few months. Maybe a few external links, and the first results page will be his.

Emergency averted. Add a few points to the hero quotient.

After all, he is not a business battling entire sites. He is a human battling one article. I left my friend with the following thought to end this episode, ala Doogie.

… besides, if Traci Lords has a clean first results page, I don't think it should be that difficult for anyone else!

Search Engine Management on a Friendly Level
Posted by tom at 11:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

January 26, 2006

The Matt Cutts Concurrence Committee

Matt Cutts' most recent post was about being tired. He used about 50 words. He has received more than 40 comments and 300 diggs.

In case you missed it, below are highlights from the comments section (and a word from our sponsor).

I concur.

Yeah, me too, Matt Cutts. I am really tired too.

Me too! I concur, Matt Cutts.

Do you concur?

I used to rank well for [mail-order bride], but now I'm nowhere to be found. Could you please explain?

C... Concur with what, sir?

I concur to infinity.

With what Matt Cutts just said. Do you... Do you concur?

Uh... well, Matt is tired. Um, he just told us…

Can you explain how you implemented your 301 redirect with Wordpress (from non-www to www)?

So you concur?

Matt Cutts, I know what you mean. I am so tired that I am going to go to sleep right now.

I think the sandbox is as unconstitutional as it is evil. Maybe you're so tired because being the devil is exhausting!

Concur? Uh... I think we should send a doctor over to make sure Matt Cutts is going to be OK.

That's very good, Very good. Well, you don't seem to have much need for me. Carry on.

Great post about being tired, Matt Cutts. It's a problem in the industry that nobody else is willing to confront. Bravo!

I blew it, didn't I? Why didn't I concur?

The Matt Cutts Concurrence Committee
Posted by tom at 11:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

January 12, 2006

Google Still Crazy After All These Years

I met my old lover on the street last night. She seemed so glad to see me; I just smiled. And there seemed to be confusion, but I thought it was the beers . . . Still crazy after all these years

So there I was waiting on a friend's arrival as I sat in this bar with Google and her friend, who began discussing power ballads and hi infidelity. When the two asked me who cleverly named the tuna fish album, I lost it.

"Google, how can you still not know who I am?" My impatience was intensifed by the fact that we already had this conversation once before. "I am SEO Speedwagon damn it"

Google responded, as if I were confused, "Did you mean REO Speedwagon?"

"I am absolutely positive that I meant SEO Speedwagon." I thought the emphasis would show that I know who I am.

Google didn't budge. "Are you absolutely positive that you didn't mean REO Speedwagon?"

I tried to calm down a bit. "Please listen to the exact words about to come from my mouth: SEO Speedwagon."

"Are you sure you did not exactly mean to say these words: REO Speedwagon?"

That didn't work. I tried again. "OK. I want you to remove REO from your head, and think Speedwagon."

"OK?"

"Exactly! So keep REO out of your head and just think about SEO Speedwagon!"

Google backstepped (yes, I mean back stepped). "Did you mean keep REO out of my head and just think about REO Speedwagon?"

I thought about asking Google to remove REO from her obsessive head and think about the exact words "SEO Speedwagon." I feared her response would lead to a new level of absurdity and heartbreak, so I walked away.

But then I just had to ask, "What is it about SEO Speedwagon?"

"Well, I just know so much about them."

As I wiped away tears, I thought of starting conversation with her friend as a way to get through to Google. As we made eye contact, Wiki asked me, "What about your friend? Shouldn't he be here by now?"

"I don't think Godot is coming," I said.

Google started to tell me that she knows Godot, but I interrupted. "I know you do, Google. Good-bye."

Now I sit by my window and I watch the cars. I fear I’ll do some damage one fine day, but I would not be convicted by a jury of my peers . . . Still crazy after all these years

Google Still Crazy After All These Years
Posted by tom at 10:20 AM | Comments (1)
Printer-friendly version

January 05, 2006

'Tis the Season for Link Building

Like my friend Erik, I have developed an allergy to the ubiquitous 2005 retrospectives and 2006 prognostications. The clichéd trend reminds me of college years past when party discourse mandated Swingers statements about being so money, baby, and not even knowing it, at a clip of 7.1 per conversation. Escaping this game might have been the only reason I felt compelled to graduate. One might wonder what I would have become without this venomous dose of motivation.

Obviously, we all hope for our new year's post to be picked up like a Jean Shepherd movie, but what about other holidays? Can we not manipulate them for blog links, as well? We can at least try. Below are just a few suggestions for 2006 Holiday manipulation:

• Ask Matt Cutts to be your Valentine.
  
• Give updates for an industry conference taking place at a pub on St. Patrick's Day.
  
• Claim your blog's success is due to automatic search engine submission and scraped content on April 1st.
  
• State the reasons why a search engine ground hog might not see a site's shadow.
  
• Post a Declaration of Independence from typical blogaucracy.
  
• List the Top Ten Halloween Costumes for spammers.
  
• End a post with Happy Festivus!
  

'Tis the Season for Link Building
Posted by tom at 11:02 AM | Comments (0)
Printer-friendly version

December 12, 2005

Speedwagon Nominated for Best of Search Blogs Awards

Search Engine Journal just announced the nominees for the 2005 Search Blogs Awards, and we are quite excited to be on the list under the category of "Best SEO Blog." Other categories include "Best Search Engine News Blog," "Best Search Engine-Owned Blog," "Best Search Engine Marketing and Contextual Advertising Blog, and the "Best Blog Search Engine Blog."

Following is the list of nominees under our category, "Best SEO Blogs:"

• StuntDubl
• FishSEO
• SEOMoz
• SEO Speedwagon
• TextLinkBlog
• SEO Black Hat
• SEO by the SEA
• Jim Boykin's Blog
• Link Building Blog
• Stepforth SEO Blog
• Matt Cutts' Blog
• WebGuerrilla
• SEO Book

You can rate the blogs here. (We would encourage nothing less than voting your conscience.) Most important, if you look through the list of blogs in this and other categories, you'll walk away with a list of sites covering (and covering well) nearly every narrow niche of the SEO/SEM field.

And with that (sniff), we're all winners.

Speedwagon Nominated for Best of Search Blogs Awards
Posted by erik at 09:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

November 28, 2005

Comment Spam the Wagon? ITSOK with Me

Maintaining the SEO Speedwagon is not quite as glamorous a task as, say, Alfred might have with the Batmobile, or Q with his fleet of Aston Martins. In fact, our version of machine guns hiding behind headlamps is a simple button marked "Ban IP Address," which we reserve for commenters and trackersback who attempt to hijack our fair vehicle to carry dirty links across the border.

I'm not the first one to notice a new, two-tiered spamming tactic among blog comment spammers. First, the links these spammers are pointing to are usually large, legitimate brands, such as Apple or Microsoft. Second, they include the rel="itsok" attribute on a link. Of those sites that have noticed this approach, however, not too many have figured out exactly why spammers are using it. Surely, SURELY, they're not dumb enough to think that it's overriding the rel="nofollow" attribute (definition), about which I became all sappy last week.

Turns out they don't believe that at all. A very articulate explanation at Concurring Opinions reveals the motive - which only hardcore spamhunters (or hardcore spammers) would naturally intuit:

These comments are a funny sort of trojan horse. They are designed to be easily and readily flagged as spam; however their links are to popular and legitimate sites. Spammers do this so that popular legitimate sites will be added to the blacklists, corrupting them. If the blacklists are full of mainstream sites, and kill comments that use links to apple.com or yahoo.com, then bloggers will stop using the blacklists. And they will once again be easy prey for the spammers.

Sigh. No wonder I thought spammers were lousy at checkers; turns out they've been playing chess the whole time.

Comment Spam the Wagon? ITSOK with Me
Posted by erik at 03:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

November 23, 2005

No Fearing the Nofollow Link Attribute

While I believe that sites that are ultimately successful do have high quality, user-focused content, many people incorrectly infer the converse of that statement: that if they have high quality, user-focused content, they will be ultimately successful. I don't necessarily believe that, because the demand is simply not great enough for all the high quality, user-focused sites out there. Many will do great, but not everyone is going to get rich.

But my pessimistic outlook is still no reason to avoid creating the best content you can - both at your own site and elsewhere. Think about the "nofollow" link attribute and its recent influence in SEO.

The mass adoption of the "nofollow" attribute about a year ago meant that site owners now had a way to illegitimize comment and trackback spam, even if they couldn't control its spread. If a link on your site has the "nofollow" attribute, engines know that you don't "vouch" for the authenticity of the link. Consequently, the engines won't reward such sites with any rankings benefits.

This effectively squashes a spammer's chances of benefiting from your site's status. He can add all the comments he wants to your PR4 post, but the links back to his site don't get a vote of confidence like they would if you made the exact same link in your post.

Unfortunately, however, many people promote their sites via forum and blog comments that are well reasoned, helpful to the discussion, and quite informative. And many of these people now feel that their sites no longer benefit from the links in comments. A mass exodus from SEO Chat forums is a recent example. While the introduction of the "nofollow" attribute was only a small reason for the members leaving, it was certainly a factor.

But if you think back to the days before link popularity was a religion, it's no different now. If you have something intelligent to say, if you're contributing to the discussion, and if you're offering a fresh perspective - and you do this long enough - you'll earn links the old fashioned way: By earning them. People will click through to your site via your profile, and eventually, if you impress them long enough, they'll want you to be a part of their community.

You've always had to impress potential customers with your intelligence and perspective. Be glad that "nofollow" is here, because all it has done is allow the specter of easily gained popularity to find peaceful rest.

No Fearing the Nofollow Link Attribute
Posted by erik at 11:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

October 06, 2005

Blogging for Big (and Small) Brands a la Forrester

Last week, Mickey Khan at Direct Marketing News wrote a nice summary of a presentation by Forrester Research's Charlene Li at Forrester's Consumer Forum 2005.

The topic was what blogs, RSS feeds, and search engines mean to popular brands. The short answer is, "They require marketers to give up a degree of control."

No big surprise there, but Li gave a nice weather report for companies thinking about venturing out into RSS feeds or even a corporate blog presence, offering several tips. Note that these tips correspond to both blogging and/or RSS content distribution.

1. Open a dialog. Sounds simple, but you'd be surprised. Turn your comments feature on. Otherwise, it's just another web site.
2. Don't be fake. Be honest and open or don't even bother. This doesn't mean talk about things that "Legal" wouldn't want you to, but it's better to avoid a topic entirely than to pretend to discuss it and dance around it.
3. Give customers some control over content distribution. Li uses the example of Apple offering multiple feeds, based on niche interest.
4. Offer consumers some form of efficacy. Li's example of Burger King's Subservient Chicken was a bit extreme and probably irrelevant to most companies, but the point remains: Offer some gesture to show consumers that you're listing to them.
5. Admit mistakes. Well sure, it was bound to bleed over from politics. It's not the sin, it's the cover-up. Li's point is that consumers are surprisingly forgiving if companies approach a mistake with honesty and humility.

No rocket science anywhere up there, right? But that's Li's point. There are so many companies doing this wrong - by missing these simple points, thinking that the basic rules of communication don't apply to them - that the fundamentals need to be repeated.

The second half of the article is also worthwhile reading, as Li discusses how brands can get started if they're new to the concept of consumer dialog.

Blogging for Big (and Small) Brands a la Forrester
Posted by erik at 08:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

September 14, 2005

Google Adds Blog Search Engine

SearchDay tells us that Google's Blog Search is now online in beta stage. I'm looking forward to testing it for freshness and depth.

You can access the engine here (with a traditional Google interface) or here (with a Blogger interface). Either way, it's the same engine returning the same data. I did several random searches to confirm this, because my initial fear was that the Blogger search interface returned results only from Blogger sites, which is not the case.

To get your blog "found," Google says it's necessary only to publish a site feed in any popular format and to ping at least one popular service. Speedwagon runs on Movable Type, so we ping several sites after each post. However, I'll test the Pingomatic service recommended in the SearchDay article and report the results to see which is faster and more reliable.

The Google Blogsearch FAQ says the query box supports "all of the standard Google Search operators," including link: , site: , and intitle:. I found this not necessarily true. a search for [site:seoblog.intrapromote.com] to return no results, while a simple search for [seo speedwagon] returned about 37 - not a full crawl, but fairly representative of our current site.

While the site: command doesn't seem to work to give a full index count of a blog, it does seem to work in conjunction with another search term. In other words, a search for [link building site:seoblog.intrapromote.com] does return pretty accurate results.

What Does All This Mean for You?

Typically, niche bloggers find and report stories long before major news outlets because they aren't tied down by annoying constraints such as "fact-checking" and "source confirmation."

Lame humor aside, as a searcher, you'll probably find this service to return much fresher results on very hot topics.

For our clients with whom we're consulting on blog-building and maintenance, it's yet another potential traffic source, and we're excited about the possibilities. More to come.

Google Adds Blog Search Engine
Posted by erik at 06:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

August 29, 2005

Much ado about Vlogs & Vlogging – (Featuring Rocketboom)

Well, now that blogging is becoming established I’m pleased to announce the next iteration called…….you guessed it, vlogging.

It comes in many different forms and if you do a search for it you will undoubtedly find a few, shall we say eclectic, vlogs. The best that I’ve seen so far is Rocketboom. It is a daily vlog with news and commentary that lasts about 2 to 3 minutes.

Vlogging’s definition is still up for grabs as chronicled in Wikipedia/Vlog. It will be interesting to see how this emerging communication tool evolves. It reminds me of podcasting in the sense that it provide and frequency free way for anyone to “broadcast�? their content. And with the relatively new video search tools from Google etc. it will be interesting to see how or if these unique communiqués will tie into natural search results.

For me, I’m pretty sure that my face was made for blogging, not vlogging. So I’ll stick to blog posting for now.

Related Minutia: Along the same “next iteration of technology�? vein check out this Engadget article from 1985.

If you have any cool tools and/or sites that you would like to submit for possible blog publishing please send it to me, or simply leave a comment.

V4

Much ado about Vlogs & Vlogging – (Featuring Rocketboom)
Posted by brent at 08:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version

August 24, 2005

The Quest for Quality Content (Just Got Tougher)

I do a lot of Technorati searches; I'm always impressed by the speed at which it crawls and indexes blog content.

For some searches on big brands, I'd seen some interesting similarities crop up: search results showing pages that were not duplicated, exactly, but so similar as to pique my interest. I traced them all back to one spot, the Blogger profile of Dan Hollings, which appears to be the hub of one of the most ... well, prolific content generation systems available.

I found Dan again later, this time leaving an article-length comment at Matt Cutts' blog. In it, Dan discusses his 100 Blogger blogs, "each with a core topical theme, but yet, each is targeted and personalized to a target audience."

Dan has created a blogging content creation system called Blog-Zilla. Far from the bottom-feeding tactics of content scraping and copyright violation, Blog-Zilla enables you to, among other things,

Never steal content, instead generate your own and let Blog-zilla hatch unlimited variations all with your blog's target audience in mind. (maybe you should read that again!)

He's right. Maybe you should read that again. "Unlimited variations." Here's an example of those variations. First, a paragraph from this post at the "Internet Marketing Tips for Lexxus" blog:

I recently checked the "gender stats" available from the Direct Sales Association, 79.9% of people in "direct sales" are female. Do the math and the boys total a paltry 20.1%. Many of the women in our industry (and customers we seek) are current or future moms. It seems natural that a new term has come on the scene: Mompreneurism.

Now here, fresh from Blog-Zilla's fiery belly, is the corresponding paragraph from this post at the "Internet Marketing Tips for Multi-level Marketing" blog:

Based on statistics available from the Direct Sales Association, 79.9% of people in "direct sales" are female. Guess what that means? Yes, the guys total a paltry 20.1%. Many of the women in our industry (and customers we seek) are current or future moms. Just when we thought the dictionary had all the words we needed a new term has come on the scene: Mompreneurism.

Make these subtle variations - 100 or more times - and ping a hundred blog engines, and imagine the results.

In his comment to the Cutts blog, Dan admits that

... because each lesson or tip I post has common elements, there is some overlap. My test indicate posts are between 25% to 75% different from blog to blog to blog and all content is author originated.

I did not major in math, but I know that "25% to 75% different," coindicentally, also means "25% to 75% identical."

Dan also asks Matt to "make note I’m not specifically blogging for search engine rankings," shortly after dropping four links into his comment post.

As far as editorializing, I don't know where to begin - so maybe I shouldn't. This isn't about "outing" Dan; with an 800-word comment to a Matt Cutts blog, he's pretty good at outing himself. I just believe that despite Blog-Zilla's claims of wanting foremost to help people reach niche audiences, this is the type of content creation that engines are working night and day to avoid.

The Quest for Quality Content (Just Got Tougher)
Posted by erik at 08:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
Printer-friendly version