Central Perk

joi, 24 martie 2011

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Posted: 23 Mar 2011 10:59 AM PDT

I came across a great analogy over at Zen Habits, and it's got me rethinking how I view social media:

If my personal website is my digital home, then my social networking profiles on Facebook and Twitter, etc. are my embassies. Embassies exist to maintain relationships with "distant lands".

Although the post is really about gaining focus and managing your digital life, I think the idea of social media profiles as embassies in distant lands is fantastic, and I'm going to run with it. My apologies to the author (Tyler Tervooren), who probably didn't intend anything I'm about to say.

Here are 6 ways to build up your social media embassies without an international incident…

1. Declare Independence

Before you can really have an embassy, you need to be a sovereign nation. It's great that your Facebook page has 100 Likes and your band's MySpace profile just cleared the double-digit friend mark, but what happens when the rules change? An embassy isn't a permanent home – politics change, alliances shift, and you ultimately have no control over someone else's territory.

The impact of social media is growing, no doubt, but that doesn't mean you should surrender your entire presence to someone else's site. Make sure you have a permanent online home that you control. Your social media embassies should be an extension of that home.

2. Be a Model Citizen

Your embassy is, first and foremost, your face to the world. You don't see countries set up a lawn chair next to a cooler under an umbrella with "Embassy" written on it in permanent marker. It's ok to create a light profile for some recon – you may decide that a given social network isn't for you – but once you're in, remember that you're representing your home country. Finish your profile, and put a little time into it. Connect with people and participate. Nothing says "poser" (or "spammer") on Twitter, for example, like someone with 1 update, no bio, and an egg for an avatar.

3. Respect the Locals

Being on a social media site is like travelling in someone else's country. If you never plan on coming back, you can play the obnoxious tourist all you want. If you want to set up a home away from home, though, you need to respect the locals, their customs, and even their leaders. Don't assume that what flew in some other country will be acceptable in your new embassy. To put it simply: listen first, and then participate.

4. Learn the Language

This is an extension of (3), but it's important to enough to stand on its own. Every social network has its unique lingo, and talking the talk can really help smooth over any diplomatic missteps. Know your hash-tags from your emoticons, and remember that the slang that can be hip in one country can make you look like a loser somewhere else. I'm not saying you have to talk like you're in high-school or pepper every conversation with "OMG LOL WTF?!", but learn to appreciate the flavor of the local language. It will also help you avoid misunderstandings.

5. Bring Your Credentials

Anybody with an email address can set up a social media embassy, and it's easy to forget that being a stranger in a strange land is a privilege. What do you bring to the table? Can you produce the paperwork, if you have to? Treat this as a thought exercise – I strongly believe that the more you understand your own value proposition, the more effective you'll be in social media. Know why you're there, and you'll be able to back it up with real contributions.

6. Foster Allegiances

Embassies have an important function – to be in the right place at the right time when a crisis occurs and to be near the heart of international relations. Your social media embassies aren't just a place to broadcast your opinions and hurl links at people. They're an opportunity to build relationships. I'd estimate that 60-70% of my current consulting business has come from a combination of blogging and my participation in social media.

Take the time to learn about people – Twitter and Facebook blend business and personal relationships in a way that makes it easy to build rapport (if you're sincere about it). Pay close attention to existing allegiances – who do your allies know, and how many steps away are those contacts from you? Done carefully (without pushing your own agenda too hard), it's easy to broaden your circle of influence, sometimes in just a couple of steps.

How's Your Embassy?

How is your own social media presence like an embassy? Are you on good terms with the locals, or are you teetering on the brink of war? This is mostly a thought exercise, and I'd love to hear what other people think about it in the comments.

Photo borrowed from Bodew.com. It really has no relevance to the post, but I was looking for a picture of a flag umbrella with a lawn chair, found this, and loved it. I'm not even entirely sure what it is, but someone please go buy one.

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Running A Seasonal Website Graywolf's SEO Blog

Running A Seasonal Website

Posted: 24 Mar 2011 07:24 AM PDT

While running multiple websites isn’t a strategy I recommend for beginners, it is something experienced publishers and SEO’s can do to diversify their income sources. While some people choose to run websites in different niches, another option is to run seasonal websites.

If you are going to run seasonal websites, you want to set up websites that have peak traffic and buying cycles that are at opposite times of the year–say, for example, Department 56 Christmas decorations and swimming pool supplies. Look at the search patterns for those two terms on Google insights.

Season Website Term Search Traffic

Seasonal websites have the advantage of being evergreen and only require updating once a year. You need to decide if you will use a living URL strategy (which I recommend) or add new URL’s. Even if you do use a living URL strategy, consider doing a content audit and removing or updating your weakest content every year BEFORE the prime buying cycle. I would also recommend adding some new content every year. Increasing your content by 10% every year is a solid number.

Another variation of running seasonal websites is running one website with distinctly different search seasons. For example, you could have a family travel website with family ski vacations, winter family vacations, spring break family vacations, summer family vacations, and so on. If you can find a way to have enough different terms so something is converting throughout the whole year, you are golden.

Seasonal Family Vacation Search Volume

So what are the takeaways from this post:

Look for ways to diversify your income with multiple sites with different peak search periods.
Try to keep the content as evergreen as possible.
Revise, update, or remove the weakest content from last year.
Try to add some new content every year.

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Running A Seasonal Website

Traffic & Trust by Nick Reese Review

Posted: 23 Mar 2011 08:06 AM PDT

One of the questions that comes to my inbox fairly regularly is how do you actually build an affiliate website, one that will rank for competitive terms and make you enough money that you can live on? Talk about a big question that I really can’t answer in a single or even multiple emails! Well, if you’re one of those folks, I’ve finally got something to offer you: Nick Reese’s Traffic & Trust ebook.

… there is a section called “blueprint” that helps you go from a blank piece of paper to an actionable list on building a successful, money-making website …

Ok let’s get the hard question out of the way. Nick sent me a free copy of his book and asked whether, if had the time, I would review it. To be honest, I get these requests all the time and, if I don’t know you or know of you, I’m not going to do it. Secondly, if I start someone’s ebook and don’t like it or don’t think it has any value, rather than bash it, my schedule will suddenly become too busy, and I’ll never get to it. However, Traffic and Trust is a book that I think has value. If you apply the principles in it, you will make back the initial investment and more money over the long haul.

The problem with a lot of ebooks is they give you overly generalized advice, sort of a 10,000-feet-up, CEO-style overview. Very few ebooks give you “in the trenches” actionable info that you can use. Now, this isn’t a step by step recipe for how to build a money making website. Quite honestly, I don’t think that’s even possible. But it takes the 10,000-feet-up good advice and helps you break it down into actionable items you can use to make a “to-do” list. In fact, there is a section called “blueprint” that helps you go from a blank piece of paper to an actionable list on building a successful, money-making website. The blueprint section is very specific. You will have to do the work, because there are no “get rich quick” steps, but it’s very do-able even if you have limited to no technical skills.

One of the sections of the book that I think is particularly important is the promotion section. As you may know, over the past year Google has tried to give credit to trusted brand websites. They have even filed patents trying to algorithmically define and identify what is a brand . IMHO two of the most important parts of the algorithm are trust and authority. If you do a good job promoting your website, the links, trust, and authority will flow. In fact if your content is good, and you do a good job promoting it, you won’t have to worry about crazy linking schemes.

There is also a section on tracking. To be honest, this is an area where a lot of people screw up. If you can build your website so you know which pages not only get the most traffic but drive the conversions, you have very powerful information. You want to put most of your effort into the parts of your website that make you money and less effort into the parts that don’t.

The very last part of the book has a list of resources that you can use to help you get from wherever you are to money making website, even if you don’t even have a domain name . It lists everything from registrars and hosting companies to affiliate programs, plugins, and promotion tools. I don’t use everything on his list but I do use a lot of them. Personally, I’m a big fan of Tiger Tech Hosting because they rock. They even monitor my friends’ tweets and provide solutions on the spot. I also use quite a few more plugins than he does–heck, I use more than most people (see WordPress SEO plugins)–but these are personal preferences. I didn’t see anything in his list of recommendations that made me wince.

Who is thus book for? If you’re an SEO veteran, there’s probably not a lot here for you. You might pick up one or two things but that’s it. If you’re a mid-level SEO and you can drive some traffic and sales but want to take it to the next level, there is definitely actionable information here for you. If you’re new and your website isn’t making any money, then you should absolutely get the book. If you put in the work described, there’s no doubt in my mind you will make more money.

Check out Trust and Traffic by Nick Reese.

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Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.
TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Traffic & Trust by Nick Reese Review

Greeting Children in El Salvador

Your Daily Snapshot for
Thursday, March 24, 2011

Photo of the Day

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama shake hands with children along the ropeline at the arrival ceremony at Comalapa International Airport in San Salvador, El Salvador, March 22, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

SEOptimise

The Hidden Motives for Denouncing SEO

Posted: 24 Mar 2011 02:04 AM PDT

Denouncing SEO is a popular sport these days on the Web. It always draws crowds. Over the years the simple “SEO is spam”, “SEO is dead” or “SEO has no future” rants have worn out though as they have no basis and have been repeated far too often without any proof.

The sport of denouncing SEO has evolved.

Bloggers, journalists and entrepreneurs of the aspiring kind denounce SEO while understanding the importance of it. The obvious linkbaits do not work anymore so these people have to come up with some theory of SEO that makes at least some sense before they denounce it.

Also by now we witness a variation of motives to denounce SEO.

It’s not just the folly of mistaking SEO for spam or the attention grabbing anymore, you don’t get as many links for denouncing SEO these days, it’s too common by now. So you have to at least try to prove the point of your rant or at least package it in a way that does not look like one.

Depending on the hidden motives the approach varies. I don’t want to explain the absurdity of denouncing SEO anymore, I’ll just repeat my short answer: saying “SEO is spam, dead or has no future” is like saying web hosting, web design or usability is spam, dead or has no future. As long as there is an Internet you will need a way to put content online (web hosting) design it (web design), to make it findable (SEO) and user friendly (usability).

So assuming the sanity of the “SEO is spam”, “SEO is dead” or “has no future” proponents we have the following motives:

Trying to convince your competition not to optimize in your market to gain an advantage

“SEO is no longer a viable marketing strategy for startups” by Chris Dixon co-founder of Hunch and investor in a 12 of others startups is a great example of this. Hunch is a pretty useless content farm that actually has little or no content. It optimize for lots a generic phrases with almost empty pages. For example the page optimized for ”Ways to Save Money”, which uses the exact match keyphrase in the title, URL and H1 tag only contains a 12 links to other empty pages with ”ideas” like ”Cook at home”.

The actual phrase is the only ”content” on that page. There are comments and more links on it. A blog could sumarize all the “ways to save money” in a single post but here they are spread on dozens of pages. Luckily the Hunch content-less farm doesn’t rank anywhere near the top for this query.

So Chris Dixon tries to denounce his luckier competition, the content farms, which ironically are really valuable in contrast to his own set of keyword optimized empty pages. He says things like: ”Some of the SEO industry is "white hat," which generally means consultants giving benign advice for making websites search-engine friendly. But there is also a huge industry of black-hat SEO consultants who trade and sell links, along with companies like content farms that promote their own low-quality content through aggressive SEO tactics.”

Indeed he targets his direct competition here. He can’t compete with the content farms for obvious reasons so he tries to at least limit the number of competitors by advising not to follow his own business model.

Getting the attention of Google engineers in order to get competitors downranked

Do you remember the early wave of content farms are bad articles? Almost all of them focused on one example, Demand Media. The one site most often cited as the prototypical content fam was Demand Media’s eHow. The bad publicity for Google allowing content farms to rank high became so wide spread that Google had to act quickly. They have worked on a low quality conetnt update for a while but it went live recently to counter the impression that Google results increasingly deteriorate.

The big surprise was that eHow didn’t get penalized It didn’t even lose in rankings, it actually gained in the Google index according to more than one SEO statistic provider. So while almost all other content farms lost significantly in the update eHow actually gained visibility in Google search.

Demand Media was aggressively dealing with the menace of a Google penalty beforehand. The PR effeorts have worked out. While Google has destroyed most of its compeition, Demand Media itself, the content farm that started is now more than ever a dmaining force in the content farm business.

Stack Exchange CEO Joel Spolsky tries the same approach and anti-SEO tech blog TechCrunch is glad to assist in the following post: ”(Founder Stories) Stack Exchange's Joel Spolsky On How SEO Makes The Internet Worse”.

Stack Overflow by Stack Exchange is a Quora-like Q&A site focusing on the programming industry. The above mentioned Chris Dixon is also an investor. Stack Overflow does not create any value itself, it’s 100% user generated content. It’s basically a mix of forums and a social voting site. Mr. Spolsky’s main complaint is that:

“SEO spam sites just rip the questions and answers straight off the site, wrap them with some black-hat SEO magic and Google ads, and rank higher than the original page on Stack Overflow. ‘They took our content, put Google ads on it, and made it worse because not in situ,’ … ‘They used SEO techniques to rank higher.’”

So while he seemingly addresses the common issue of content theft on the Internet he ultimately wants to save his business model of earning money by content provided by others. He takes ”his” content from users who earn no money for posting it and he wants to be the only one to own it. There’s a bigger issue involved here, who owns the content you put on a site, you or the site you post in on? I’d argue you do that but here someone who capitalizes on content by other people complains about others taking advantage of it.

Also let’s look at a random example question I took from Stack Overflow to show how low quality user generated content outranks expert bloggers. I used the question ”Change an input’s HTML5 placeholder color with CSS” from Stack Overflow for this purpose. The two short answers only offer a very basic workaround for the actual issue while there are adavnced scripts available online to deal with it.

Nonetheless when you search for [input HTML5 placeholder CSS] stack Overflows outranks the actual HTML5 placeholder CSS styling expert solutions by Nico Hagenburger and David Walsh. Why does Google favor such thin content UGC sites? Is it due to the fact startup CEOs and Google engineers are like buddies and can influence them to get competitors downranked ”algorithimically” while simple bloggers have no such davantages? Stack Overflow is no different than all the other UGC based content farms, it’s just more geeky.

Making the impression that SEO is not your business model in order to make sure Google doesn’t act on you

Ariana Huffington is probably one of the most hated competitors in journalist circles. Journalists and old media publishing houses who in most cases fail at SEO are very envious at her meteoric rise to money and fame. How did she get there? To a large part due to SEO best practices and user generated content. By now the Huffington posts even ranks with empty pages scraping third party tweets.

So she should be praising SEO for what it’s worth, after all, it was not just the exploitation um huge numbers of idealist and activist cntributors, it was a well planned SEO strategy that made the Huffington Post succeed. Now that everybody noticed though Ariana Huffingtom tells the envious professional journalists that it’s actually not about SEO. Her opinion on SEO is already in the headline of an interview piece called ”Arianna Huffington: SEO Is Just A Tool, Not A Way To Produce Great Journalism [TCTV]” on the same TechCrunch blog which is renowned for badmouthing SEO.

Then she goes on to claim how the new AOL-HuffPo will be focusing on high quality journalism. She even goes so far as to claim that she already focused before the merger on high quality journalism. She did not. The HuffPo empire was build on unpaid labor by thousands of activist bloggers most of whom feel cheated now. Many contributors left immediately and publicly decried the the sale to AOL as a sell out.

HuffPo was basically a huge group blog run by idealists for free. They created value and one person now became a millionaire by selling it to a megacorporation that doesn’t fit with the idealist worldview of most contributors.

So what is the business model of HuffPo? It’s taking free content from unpaid contributors, pushing it to search engines via SEO and making money off it. All the journalism is good and SEO is bad talk is just a way to cover up her tracks. She ceated a huge content farm by fooling people into unpaid work by pretending that it’s an activist site. No that’s clear it isn’t the HuffPost team is getting desperate and thus uses Mahalo-like spam technique like scraping tweets. As people in the search industry already notice she has to blow the trumpet of journalism in order not get penalized like the other content farms.

So you see that in all three cases the hidden motives for denouncing are quite obvious when you look a bit more closer.

It’s not that these people want to see a clean, valuable and relevant content on search engines. It’s their own business they have in mind. The spam they talk about are ”sites positioned above me”. They want to use publicity to press Google to act on their competitors. Demand Media already succeeded using this tcatic it seems so more an dmore shady individuals will do try it. Prepare for advanced variation of “seo is spam”, “seo is dead” and “seo has no future” articles.

* Image by Toni Blay