Feb
7
10 More Easy Ways to Improve Your Website
Filed Under Best Practices, Blogging, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines, Web Marketing | 6 Comments
How well is your blog or website performing?
This past November, I wrote, “Some web sites clearly have it together. They have lots of traffic and appeal to visitors.
“Other sites aren’t bad. They have good potential. With a few tweaks here and there, they could enjoy much more traffic and appeal much more to their audience.”
I listed 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Blog or Website and indicated that there might be more suggestions to follow.
Here then are ten more tweaks (presented as problems and fixes), bringing the total to twenty. Hope they’ll keep you busy for a while. 
- Key Content Hidden “Below the Fold” - You have seconds to capture a visitor’s attention. If visitors need to scroll down to view vital content, you’ll most likely lose them. Similarly, if you have an important widget, such as a Facebook fan page widget, place it where it will be visible without scrolling down.
- Long Flash Intro - I hate sitting through flash intros designed to impress. Don’t you? Why would you want to subject your visitors to long (or even short) flash intros? Flash intros are dead time. Why not instead impress visitors with your knowledge and the relevance of your content?
- Clutter - Some websites have too much going on; they look like patch quilts. Others have ads that fill every nook and cranny. What can I say? Such sites are overwhelming.
- No Call to Action - What do you want your visitors to do when they visit your site? To buy? To subscribe? To leave a blog comment? Let them know what you expect, and if your request is reasonable, they may very well comply. If you don’t ask, they may not know what to do, and they’ll leave, perhaps forever, without taking action.
- Distracting Ads - Pop-up ads, blinking ads, glaring banners, sexy ads, scripts that forward to advertisers’ sites after a few seconds, inappropriate auto-playing audio, etc. I dare say, these are “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” Make sure your ads don’t interfere with your content. If your ads are your content, then please disregard everything you’ve ever read on this blog.
- Images Not Labeled - Make your visitors and the search engines happy. Whenever possible describe your images using alt and title parameters in your img tags. If all this is gibberish to you, worry not. Your web development or HTML guru will know what to do.
- Hard to Navigate Site - Don’t confuse your visitors. Keep your website simple and provide a site map if you can.
- Difficult to Understand - Write for your audience. Not everyone will have an advanced degree — unless of course such people are your target audience.
- Spelling and Grammar Mistakes - There ain’t no excuse for bad spellin and grammar.
- Stale Content - Fresh content is good for SEO and for attracting repeat visitors.
Implement as many of these ten website improvements (and the ones listed 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Blog or Website) as you’re able to.
How time flies! Already, we’ve come to the part of the blog post where people usually leave a well thought-out comment. 
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Jan
25
My Top 10+ Blog Traffic Sources
Filed Under Blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Ning Sites, Search Engines, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Targeting, Twitter | 37 Comments
In 8 Simple Ways to Penetrate Social Media Clutter, I recommended that you leverage multiple traffic sources. In Looking for Traffic in All the Wrong Places, I gave you a partial list of the places I look to get more web site traffic.
Based upon Google Analytics data pertaining to my recent blog visits, bounce rates and average time on site, I present my top 10 blog traffic sources along with some notes on each:
- Search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing - They account for 35% of my traffic. When my blog was new, I didn’t get any search engine traffic at all. Now, however, I get 5,000 visits from searches per month — including business people seeking precisely the types of services I offer. The credit goes to search engine optimization and to a growing reservoir of content.
- Entrecard, a traffic exchange for bloggers - Admittedly, Entrecard provides me with lots of worthless traffic. Fortunately, however, the site provides me with some great traffic too and an opportunity to build key relationships with other bloggers. One of my favorites at Entrecard is Gera from Uruguay, owner of the Sweets Foods blog. He and I are now also connected by email, Facebook and Twitter. As with all other traffic sources, to benefit from Entrecard you’ll need to make a long-term commitment to developing it.
- Twitter - I’ve written at length about Twitter. Read Twitter Stats Defy Measurement. I’m happy to have started with Twitter in 2008 when Twitter’s rules didn’t get in the way of building a large following. Today, different tactics are necessary to connect with your target audience. Start by encouraging your website visitors and friends on social networking sites to follow you on Twitter. Then gradually introduce new Twitter tools into your mix.
- Facebook - I turned my attention to Facebook in June 2009 and experimented with the NetworkedBlogs application, which may have introduced new readers to my blog, but proved to be a poor source of ongoing traffic. On the other hand, profiles, fan pages and events showed themselves to be excellent traffic sources. It seems to me, so far, that Facebook fan pages are very effective as a form of web site subscription.
- Ning social network - I’m sorry to report that Ning has morphed into a host of unrelated niche sites. If you have your own Ning site, or a group or lots of friends on someone else’s Ning site, you can use that site to move traffic. As with Twitter, getting started with Ning is harder than it used to be, and the marketing benefits are fewer. I belong to many Ning sites and have several of my own. My primary Ning site is Beyond Business Coaching.
- Business Exchange - Discovered this social bookmarking site recently and wrote about it in 12 Tips for Using Business Week’s Social Bookmarking Site. I’m hoping that Business Exchange will help me generate a lot of high quality traffic in the year to come.
- Blog Catalog - If you have a blog and decide to use BlogCatalog, start your own group there; make many friends on the site and invite them to join your group. Those who join are interested in you and your group’s theme.
- StumbleUpon - Planning to learn much more about StumbleUpon and use it much more this year. I’ll keep you posted.
- LinkedIn - While well connected on LinkedIn, I’m not using it much at present. Most of my LinkedIn traffic is coming as a result of the Twitter LinkedIn integration.
- Ryze - Here I first encountered online social networking back in 2003. I find Ryze very underwhelming in 2010. The traffic I get from Ryze comes from posting in groups, which are really forums.
I believe that Blogger is sending me visitors because of Google Friend Connect. Also, I heard a rumor that Yahoo! is dumping MyBlogLog. Will let you know about both of them.
You made it all the way down here. Why not scroll down a drop more and leave a comment?
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Dec
13
8 Simple Ways to Penetrate Social Media Clutter
Filed Under Best of 2009, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Web Marketing | 17 Comments
The Global Map of the Social Web, newly published by Trendstream, illustrates country-by-country the already enormous Web 2.0 footprint.
Not surprisingly, the rapid increase in social media usage has generated a corresponding increase in blogs, videos, photos and other social media content.
For you and me as social media consumers, our choices seem endless. New content is created at a daunting rate. Conversely, as content producers, we find it more and more difficult to penetrate the growing social media clutter.
This competition among sites and content will further intensify over time. We therefore need to find ways to compensate and stay consistently in front of our intended audiences. Here are eight ideas that can help:
- Build a Large Web Presence - Search engines and plain old geometry will work on your behalf. The better you do in the search engines and the more social media territory you can effectively cover, the more exposure you will receive, both in reach and frequency.
- Leverage Multiple Traffic Sources - Using many traffic sources will help you create a large web presence, and you’ll benefit in other ways too. Read Looking for Traffic in All the Wrong Places.
- Develop Relationships - Engage with those who engage with you. Not only will they keep coming back, but so will the people who enjoy the conversation but remain silent. Focus on helping by letting people vent or by providing helpful information. Be social!
- Offer Many Ways for Friends to Subscribe or Follow - People will naturally connect through more than one info stream. E.g., I’ve set up a blogcast, an RSS feed, a Twitter account, a Facebook page and profile, a NetworkedBlogs page, my own Ning site, a LinkedIn profile, a Business Exchange profile, a BlogCatalog group, and half a dozen other ways to keep in touch. Each one has throughput of one to ten percent, but collectively they all add up. That’s how social media list building needs to work. An RSS feed alone is insufficient.
- Be Reliable and Consistent - Do what you say you’re going to do, and publish new content as consistently as possible. Being somewhat predictable will help people get to know you and will build trust.
- Promote Others - Say good things about your readers, link to their content, and link to the content of others in your industry. Be a team player. Goodwill is an invaluable asset.
- Focus - Don’t spread yourself too thin by trying to be everything to everybody or by trying to be active on many social networking sites. Concentrate on communicating your brand and message to your intended audience. Get the most you can from the time and effort you invest.
- Collaborate - Strategic alliances and synergies are a big part of my plan for 2010, and perhaps they ought to be part of your plan too.
How do you penetrate social media clutter?
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Nov
29
Looking for Traffic in All the Wrong Places
Filed Under Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines, Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 23 Comments
This is an article about how to get more web site traffic. Unlike most articles discussing how to get more web site traffic, this article focuses on optimizing sources of traffic rather than optimizing links or keywords.
I’ve had some success getting web site traffic. Admittedly, I may never catch up to Seth Godin whose blog currently ranks 6,028 in Alexa for traffic. However, my blog did recently pass 50,000 in Alexa after a couple of years blogging.
Friends wonder what I’m doing that they’re not, and whether they’re looking for traffic in the wrong places.
Hard work and consistency are certainly key success factors, and I am hard working and consistent. I’m also very hard thinking, and I’ve concluded that there aren’t right and wrong places to look for traffic, and that diversifying traffic sources is a critical strategy for achieving long-term success. Most web site owners don’t diversify enough.
Rationale for Diversification of Traffic Sources
It’s true that some traffic sources deliver greater, higher quality and better targeted traffic than others. It’s also true that some traffic sources are less time consuming and easier to use than others. Nevertheless, 80/20 rule notwithstanding, to rely only upon your best traffic sources is a questionable strategy for at least seven reasons:
- Quantity - Obviously, using more traffic sources tends to generate more web site traffic. While some traffic sources aren’t as efficient to use as others, their traffic is no less valuable.
- Stability - Using more traffic sources reduces risk and increases stability. Putting all your social media eggs in one basket is risky, since social media is in a constant state of change. We often see social networking sites rise and fall in popularity and even disappear completely. Search engines are also unpredictable. They can revise algorithms or remove web sites at their discretion. My strategy has allowed me to adapt gradually to changes over time.
- Opportunity - Testing to uncover the best approaches is a widely accepted marketing concept. Using more traffic sources, you find opportunities you would otherwise miss. You also increase your chance of getting lucky.
- Diversity - Using multiple traffic sources, you can reach audiences that are more diverse and richer from a marketing perspective.
- Frequency - Using many traffic sources, you tend to reach people more often which helps you build your relationships with them more effectively and reinforces your messages.
- Synergy -Some traffic sources complement each other and create synergy.
- Latency - Some traffic sources require persistent usage before they yield results (e.g. search engines) or the source itself may not have matured (e.g. Twitter).
Places I Look to Get More Web Site Traffic
Without going into detail, a partial list of sources that have recently helped me get more web site traffic are: search engines (Google, Bing, etc.) Entrecard, Twitter, Ning sites, Facebook profile, Facebook page, Facebook NetworkedBlogs, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, BlogCatalog, Google Friend Connect, and other blogs.
While you can use my partial list of traffic sources for starters, you’ll need to develop your own long list of sources that’s geared to your audience and your marketing strategy.
I’ve intentionally excluded video sites such as YouTube from my list for now, but in all likelihood it will be on yours. Furthermore, I don’t generally buy traffic, but it might make sense for you to do so.
Okay. We’ve reached the point in the post where you usually comment. Please share your favorite traffic sources and ways you like to get more web site traffic. 
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Nov
22
10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Blog or Website
Filed Under Best Practices, Best of 2009, Blogging, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Web Marketing | 29 Comments
Like you, I typically visit many blogs and websites each day.
Some web sites clearly have it together. They have lots of traffic and appeal to visitors.
Other sites aren’t bad. They have good potential. With a few tweaks here and there, they could enjoy much more traffic and appeal much more to their audience.
I promised myself that I’d write up some suggestions for improving blogs and websites. I realize that while much is possible, we can’t hope to do everything. We need to apply the 80/20 rule and focus on strategies and techniques that are easy to implement yet promise substantial benefits:
- Make Your Text Easier to Read - Some months ago, I noticed that my blog’s text wasn’t visually sharp enough. It was difficult to read. Upon examination, I noticed that the font wasn’t quite black, and the background wasn’t totally white. The links were grayish. After a few minor theme changes, the color scheme was improved. Low contrast combinations or light text on a dark background always require extra effort to read.
- Optimize for Human Eyeballs - A site’s title tells search engines and their users what the site is about. The title is the bold headline in search engine results. Using keywords in your site’s title can help you rank higher for those keywords. Recently, I changed the title of my blog hoping to rank higher on more keywords, and my traffic fell. The new title was unfortunately less relevant and less appealing to my potential readers. I changed my title back, and traffic rebounded. The takeaway: Optimize for humans, not just for search engines.
- Use Headings to Break Up Long Articles - Headings break up an article into sections and help make the article easy to scan and read. Limiting paragraph size helps too. Headings, however, like titles, can tell search engines what an article is about and are an excellent place to insert your keywords.
- Link Out - I provided a rationale for linking out to other sites in The Blogger’s Guide to Links and Comments: “Use of outbound links enhances your pages in ways that both search engines and people can easily appreciate.” The advice in that article applies equally to blogs and conventional websites. Unless you’re linking to ads, use only dofollow links.
- Link Internally - This can be huge. Linking internally increases a site’s circulation, and it increases the perceived relevance of both the linking page and the page linked to. Link to another page or article on your site when you have the opportunity. In a blog, you can even link to a tag, as I often do. A blog site map such as the once generated by the Wordpress plugin Really Simple Sitemap makes it easy for visitors to find a blog’s archived content. I use internal links on my blog nearly everywhere, even in places which aren’t obvious.
- Be Social - Adding a social dimension to your web presence makes you real and credible. Join all the major social networking sites, and let visitors know how they can connect with you. Google Friend Connect and Facebook NetworkedBlogs widgets add sociability to your site and enable readers to publicly endorse you. Bloggers can join blog networking sites as well such as Technorati, Entrecard, BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog.
- Make Subscription Simple - Make it as easy as possible for readers to subscribe to your blog or newsletter. Blogs should offer subscription by both email (using a service like Aweber) and RSS (using a service like Feedburner). I’m always amazed when I have to hunt for a way to subscribe to a site.
- Use Social Bookmarking - Make your content easier to find and, as is the case with some social bookmarking sites, create quality links into your blog or website. Some of the social bookmarking sites I use are Digg, Delicious, Propeller, Reddit, diigo, Jumptags, Google Bookmarks and iZeby.
- Encourage Comments - Not only do I generally ask readers to comment, but I comment back as well whenever it’s appropriate.
- Extend Your Domain - If your domain will expire with the next twelve months, you might be signaling to search engines and savvy visitors that your site is only temporary.
I’ve omitted other ways that you can improve your site, because they’re harder to implement, and because they’ll give me something to discuss in a subsequent article.
In any case, we have our work cut out for us.
What do you think?
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Nov
8
The Blogger’s Guide to Links and Comments
Filed Under Best of 2009, Blogging, SPAM, Search Engines | 42 Comments
No aspect of the Internet is more critical to understand than hyperlinks or simply links, as we call them. After all, what is the World Wide Web but countless documents which are interconnected by links?
A web page without links in to it can never be discovered by search engines, nor will people find the page unless directed to it. A page without links out of it is a virtual cul de sac, a dead end street from which visitors must back out in order to exit.
Woe to the web page that has neither inbound nor outbound links! 
Links Can Transfer Some of Their Authority
When a web page, especially an important one, links to your page, it serves as a recommendation and conveys, i.e. transfers, to your web page some amount of its authority both with search engines and with Internet users. The authority of your page increases, while the authority of the page linking in to you decreases.
When you link to others’ pages you transfer authority to their pages. Their authority of their pages increases, while the authority of yours decreases.
Links play an key role in search engine optimization. They help search engines to gauge the validity and the authority of each page or document on the web.
Why Relinquish Your Authority?
Why should you give away any of the authority that you’ve worked so hard to earn?
Authority isn’t all that matters. Relevance matters. Participation in the web and in your niche’s online community matter too. Generous use of outbound links enhances your pages in ways that both search engines and people can easily appreciate.
The Internet and search engines are mainly research tools, and outbound links help researchers to find and to verify the information they seek.
Linking Without Transferring Authority
There are two cases in which you need to link out but prefer not to give up any of your authority and don’t even want the search engines to follow your link to see where it leads.
When linking to something you’re advertising, it’s common practice to have search engines ignore your link. Why convey authority upon an ad?
There is another case which I discuss in the next section.
To request that a link be ignored by search engines, rel=nofollow is used in the HTML code. (Don’t worry if HTML is too technical for you.) Therefore this type of link is commonly referred to in SEO jargon as a nofollow link. A normal link is referred to as a dofollow link.
Comments on Blogs and Forums
Blogs and forums need comments to thrive. They help to build community and add valuable content which search engines like.
Comment often require links to be meaningful or to identify the commenter. Comments which are completely devoid of links have a sterile quality, so some degree of linking is necessary and desirable.
Unfortunately, links create an opportunity for SPAM.
As I explain in Anti-Social Media Marketing, spammers submit stupid or even obscene comments hoping to build inbound links to their sites.
Why transfer even one iota of your authority to a spammer?
Filtering out these comments is a pain, especially when they’re written to look plausible. For this reason, blogs and forums are programmed to use nofollow links in comments as a disincentive for spammers.
Dofollow Blogs and Forums
Just as nofollow is a disincentive for spammers, it’s a disincentive for real blog commenters and forum posters as well. I know that I prefer (and I’m not alone in my preference) to visit dofollow blogs and get a dofollow link back to my blog when I comment.
Many blogs and forums deal with potential SPAM without resorting to the use of nofollow links. Quite a few forums and some blogs subject their un-vetted commenters to moderation and other restrictions.
How I Make Dofollow Work for Me
Online Social Networking is a dofollow freestanding Wordpress blog. These are eight steps I take to make dofollow work for me:
- I use the Askimet plugin to pre-screen comments for SPAM.
- I moderate all comments and screen them for SPAM, (as well as inappropriate content, bad spelling and very bad grammar).
- I reject SPAM and undesirable comments. (I also correct spelling and grammar when necessary.)
- I use the Nofollow Case by Case plugin to override the Wordpress nofollow default.
- If a comment is borderline SPAM, I let the comment through, but I tell Nofollow Case by Case to make its links nofollow.
- If I want particular links in the body of a comment to be nofollow, I edit the HTML and insert rel=nofollow in the code.
- I let regular commenters (whom I like) get away completely with borderline SPAM (with or without a lecture), because I care a lot about their friendship and good will.
- I display a You Comment I Follow banner at the bottom of each post to let readers know that my blog is dofollow. Over time my blog has been added to a number of dofollow search engines.
Linking and Dofollow Takeaways
Linking is vital to the Internet. All websites ought to use ample links on their pages, just as I have in this article.
If you blog, consider a dofollow approach. Don’t be afraid to relinquish some of your authority to commenters, because in balance, you can expect to gain.
Now please, leave a great comment below and collect your dofollow link back to your blog or website.
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Nov
1
What it Takes to Build a Web Presence
Filed Under Blogging, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Web Marketing | 9 Comments
Web marketing to me is entirely about building up both social capital and search equity, nurturing relationships and reputations both with people and with search engines.
In Social Media vs. Search Engine Optimization and in The NEW Search Engine Optimization, I underscore the importance of both social media and search engine optimization and their interdependence. Your web marketing recipe must include plenty of healthy social media and search engine optimization ingredients.
I also point out in Website vs. Web Presence, that SEO, social media, relationships and reputation each contribute to the building of a presence on the web. Darren Rouse, the author of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, shares in a video his blog-centric approach to web marketing in which social media sites — which aren’t under our complete control — serve as outposts for our blogs and websites, i.e. our home base — which we do control.
I agree with Darren’s point of view and adopted the same approach when I started Online Social Networking 24 months ago. I must stress however, that I have always envisioned search engines providing me with more than enough targeted traffic over time.
A Note of Caution
Many social media enthusiasts are in search of a predetermined blueprint for success. However, beware! One-recipe-feeds-all diners and buffets aren’t for you.
The precise description and proportion of each ingredient must depend upon your objectives, and upon the tastes of all the distinguished guests for whom you’re cooking up this sumptuous but scrumptious feast.
Bon appétit mon ami.
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Oct
28
Website vs. Web Presence
Filed Under Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines, Web Marketing | 15 Comments
Once upon a time, a business would put up a website with its contact information, and that was the beginning and end of its web presence.
Those days are long gone. Savvy marketers today are very aware that a multidimensional approach is essential if one hopes to build a strong and responsive web presence.
Social Media and Search Engine Optimization
Social media and SEO are two of the most important aspects of building a presence on the web.
I’m reminded of a conversation I had several months ago with Christopher Boyer, creator of the Hospital Online Marketing Education site on the Ning network.
Chris mentioned that he tells his Healthgrades clients that search engines are where research starts on the Internet, and that a researcher’s attention is captured by the websites and social media content displayed on the very first page of search engine results. He asks hospital marketers to think of Google.com as their home page and to focus on dominating search engine results for their respective niches.
Social Media and Relationships
Darren Rouse of Problogger.net fame shows in his video, How I Use Social Media to Promote My Blogs, the way he incorporates a large number of social media sites in his web promotion strategy.
Notice that Darren not only uses social media to drive traffic to his blogs; he uses it to build valuable relationships with people. Relationships and Internet buzz play key roles in today’s web marketing.
A Web Presence is Much More than Just a Website
The web presence paradigm has evolved. Search engine optimization, social media, relationships and reputation all contribute to the impact that we and our brands have on the web.
Your valuable comment below (and your subscription to this blog) will help us to build our relationship.
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Jul
12
8 Great Choices for SPAM Free Promotion
Filed Under Best of 2009, Blogging, List Building, Networking and Marketing Strategy, SPAM, Search Engines, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Web Marketing | 13 Comments
I’ve written about the problem of spam both offline and online at social networking sites in How Do You Like Your SPAM? and Why Do People SPAM?
With this article, I’m delivering on the promise I made last week to discuss marketing channels you can use to promote yourself or your business — without ever resorting to spam.
Legitimate promotion alternatives fall primarily into these basic categories:
- Advertising - Expect to pay — unless you prefer getting marginal results, running around town, lurking in parking lots and posing for security cameras, all while schlepping around stacks of flyers and carefully avoiding people you know. Online, free advertising attracts people without money and spammers, although you may get good results with Craigslist. Offline advertising includes newspapers, magazines, direct mail, radio, television, offline directory listings and billboards. Online advertising includes Pay Per Click, e-zines and online directory listings. I do not recommend using banner ads. Advertising ROI will depend on the net lifetime value of each acquisition or conversion and the cost of each acquisition.
- Press Releases - If your business is newsworthy, or if you can create a newsworthy event, then you may be able to get some free exposure. Your press release needs to be well written in a suitable format and distributed either offline, online or both.
- Speaking and Contributing Articles - It is an accepted practice to establish your reputation and generate leads by speaking at meetings or contributing articles to journals. Don’t expect to get paid anything until you become a recognized expert in your field.
- Strategic Alliances and Joint Ventures - A business or list owner promotes your offer to his or her clients or e-mail list based on an agreement through which you both stand to gain. It’s not uncommon to give a joint venture partner all the profit from an initial product offering in exchange for helping you to add new contacts to your list.
- E-Mailing Your List - You can send relevant commercial messages to subscribers who previously opted into your database. Try to avoid using purchased lists. If you must, be sure you know with certainty that the subscribers agreed to receive offers from third parties. Be genuinely helpful and careful not to abuse your list.
- Search Engine Optimization - You’ll need a web site, and unless you’re an SEO maven, you’ll have to pay for SEO services. There’s more to doing effective search engine optimization than most people realize. However, SEO will be worth the trouble if it gets you ranked high up in the free organic search engine results that most searchers look at and care about.
- Social Media - Social marketing is similar in philosophy to speaking and article contribution mentioned above. You share online videos and articles to educate, inform and entertain people, and to build a relationship with them. If they want your product or service, they’ll be inclined to buy it from you, since they know you, and you’ve earned their respect. Your blog on a social networking site, a blogging community such as Blogger.com, or you own hosting, are good places to share your content. For ideal results, create and post new original content on a regular basis. If your content is geared toward your target market, then you’ll attract qualified customers to you and your site.
- Business and Social Networking - Networking is meeting new people and developing relationships with them. You can network at your local Small Business Association, Chamber of Commerce or BNI. I can go to Network Plus, a group in my area founded by Ted Fattoross. Online social networking is more convenient. You network from your computer at any of thousands of social networking sites. My favorites are Ning and Facebook. You build relationships by asking questions and getting to know people. Keep in mind that spamming doesn’t work at all, and exchanging business cards is no more than a cordial first step in starting a relationship.
I like the web marketing channels: my e-mail list, search engine optimization, social marketing and business networking. I coordinate them to benefit from the synergies between them.
Now it’s your turn.
Which methods do you use? Which ones are you hoping to use in the future? What challenges do you foresee?
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May
13
The Long Tail and Social Media
Filed Under Blogging, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines, Web Analytics | 14 Comments
The long tail has recently become a major buzzword both in business and online.
The long tail concept is rather abstract, so it can help to look at concrete examples. Let’s look at examples from my blogging experience.
The Long Tail of the Search
I started publishing Online Social Networking in November 2007, and I installed Google Analytics to monitor, analyze and track traffic to my website.
My blog, as you can probably guess, has been search optimized for the keyword online social networking.
Out of 25,515 visits that were due to search engines, only 1,469 were searches for online social networking. The remaining 24,056 visits were based on 10,769 other search terms. 3,658 of those 10,769 were variants of online networking.
Fewer than 500 of the 3,658 search terms were used to find my site more than one time. These search terms each occurred very infrequently, yet in aggregate they accounted for a great proportion of my visits.
The long tail of the search refers precisely to this phenomenon.
Most searches are based on all sorts of low frequency keywords. See the diagram to the left in which the yellow region under the curve corresponds to the long tail.
The Long Tail of ROI
I spend several hours writing each post on my blog and another hour or so bookmarking and promoting it. My hope is that people will come read the article and subscribe. Just to keep things simple, consider subscribing to be my return-on-investment.
A couple of hundred people, more or less, will visit within a couple of days to read my piece. Some will comment, and some will subscribe.
As I mentioned above, my blog is search engine optimized. I receive more than 100 visitors daily just from search engines. Over time each individual article on the blog will be read by a handful of search visitors per day. That’s not a large number, but it eventually adds up.
That’s the long tail of ROI: The small number of residual daily visits and subscriptions eventually match or surpass the initial surge of visits and subscriptions when the article is first written and posted.
The Allure of Social Media for Marketing
There are many aspects of social media that are appealing. It’s free. It’s social. It’s far reaching. However, the long tail aspect of social media I’ve described makes it especially attractive to savvy marketers.
Well written and keyword researched content remains online indefinitely and attracts an enormous number of search engine visits over time, a benefit not enjoyed using other media.
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Mar
22
Web Developers Don’t Know Social Media
Filed Under Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines | 13 Comments
A web developer knows how to build a website and how to create a web page that interacts effectively with visitors. Web developers can often organize information and design web sites with great visual appeal.
Generally speaking however, web developers are neither experienced Internet marketers nor skilled copywriters. They specialize in following, tweaking and implementing the specifications provided to them by small business owners and corporate marketing departments. A web developer is a technician skilled at converting a set of instructions into an interactive web site.
Launching and promoting a web site and building an Internet presence require more than a development effort. Here are eight other elements that will likely figure into your online presence:
- Your niche and perhaps micro-niche - What specific need or needs will your products or services fill?
- Positioning and branding - What distinguishes you from your competition? How can you position your brand so that it’s at the top of it’s own category?
- Targeting - Who will use your brand and how can you connect with them online and offline?
- Your keywords - What terms are people searching for that are relevant to your brand and which are the best ones to compete for?
- Content - What do you say on your site? How do you communicate your ideas, and how do you weave in the keywords indicated by your keyword research?
- Contextual linking - Creating meaningful hyperlinks within your site content that help the reader and the search engines.
- Link building - Getting the best sites to link back to you and other SEO strategies to attract search visitors and drive referrals to your website. Listing your site in appropriate directories. Submitting your site and content to social bookmarking sites, and writing press releases and articles that will also link back to you.
- Web promotion and list building - Leveraging social networking sites, video sites, e-zines and PPC ads to drive even more people to visit and register at your website or your blog.
To build a successful web presence requires a team of marketing, design and development professionals to tend to each aspect of your online campaign. In many organizations, some people will assume several roles.
If you’re a small business owner, I recommend that you let a marketing consultant bring together and manage the expertise and skill sets that will be required.
If you have more time to invest than money, Site Build It! is an inexpensive option. You learn each phase as you go and are guided step-by-step through your project.
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Oct
7
Google Reverses Recent PageRank Update
Filed Under News, Search Engines | 31 Comments
To the surprise of many, a Google PageRank update occurred late September, a month earlier than expected. I saw the page rank of many of my blog posts move up, and I also saw the page rank of a friend’s site move down.
A Google PageRank update hadn’t been expected until October. The previous re-evaluation took place in July according to an apparent every three months pattern. Needless to say Google’s action raised many eyebrows.
On Saturday night the 4th of October I installed the Google XML Sitemap Plugin on a client’s Wordpress blog. While in the installing mood, I also installed the Google Toolbar on my Firefox browser. That’s when I noticed that something was up.
I looked at the page rank of a bunch of my blog posts and at the ranking of my friend’s site. It appeared that Google had rolled back pagerank to July’s numbers, an action would raise even more eyebrows.
Detailed investigation revealed that Google substantially revised but did not completely reverse their September page rank update.
What is Google PageRank?
In case you’re unfamiliar with page rank and wondering why so many people are obsessed with it, I’ll try to explain.
Website owners want their web pages listed at the top of the major search engines. They want lots of targeted visitors landing on their sites, and search engines are a great way to attract them.
Keyword research and optimization are important, but the use of keywords isn’t the only determining success factor. A web page’s authority is just as important, especially with Google.
Authority is determined by the quantity and quality of backlinks, links from other pages on your site or other sites. Backlink quality depends on the authority and the relevance of the linking web page.
Google’s rating of authority is called PageRank after Larry Page, Google’s founder. Google PageRank, or PR for short, is a number between 0 and 10. A PageRank of 10 is the best, but even a PR 5 isn’t easy to obtain.
Since Google PageRank is a key component of search engine optimization, and since page rank depends on receiving favorable outside attention, website owners and SEO professionals put enormous effort into cultivating relationships with relevant and authoritative sites that can link to them.
Back on the Link Farm
A note of caution: Buying links and link exchange strategies can backfire. Search engines are on the lookout for sneaky SEO strategies.
As with keyword stuffing discussed in Keywords Demystified, link farms and other linking schemes can also incur harsh penalties including search engine delisting.
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