Central Perk

luni, 8 august 2011

Damn Cool Pics

Posted: 08 Aug 2011 12:29 PM PDT

The Cat Scan is a new Tumblr blog by Jonny featuring images of cats that have been scanned by a scanner. You can submit a scan of your cat and it will be posted there. It turns out very cool. See for yourself.

Do You Suffer from Computer Vision Syndrome? [Infographic]

Posted: 08 Aug 2011 12:11 PM PDT

Feeling bleary-eyed after a long day in front of your various screens? Here's an infographic full of tips and techniques to ease your eyes into the digital world, showing you ways to cope with staring into screens all day.

If that's not enough, the infographic gives you a peek at present and future tech that will make your eyes positively bionic, as well as new devices doctors are now using to diagnose eye problems much more efficiently than ever.

This must be getting bad — Those Acronym-Making People (TAMP — okay, I made that one up) have created one for the eye health problems that ensue after staring at screens for an average of six hours per day: CVS, or Computer Vision Syndrome:

Click to enlarge.

Source: Mezzmer

SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

Discovering Brand Advocates (Link Building Tip)

Posted: 07 Aug 2011 01:59 PM PDT

Posted by Kate Morris

There are a number of posts over the last few years that are described as "head smacking tips" or "so easy it should be illegal." My head smacking tip to start this week is simple: If you have users that register for anything on your site (newsletter, profiles, orders), ask them if they have a website (and for the URL).

Why? We all want more linking root domains that are editorial in nature. The GOOD links, from people that really want to talk about your business. I know many of you would love to have a list of sites that are strong and have heard of you already. The outreach is much easier that way! How better to do that than reach out to current customers that have websites?

My Example: (if I were Spotify that is)

Spotify Profile

Please note that the highlighted field is not in their current profile section. I added it. But how awesome would it be if it was there? Of Spotify's 10 million registered users, what if only 5% filled that out? That's 500,000 URLs of people that use your product! How many of you would love to have 500,000 possible new linking root domains? Depending on your company size and how many people you have registered on your site and how often you get new registrations, this could be lower (or higher!), naturally. The point is still the same, these are people that know your brand and are therefore easier to contact.

While you are at it, you might ask if they have Twitter handles. This can help you contact them and really interact with them, hopefully turning them into advocates. Think of the companies using Klout scores to engage with the influential. (I'm not one of those, and no I'm not jealous *kicks dirt*)

I do have some tips to help you get started in this process. We'll look at how to collect this information, including how to add it to your form and how to process the information once it is gathered. Then we will consider what to do with this information to impact not only links but also building advocates for your brand. Read that as long term growth and revenue, because that is what brand advocates do for you.

Tips for Adding "Website" to Your Form

Don't make it mandatory to enter this information.
Not everyone owns 20 domains like most of us do (or 2,000, or 2 million). But if you ask, people might give that information to you. It might be in hopes for a link (which you might do) or just because they are filling out the information requested.
Don't clutter your initial contact form with it.
CRO law #1 is keep your forms as short as possible. If you already just ask for name and email address, then stay with that. They can fill out the information later.
Let them know there is more information to fill out.
Once you have them registered and confirmed, let them know where their profile is (maybe via email) and that they are welcome to fill in more information to help tailor their experience. Things like location, birthday, etc.
Ask old members to visit and fill in the gaps.
Want to get this information from current members? Redesign that area (the profile) and let them know about it. The new design and questions (maybe with some *get birthday deals* calls to action) will spur them to visit and update. Or if they have already filled in information like address, email the people that haven't updated in a year and ask that they verify their information in the system. I can't tell you how many times I come across a profile with a really old address or email address.

Using the Information

Once you have that information, mine it. Spit out a report of your user's websites, the date they joined, number of conversions (maybe total amount spent on the site), anything that would help you assess them as customers. Oh, and contact information, that is important!

Run the list of domains through the SEOmoz OpenSiteExplorer API. Ben Estes, a brilliant colleague of mine, wrote a post on how to use the API to get great data. If you can quickly return data like domain authority, page authority, linking root domains, social shares, etc., then you can determine who your best possibilities are for customers turned online advocates.

Ben actually built something like this for Distilled's use, and here is the output we get from it (copied and pasted into Excel).

You are looking for sites that have some authority, but don't just look at domain authority. Sites on Blogspot or Wordpress are going to look really strong that way. Instead, I'd focus on linking root domains and page authority of the homepage. Also be sure to look into what social metrics they have going on (sorry we don't have that coming in from our tool, those metrics are new after all!). Take this random list of sites I generated (really, no really, random, plus my own) and look at the metrics. The highlighted ones are the good ones to start with. Your set will look different, just use your own judgement as to how to break them out in priority order. I'll give you a few more ideas on how to do that in a minute.

And BTW, these are all friend's sites from people I follow on Twitter. Please don't shoot me guys. And Ian, can I get a link man? (kidding, kidding!)

Identification and Outreach

Take all of that awesome information and add it to the information you downloaded on your customers including how often they buy and contact information. Are they really fans of yours and have a great site (remember, pay attention to linking root domains and homepage page authority)? Go for them first. They are the easy pickings.

Next, focus on those people that keep coming back but don't have as strong of sites, but keep those sites updated regularly. This requires checking out the sites you have listed for quality (think the Google Panda questions), but it's worth it. In my mind any quality site, no matter how strong it is right now, is a good site to get a link from. These people trust your brand and are the perfect people to tell the world about it. And who knows, they could have just started. How awesome would it be if you helped them get their site going? Remember, this is a world of relationships and communication: karma is real.

Now to the harder part. You might have some people that have strong sites but have only purchased from you once and have never been back since. These people will take more finesse in contacting, and should be treated much like any other outreach project. Be sure that you take the time to get to know them, build the relationship before you go out and ask for a blog post or tweet. Build the relationship (I just said that, I know, but it's important).

As for the "other" sites, keep an eye on them. In this Post-Panda world, you never know when someone is building an even more awesome site and continue to grow as a valued customer to you. This is not a one time deal, keep track of this info over time. The key here is that if you have customers and a great product or service, people will be willing to talk about you. Sometimes you just have to ask.

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Interview with Robert Sheinbein About Creating Quality Content Graywolf's SEO Blog

Interview with Robert Sheinbein About Creating Quality Content

Posted: 08 Aug 2011 10:35 AM PDT

The following is a sponsored post for MadContent.com.

For those of you who missed the first interview be sure to read Robert Sheinbein Talks About LinkWheels. In today’s Interview we’re going to be talking about content and Panda, and creating quality content for your website. Hi Rob welcome back, one of the obvious things Google wanted to eliminate with the Panda Update was low quality content and content farms. What are some of the changes you think site owners and publishers have to make as far as existing content, and new content on their websites.

For me, Google Panda is one of the best things that Google has done! Most Internet users would have experienced trash sites in their search results while searching for a keyword before Panda! Since Panda, there is now a focus on quality. Gone, or almost gone, are the days where you can do tricks to get yourself ranked in Google. There are a few more tricks left but one thing is for sure is that these tricks are short term( 3 months to 18 months) and eventually you will be hit with a Google penalty if you do these tricks. I'm also sure that there is more to Panda than meets the eye. There will be many more updates not just from Google, but from the whole search engine community at large, and that is all good change!

So now what are we supposed to do? The first change website owners have to make is to move entirely away from low quality content. Actually, what needs to be done is to re-orient the site to visitors once again, and not just search engines. When there is engaging content on websites, and when the site is updated frequently, search engines automatically notice and will rank them high for the respective keywords. When there is good content, SEO becomes easy too!

Google has put out some recommendations for site owners affected by this update and what they should look into changing. One of the things many people in the Internet marketing community recommend is identifying low quality content, and updating or removing it. What do you think are some of the better ways to identify low quality content or content that might be problematic and how do you recommend dealing with it?

Site owners will know the source of their content. If they know that they've got spun or other low-quality content (or even worse –copied content), they'd do well to purge it all and start afresh – before the sites get a slap or a ban from Google. This is a better solution than just updating the content by making superficial changes. And it is necessary that there be frequent updates. Nothing works better than a website or a blog with frequent high-quality content updates.

You own a website copywriting service MadContent.com can you give my readers a brief overview of the service.

MadContent.com has been around for several years now, and we're absolutely proud of it! It is one of the very few pure-content service providers online, and we have worked with over 2000 separate websites in the last couple of years. We've also been on top of Google for most of our keywords, and we're doing better than ever. In the last 2 years, we've groomed a team of fabulous writers from all over the world, and we have them on a salary. That is why we can manage to deliver top quality content at prices which are so attractive. In the recent months, we've added Press Releases, Article Submissions, and E-Books to our arsenal, and the results have been quite good for clients. We have a totally customizable order form, where customers can order articles according to their own needs – keyword density, format, etc. We deliver quite fast – within 5-7 business days for large orders, and 3-4 days for smaller orders. Customers can start with as low as 1500 words in an order.

When we were speaking offline before this interview I had a few questions. Is this original content written by humans or is just “spun” content? Can I use this content anywhere, like my website or maybe guest posts on other websites? How do you verify the content being created hasn’t been copied from somewhere else?

Very valid question! We actually started off by having a small content team for our own internal customers, and that grew into MadContent.com. We value content quality and never stoop down to spinning and rewriting existing content. Our writers are dedicated to the highest standards of quality, and we have a strong code of conduct, which does not allow such practices. So yes, you can order content which you will use directly on your website home page! All our articles pass CopyScape, and we have an internal quality control team which proof checks every article before it reaches the customers. Once we send you the articles we relinquish control over them and will never use the articles again – even as samples to prospective customers. It is this work ethic which has brought us to where we are today and we always keep looking for ways to delight our customers!

What types of content do get the most requests for, or do you feel would help site owners and publishers the most? What are some unusual ways people have used your service that site owners might not think of right away?

About 50% of orders we get on MadContent.com are for SEO Articles. Since these have a wide range of applications – from usage on third party blogs to article sites, they get ordered the most. Then come articles for Submission to directories – which are longer than the normal SEO articles. Customers have the flexibility of choosing the word count of each set of articles they order with us but we've noticed most people choosing 500-600 word articles for submission. Press Releases come next (which are also 500+ words). Website Content is another regular niche – with customers ordering content which will actually be used on their websites directly. There are several interesting uses people have come up with – product reviews, product descriptions, sales copy, and image / video descriptions keep coming in frequently. We also get description orders for sales sites as well.

When I first started using copywriting services and authors, one of the biggest difficulties I had was “spec’ing out” a project, or giving clear instructions on what I wanted as an end result. My problem was I assumed people on the other end of the screen knew what I wanted, without me telling them, once I started giving clearer directions as far as tone and style, and an example or two, the results came a lot closer to my expectations. What are some tips you can share about providing better instructions for people who want to try to use your service?

Another fabulous question! You hit the nail on the head when you say that most people do not have an exact idea about what they want. If such an order comes in – where the client gives us vague instructions, we normally send them a mail asking for more details, and in the mail we mention the kind of details we want – like what do they aspire to do with the content, and so on. That helps them get more specific. Also, we are going to make another change on the site to increase our customer support. We are adding a 24/7 Live Chat operator – so that customers can actually chat with one of our people before placing an order. Our sales professionals are trained to ask the right questions, allowing customers to choose the right kind of content and the right keywords. That should help! We have been slowly adding this service to all our sites after we bought the company recently. We have noticed over a 100% increase in sales since we have added the service to our sites. It does take time to train the live chat operators but "wow" the result are amazing. You can learn more about the service at http://www.www.livechatagent.com

Let’s pull out the crystal ball, as website owners the best thing we can do is not try to be where Google wants us to be today, but to try and be where Google is going to be in 2-3 years. So what do you think are some forward thinking strategies or tactics people can use as far as creating content that will have the longest life, and be the most effectiveness in Google’s eyes?

The first and foremost thing customers need to do is to get their keywords right. A keyword strategy is not something which can be changed every other week! Once the right keywords are in place, content starts. Having content which is in sync with the primary keywords of the website – at a low density of about 2% – is the kind of content which will have longevity. This is the content which will yield best results too. And a content based SEO strategy is best done on a regular basis. Updating content on a regular basis is much better than posting a thousand articles at one go. Also, website owners should make sure that they use tools like RSS, Ping, and Social Media to get people into the content they write.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to me today Rob, since you’ve provided some helpful tips and advice, I’ll give you this opportunity to remind everyone about your copywriting service and how it can help them.

Thanks MadContent.com is probably the most economical place for quality content today. And most of your readers probably already know that! We specialize in writing original, keyword-rich, and engaging content for all kinds of websites (with the exception of adult, gambling related, and a few other genres). Our flexible order form and quick turnaround ensure that we fit right into your SEO strategy. We are also the backend provider of choice for several large SEO consultants and Web designers. Try out MadContent.com (if you haven't done so already), and we know that you won't look for a content provider ever again.

Rob Sheinbein provides many services to website owners. His full list of services can be found by visiting http://www.ezd.com

The preceding has been a sponsored post. Find out more information about sponsored posts.

photo credit: Photospin

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