Archive for January, 2009
What My Kids Taught Me About Blogging
by Jennifer Laycock
So far this week I’ve written about the Search Engine Optimization and Social Media lessons I’ve learned from watching my kids grow up. Today I’ll be looking at what my two year old and four year old have taught me about creating content, building a community and increasing engagement rates for your blog.
Attention Spans are Short
Anyone who has spent more than 35 seconds with a preschooler knows they have the attention span of a squirrel on crack. Holding their focus on any one toy, game, conversation or activity for more than a few minutes is a challenge. They’re always looking for the next great adventure and the next fun surprise. Over time, they learn to focus a little longer and a little more intently, but in the early days, it’s all ADD, all the time.
Internet users aren’t all that different. We live in a world where the next exciting thing is a single click away. The 30 second video you’re watching on YouTube better be interesting or your eyes will wander to the list of related videos and you’ll be off watching a new one before the first one even has a chance to finish playing. Tweets and Facebook status updates have taught us to communicate in sound bite form and a great deal of users have no interest in reading more than a few hunred words of content in a sitting.
In a world where social bookmarking, Twitter, search results and editorial links allow users to flutter from blog to blog, you have to find a way to keep their attention for more than a nanosecond. You need to make sure your content and your design are interesting enough to draw them in. Things like related posts, integrated video, images, and well formatted, scannable text can go a long way toward catching their eye and getting your point across.
Sometimes You Have to Start the Friendship
Last weekend, a friend of mine came to visit with another friend and his young son. This little boy was the quiet type. Very shy, very reserved…we barely heard a peep out of him for the first hour or so he was there. My children, on the other hand, have a little more of my personality. They’re warm and open and friendly and willing to talk to nearly anyone. That means they make friends easily and quickly.
I watched my children descend on this little boy, invite him back to their room to play, provide him with toys and start playing “around” him. Eventually, he joined in and appeared to have a very nice time playing. It made me wonder how things would have gone if my kids were as shy as he was. Would they all just have hung back in a corner eyeing each other? Would they have found toys and played on their own, having far less fun than they could have together?
That’s kind of how the blogging community works. Sure, you can blog in a vaccuum…sharing your thoughts and ideas and experiences without ever referring to or linking to any other bloggers. You might even succeed by doing so. Thriving, however, requires you to step out and make the effort to make some friends.
Find other related blogs and add your input via comments. Point out their best posts, or launch a friendly debate against them on your own site. Contact them via email or follow them on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Connecting with other bloggers in your niche makes nearly everything about blogging better. You’ll have more sources for content ideas, you’ll have an easier time getting coverage and you’ll enjoy the experience so much more with friends.
Find People You Have Things in Common With
While all kids like to have friends, it quickly becomes clear they most enjoy spending time with other kids who share their interests. Kids might meet up on a sports team, in a martial arts class, at cub scouting, or any other variety of shared activities. Even outside of that, most children form friendships on the basis of the things they like to do.
This is a good rule to model when it comes to making connections around your blog. I mentioned above the value of finding other bloggers to connect with. In this section I want to stress the need to make sure you’re finding bloggers who share your interests. If you run a food blog, seek out other foodies. If you’re a marketing consultant, you’ll want to build up a bevy of marketers to read and interact with. If you’re writing about music or movies or celebrity gossip, you’ll want to look for the other blogs that cover those topics as well.
The most successful blogs are part of a community. Their authors are connected with people who share their interests and together, they form a collective voice on a topic. If you want your blog to be a success, you’ll need to step out and make the effort to find the people who share your interests and to connect with them. Otherwise your blog will be the shy kid hanging around at the edge of the party, wishing you had the courage to join in and experience the fun.
Photos courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons license from users CD_Photo, MadMetal and The Shutter Babe.
Check out our small business news site.
New Tools Add to Twitter’s Networking Potential
by Mack Collier
Twitter itself is pretty simple, but as the site continues to boom in
popularity, 3rd party sites/tools are popping up like kudzu in the
South. And many offer a great deal of potential for helping you tap
into the networking ability of Twitter.
With the economy as bad as it is, many of us need all the help we can get in putting us in contact with people that can help us grow our businesses. Here’s some sites/tools I’ve noticed recently that help you utilize Twitter to its fullest as a networking tool:
Twitter Local – TL is a 3rd party client that lets you see tweets from Twitter users based on location. This is also great to cover a breaking news event in a certain location.
Twellow – Twellow shows you Twitter users organized by their industry. This also helps you answer the ‘who should I follow on Twitter?’ question.
Twellowhood – This is also from the people behind Twellow, it lets you see who is on Twitter and living in a location that you specify.
TweepSearch – What happens when you have 1,000 people following you and you want to see how many are working in advertising in Phoenix? Uh-oh. But thanks to the TweepSearch, you can search for such information among your followers.
Twitter Search - Don’t forget the tried and true. Ken Burbary has a wonderful post that details how to effectively drill down into Twitter Search to get maximum results.
People Search on Twitter - We got an early Christmas present last year when Twitter brought back the ability to search for people on Twitter.
These sites and tools should help you better network with others on Twitter. And if you suddenly in the market for a new job, these tools can help you there as well!
Check out our small business news site.
Some Sage Wisdom Amidst A Winter Wonderland
by Sage Lewis
While poking fun at himself and where he lives, Sage makes a valuable point about the importance of listening to your surroundings. Sometimes, we focus so strongly on just one thing we want that we forget to be aware of and act upon what’s currently around us, which might actually lead to something better than that one thing.
Check out our small business news site.
Cast Your Vote for the Best Online Marketing Articles
by Jennifer Laycock
It’s that time of year again. Matt McGee and a team of volunteer judges have put together one of the most comprehensive lists of great online marketing articles around. Matt divided the articles up into topical categories earlier this month and the judges have just finished narrowing them down to the final contenders. Now it’s up to the online community to cast their vote and determine who goes home with a 2009 SEMMY award.
You can check out this year’s nominees in a variety of categories:
- SEO
- Analytics
- Online Marketing
- Design and Usability
- PPC
- Blogs and Blogging
- Search Tech
- Reputation Management
- Search Industry
- Small Business
- Rants
- Viral Marketing
- Local Search
- Social Media
- LOL Funny!
I’m a finalist in the Viral Marketing category and Search Engine Guide’s Associate Editor Stoney deGeyter is a finalist in both the Online Marketing and Link Building categories. (and yes, he’s probably going to gloat over that for at least the next six months.)
So grab a cup of coffee, fire up your browser and read through some of the best online marketing posts of 2008, then cast your votes and spread the word.
Check out our small business news site.
What My Kids Taught Me About Search Engine Optimization
by Jennifer Laycock
Yesterday I wrote about the Social Media lessons I’ve learned from watching my kids grow up. Today, I’m going to put the search engine optimization spin on it. After all, no matter how well we learn the basics of good search engine optimization, there’s always something to be said for a reminder of why those basics are so important.
Good Organization is the Key to Everything!
Life with small children is chaotic. Toys end up in the strangest places, crayons end up in the fridge and clothes end up in places you’d never think possible. Of course this problem only compounds itself over time as friends and relatives show up with more and more toys to add to this mix.
My children have a habit of haphazardly carrying toys from one area to another and leaving them there. We’ve got play areas in each of their rooms and in our sun room. Nonetheless, trains find their way from the train table in my son’s room to the toy bin in my daughter’s room and play dishes find their way from the play kitchen in the sun room to the toy bin in my son’s room.
Figuring out what toys have ended up where can be sheer madness. It’s also a source of endless frustration for my kids when they want to play with something (the train set or the kitchen set) and they can’t find the pieces. This is when I explain to them why toys all have their place and why they need to be returned to that place when they’re done being played with.
It’s not so different from the navigation on a web site. Good internal site structure and proper internal linking is essential to good SEO. Both search engine spiders and people need to be able to find their way to your content. Unfortunately, content has a way of popping up on the site from all different departments and getting thrown into the mix without good planning. Blog posts are made without proper tagging, press releases and announcements are thrown online without being integrated into media kits and new products are added without being properly categorized.
Worse yet, improperly linked pages leave search engine users with a tantalizing taste of what they’re looking for and no way to fully enjoy it. Finding great content in the search results and being unable to make your way to additional related content is no different from my son finding the caboose of his train and having no idea where the engine or tracks are.
Choose Your Words Carefully
Young kids have a very limited vocabulary. While it’s true they add new words at an astonishing rate, you still have to choose your words carefully when communicating with them. Children hate what they see as smoke and mirror words like “maybe,” “later” and “we’ll see.” They know those words tell them nothing and generally come at a time when they most want a concrete answer.
The same thing holds true for the content on your site. While I understand your marketing and PR department may have certain ways they like to refer to your offerings to make them sound all fancy and special…the general public just wants to know what you have to sell. Choosing the keywords and phrases you’ll focus your content on is probably the single biggest decision you’ll make in terms of your search marketing efforts.
Pick the wrong words and you won’t get your point across to the people you need to reach. Pick the right words and you’ll be both found and understood. Which leads to the next lesson…
You’re Going to Have to Repeat Yourself
I’m not sure how many times a day I repeat myself, but I’m fairly certain it’s somewhere around the eleventy billion mark. Kids learn through repetition and they test boundaries repeatedly. That means I have to repeat, remind and restate myself on nearly every point I’m trying to make.
This is exactly what you have to do when preparing the content for your site. You’ll need to repeat your keyword phrases in areas like your title tags, your headings, your page copy and your links. You’ll also need to restate those phrases in different contexts and forms to make sure the language flows naturally.
While there’s no magical number of times your keyword needs to appear on your page to help you rank well, the reality is that it must be used consistently to let the engines know what your page is about.
Photos courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensing from users Patrishe, SingleParentSpecials, TomEppy
Check out our small business news site.
Top 500 Search Engine Keywords Of The Week – January 28, 2009
by Wordtracker
1. Headers defined
Nos. : Position according to popularity
Count : Number of sightings of keyword in database.
Keyword : The keyword itself
2. The top 300 surge report
These are the top 300 queries from the last 48 hours, which
represents the complete queries from the largest Metacrawlers
on the web (Metacrawler/Dogpile etc..) for the last 48 hours.
Nos. Count Keyword
===========================================
1 4917 www.zoo.com
2 4035 facebook
3 3930 google
4 3434 yahoo
5 3238 myspace
6 2915 youtube
7 2768 peanut butter recall
8 2573 ebay
9 2527 craigslist
10 2487 coroas transando
11 2298 red tube
12 1906 yahoo.com
13 1667 you tube
14 1575 mapquest
15 1529 tube8
16 1432 hotmail
17 1372 redtube.com
18 1340 myspace.com
19 1294 xtube
20 1290 youporn.com
21 1289 yahoo mail
22 1215 cancer
23 1203 craigs list
24 1196 leo
25 1182 gemini
26 1161 aries
27 1148 aquarius
28 1142 scorpio
29 1136 pisces
30 1132 taurus
31 1128 virgo
32 1112 hotmail.com
33 1093 sagittarius
34 1091 capricorn
35 1082 libra
36 1073 xhamster
37 1048 msn
38 1041 obama pay freeze
39 1039 gmail
40 1002 mujeres eyaculando
41 991 www.elkware.com
42 991 googletestad
43 984 cnn
44 922 inauguration videos
45 889 amazon.com
46 839 google.com
47 816 aol.com
48 812 wikipedia
49 803 spankwire
50 775 facebook.com
51 747 girls
52 741 walmart
53 739 best buy
54 726 maxporn
55 704 youporn
56 703 obama
57 697 garotas transando
58 691 dictionary
59 681 youtube.com
60 665 home depot
61 664 dogs
62 659 amazon
63 654 msn.com
64 653 gitmo to close
65 650 aol
66 642 white pages
67 634 barack obama
68 631 fox news
69 622 circuit city
70 612 hot
71 582 weather
72 550 brazzers
73 544 tube8.com
74 529 target
75 529 dog
76 523 porntube
77 520 homens coroas transando
78 519 lowes
79 518 luis miguel desnudo
80 510 redtube
81 505 mother seduces son
82 503 test
83 496 chinese new year
84 483 wap.elkware.com
85 480 sears
86 475 x tube
87 475 dogpile
88 474 games
89 472 panochas gratis
90 472 youjizz
91 466 bucetas brasileiras
92 466 pornotube
93 465 ebay.com
94 465 comcast.net
95 464 search engines
96 458 mujeres nalgonas
97 456 nudist
98 450 super head & mr marcus
99 449 yuvutu
100 446 gmail.com
101 443 www.yahoo.com
102 439 mulheres gozando
103 431 lucy pinder
104 428 google maps
105 427 map quest
106 424 my space
107 419 maps
108 415 chinese horoscope
109 412 fotos de bucetas
110 395 ask.com
111 395 craigslist.com
112 391 shufuni
113 385 bikini
114 385 tube 8
115 379 southwest airlines
116 378 msnbc
117 375 erica ellyson
118 366 itunes
119 365 paris hilton
120 363 tncz red news
121 361 garotas virgens
122 360 megarotic
123 359 bank of america
124 358 boysfood
125 353 mature
126 352 lingerie
127 349 bucetas raspadas
128 348 cnn.com
129 348 anime
130 345 yellow pages
131 342 twilight
132 340 google earth
133 339 puppies
134 338 jab farm lessons
135 337 cars
136 335 news
137 329 xxxtube
138 329 jenna jameson
139 329 imdb
140 328 irs
141 328 doctor’s excuse
142 324 girl
143 323 daily horoscope
144 320 miley cyrus
145 319 weather.com
146 318 kim kardashian
147 316 xtube.com
148 316 www.web21.com
149 315 find people
150 313 utube
151 313 chinese new year cards
152 312 ask
153 310 marisa miller
154 305 mariana bridi
155 304 www.myspace.com
156 302 usps
157 301 ups
158 300 jessica alba
159 299 love horoscopes
160 297 slutload
161 296 babes
162 295 www.facebook.com
163 293 love calculator
164 293 webkinz
165 291 panochas mojadas
166 288 mariana bridi da costa
167 288 wicked weasel
168 286 drudge report
169 286 trackstick
170 283 britney spears
171 283 espn
172 279 mulatas transando
173 279 lil wayne
174 279 people search
175 279 astrology
176 277 ae.zip2.com
177 273 keezmovies
178 270 thong
179 268 netflix
180 268 photo tips
181 267 megan fox
182 267 www.youporn.com
183 266 spankwire.com
184 264 ellen rocche nua
185 264 angelina jolie
186 262 meninas nuas
187 260 verizon
188 259 walmart.com
189 258 costco
190 257 badjojo
191 255 expedia
192 254 radio shack
193 252 carmen electra
194 252 irs.gov
195 252 myspace layouts
196 252 pink
197 252 list of black comedians
198 251 pogo
199 250 www.redtube.com
200 250 qvc
201 250 katie morgan
202 249 imagefap
203 248 viejas encueradas
204 248 wal mart
205 248 music
206 246 metacafe
207 246 www.google.com
208 246 pthc
209 246 chinese zodiac
210 245 las mas nalgonas
211 244 free movies
212 243 office depot
213 242 travelocity
214 242 kelly blue book
215 241 facts about barack obama
216 241 funny
217 240 tattoos
218 239 kristen archives
219 238 mapquest.com
220 238 free horoscopes
221 235 breast
222 234 orbitz
223 234 drudge
224 234 onomatopoeia poems
225 231 yahoomail
226 230 ninfetinhas
227 230 webmd
228 230 booty
229 230 free online games
230 230 staples
231 229 asian
232 229 hombres peludos
233 226 fotos proibidas
234 226 bbc news
235 225 the view
236 225 star signs
237 224 verizon wireless
238 224 match.com
239 223 al4a
240 222 met art
241 222 galilea montijo cojiendo
242 222 food network
243 221 limewire
244 220 ninas encueradas
245 219 web md
246 219 zodiac signs
247 218 zodiac
248 217 movies
249 217 lost
250 216 kelli mccarty
251 216 asstr
252 216 dump.com
253 215 jackie robinson timeline
254 215 naughty america
255 214 acai berry
256 214 photobucket
257 213 comcast
258 213 www.hotmail.com
259 212 dans movies
260 211 rush limbaugh
261 211 denise milani
262 210 microsoft
263 210 global warming
264 209 oscar nominations
265 209 tnaflix
266 208 cats
267 207 sebastian rulli desnudo
268 207 women
269 207 hog rock cafe
270 206 lisa lopez autopsy
271 205 youjizz.com
272 204 face book
273 203 wife
274 203 maxporn.com
275 202 beyonce
276 202 flickr
277 202 ftv
278 202 area codes
279 202 turbo tax
280 201 reality kings
281 201 mortgage calculator
282 201 plentyoffish
283 200 paypal
284 200 busty
285 199 hearts
286 199 eskimotube
287 199 pitos grandes
288 198 free games
289 198 jessica simpson
290 197 jobs
291 197 reverse lookup
292 197 tera patrick
293 197 altavista
294 196 nudists
295 196 jennifer aniston
296 195 katy perry
297 194 proxy
298 194 printable bubble letters
299 193 funny videos
300 193 aol mail
3. The top 200 long-term keyword report
Our current database contains 275,143,855 search terms
and represents the complete queries from the largest
metacrawlers on the web (Metacrawler/Dogpile etc.) for the
last 150 days.
Nos. Count Keyword
===========================================
1 195628 google
2 185446 myspace
3 161689 youtube
4 159379 yahoo
5 153269 facebook
6 137312 ebay
7 133213 redtube
8 126586 craigslist
9 114001 red tube
10 113370 youporn
11 96051 yahoo.com
12 88653 you tube
13 82491 maps
14 79887 mapquest
15 79465 myspace.com
16 79233 youporn.com
17 78509 redtube.com
18 77442 coroas transando
19 73291 tube8
20 72741 xtube
21 70169 horoscope
22 69058 hotmail
23 58195 walmart
24 57370 craigs list
25 56890 cancer
26 56017 scorpio
27 55945 virgo
28 55110 yahoo mail
29 54251 pisces
30 53810 aries
31 53592 leo
32 53125 cnn
33 53023 libra
34 52479 sagittarius
35 52454 taurus
36 51710 aquarius
37 51226 hotmail.com
38 51098 www.zoo.com
39 50959 sarah palin
40 50954 gemini
41 49865 msn
42 49856 white pages
43 49669 youpron
44 49163 capricorn
45 48936 best buy
46 47521 pedoland bbs pthc
47 47125 fotos de bucetas
48 45740 weather
49 45707 xhamster
50 44340 gmail
51 43527 girls
52 43471 amazon.com
53 43011 gambar pemerkosaan
54 42796 spankwire
55 42729 home depot
56 42714 wikipedia
57 41810 target
58 39677 aol.com
59 39528 google.com
60 38307 amazon
61 37881 dictionary
62 37274 brazzers
63 37046 fox news
64 36847 funny videos
65 36317 sears
66 35939 mujeres eyaculando
67 35757 kim kardashian
68 34582 hot
69 34518 pornotube
70 34443 youtube.com
71 34400 lowes
72 33881 circuit city
73 33491 test
74 33201 free ringback tones
75 32828 www.elkware.com
76 31912 money
77 31620 tube8.com
78 31361 maxporn
79 30964 porntube
80 29743 nudist
81 29694 search engines
82 29249 game cheats
83 28734 msn.com
84 28407 ebay.com
85 28168 dogpile
86 28016 aol
87 27482 bikini
88 26942 robb’s celebrity page
89 26785 googletestad
90 26691 breaking news
91 26686 dogs
92 26511 games
93 26496 facebook.com
94 26119 free e-cards
95 25576 mujeres nalgonas
96 25237 obama
97 25207 pthc
98 24939 tamil kama kathaigal
99 24870 kristen archives
100 24473 youjizz
101 24300 carmen electra
102 24011 megarotic
103 23832 boysfood
104 23754 music downloads
105 23751 miley cyrus
106 23632 halloween costumes
107 23317 shufuni
108 23222 espn
109 23002 google maps
110 22962 paris hilton
111 22855 lingerie
112 22808 my space
113 22803 britney spears
114 22707 yuvutu
115 22705 comcast.net
116 22511 msnbc
117 22189 map quest
118 22033 weather.com
119 21971 lil wayne
120 21681 walmart.com
121 21332 jab farm lessons
122 21316 dog
123 21180 www.yahoo.com
124 21125 hearts
125 21084 jessica alba
126 20950 myspace layouts
127 20915 anime
128 20915 tube 8
129 20879 gmail.com
130 20816 ls magazine
131 20586 barack obama
132 20570 pink
133 20563 southwest airlines
134 20553 cnn.com
135 20506 mother seduces son
136 20420 ask.com
137 20376 jenna jameson
138 20272 garotas transando
139 19728 cars
140 19495 roses
141 19458 scary pumpkin stencils
142 19435 angelina jolie
143 19375 free lady sonia
144 19355 xtube.com
145 19349 craigslist.com
146 19058 megan fox
147 19053 black friday ads
148 19053 google earth
149 18980 luis miguel desnudo
150 18971 drudge report
151 18728 twilight
152 18538 free galleries
153 18516 news
154 18443 bank of america
155 18430 yellow pages
156 18409 mature
157 18349 webkinz
158 18329 costco
159 18269 tamil blue film
160 18147 x tube
161 18096 girl
162 17825 daily horoscope
163 17689 elweb bbs
164 17608 babes
165 17386 www.myspace.com
166 17355 butterflies
167 17332 love horoscopes
168 17280 plants
169 17157 wedding flowers
170 17148 jessica simpson
171 16989 jennifer aniston
172 16920 types of flowers
173 16825 doctor’s excuse
174 16652 katy perry
175 16650 music
176 16566 homens coroas transando
177 16539 itunes
178 16504 order pizza
179 16491 christmas
180 16446 people search
181 16427 utube
182 16420 www.ls-magazine.com
183 16326 ask
184 16314 wicked weasel
185 16251 flower guide
186 16204 bbc news
187 16202 meaning of flowers
188 16095 super head & mr marcus
189 15850 paypal.com
190 15661 limewire
191 15650 panochas gratis
192 15646 chinese horoscope
193 15543 www.youporn.com
194 15468 imdb
195 15337 al4a
196 15258 ikia furniture store
197 15239 asian
198 15165 ups
199 15076 board3.cgiworld.cgiid=j
200 15069 free itunes codes
Find keywords that apply directly to your site. Try the free trial at Wordtracker (aff) to see the words your customers use when they search – and how popular each word is.
Check out our small business news site.
Don’t Be Blinded By Social Media and Social Networking
by Mack Collier
EMarketer recently reported about a study on how small businesses would
be spending their online marketing dollars in 2009, and the results
were interesting at times, and downright scary at others.
The article pointed out
that the study found that only 37% of respondents do NOT use social
networking, the lowest percentage, even lower than the 38% that do NOT
have a website! Seriously? Social networking is now more important than
having a website to small businesses?
I also noted that 70% of respondents said they would not be blogging in
2009 (and I think that figure will actually be much higher), and 82%
won’t be incorporating mobile devices into their online marketing
efforts.
What concerns me about these figures is how it suggests that the respondents may be placing too much importance on social networking, and not enough on other online marketing channels. If you want to create and maintain an active presence on MySpace and Facebook, it should be because you have identified that your current and potential customers are there, not because ‘everyone else is doing it’. You may be reading all the excitement about social media and social networking and feel that this is something that you ‘need’ to be doing.
You don’t ‘need’ to be using social media to grow your small business. I think you should do some research to determine if social media should be in your business growth toolbox, but social media isn’t right for every business. Don’t invest your limited resources in any tool unless you have reason to believe that it will help you grow your business, and be worth the time and money investment.
Check out our small business news site.
Bribing People With $50 Gift Cards: Part Deux
We asked what you might want to see here, and what would a promotion-monitoring component look like? The readers’ ideas far exceeded expectations, and could really help push this column further along. …
Yahoo’s New Era
President Obama received a warm welcome with record-breaking fanfare, but I just didn’t see the outpouring of joy for Yahoo’s new chief executive. I suppose one could argue the United States is in much worse shape than Yahoo, but the lack of enthusiasm I’ve seen for Bartz (among the digerati) is disappointing. …
Track Those Alternate Conversions
It’s natural to think about revenue-generating events such as sales, leads generated, or ads clicked on when we think about conversions. But there are many other types of valuable conversions, and we’re shortchanging ourselves when we look at it this way. …