The Year In Review 2007
Everybody that has a marketing blog has written or will be writing a “year in review” article and even though I am something of a non-conformist, here is mine. From a business perspective 2007 has been a very good year for me and Get Found Now. I am not referring to financial success, which we had, but success that led to vindication of my ideas and techniques.
2007 was a year that many of the theories I had about using community based strategies for my client’s Internet presence management were proven. I have been using social network marketing type strategies for a long time, starting off with PHP Nuke and phpBB as integral parts of Internet web site strategies. It was mainly due to security issues that I got away from these forums to a more secure system – WordPress.
Even though I always knew that having social aspects to a website was a great way to interact with site visitors, the forum system wasn’t really search engine friendly. That is what makes WordPress special, the way it interacts with search engines, and how it can be a powerful stand-alone system or better yet, a part of a larger web site structure.
WordPress has 2 things that make it so powerful:
- XML-RPC - it automatically updates search engines and other directory or news sites every time your site is modified. This is vital to keeping your site fresh in the eyes of search engines. Having spiders crawling your site 2 or 3 times a day is mighty powerful mojo. My post Search Engine Optimization and Social Network Marketing has a lot more info on XML-RPC including the directories you should be using.
- RSS – it is meant to be syndicated. RSS syndication is going to be the next big thing. Most of my readers already know all about RSS, but the general web user doesn’t fully understand or use RSS. This is even more apparent to site owners and companies that use the Internet. Now that social network marketing is seen as a legitimate marketing tool in the business world, the next big step is RSS integration. See my post RSS Syndication Explained for more details.
I have to say that the best part of 2007 for me was the legitimizing of social network marketing and seeing my theories about RSS connectivity work for me and my clients. Now lets take a look at what happened in 2007 that made these things possible.
Social Network Marketing Takes The Stage
The absolute popularity of sites like FaceBook, Digg, MySpace, You Tube and Flickr pushed social network marketing into the spotlight, but even more important was the way mainstream industries like real estate embraced it. 2007 will be remembered mostly for the amount of money spent by major companies like Google and Microsoft on social network marketing ventures. All the big online players threw their hats into the Web 2.0 ring spending billions of dollars on social media sites that have yet to have a substantial plan for monetization. To me this is reminiscent of the “dot bomb” spending debacle of the 90’s, but then what do I know?
For those of you new here, I am going to digress and give you a quick insight into just what Web 2.0 is. In 2004 Dale Dougherty, an O’Reilly executive, coined the phrase Web 2.0. He and Tim O’Reilly explain Web 2.0 as opposed to what the World Wide Web used to be (Web 1.0):
Web 1.0 –> Web 2.0
DoubleClick –> Google AdSense
Ofoto –> Flickr
Akamai –> BitTorrent
mp3.com –> Napster
Britannica Online –> Wikipedia
personal websites –> blogging
evite –> upcoming.org and EVDB
domain name speculation –> search engine optimization
page views –> cost per click
screen scraping –> web services
publishing –> participation
content management systems –> wikis
directories (taxonomy) –> tagging (”folksonomy”)
stickiness –> syndication
Here’s a graphic from the page as well that is a good visualization:
For those of you that prefer a video explanation there is an awesome video on my Social Network Marketing Web 2.0 Explained post that visualizes Web 2.0
The fact is Web 2.0, social network marketing or whatever you want to call it, is here to stay and 2007 has proved it.
Search Engines Expand Their Results
The other major event of 2007 as far as I am concerned is related to search engines. The major engines changed the way that they display the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages) to include more media and other goodies. This can actually be put in the Web 2.0 category since the changes in the SERP’s put media in the top 10 results and certainly gives even more credence to social network marketing.
All the major search engines added what is now referred to as blended searches to their index results. It all started in May when Google launched Universal Search (Read The Changing Face Of Google). The next major search engine to jump on the social search bandwagon was Ask.com with their Ask3D. Live Search joined the party in September, and Yahoo added its blended search results in October along with the useless Search Assist.
These changes have had and will have a major impact on search engine optimization. SEO guys are going to have change their game and actually think about marketing! I had a feeling this was coming as you can see in SEO is Dead Long Live SEO. The fact is that blended search is a good thing for me and my clients and for all of you that follow our school of thought. You just have to make content the king of your site, have a means to stay in touch with the search engines through XML-RPC or XML site maps, and use WordPress! If you don’t have these things and want to get cracking visit my page Internet Presence Management to find out how Get Found Now can help you out.
I hope that 2007 was as good for you as it was for us. Happy New Year!
Technorati Tags A No Go
A lot of webmasters, especially bloggers, use Technorati Tags as a means of site promotion. I have been testing them on several site for a few months now and have found that they are worthless. While the tags might have some use from a usability standpoint, that is only the case if Technorati actually serves your pages on their site when one of YOUR visitors clicks on the tag. They have had many technical issues including inbound link tracking and now they are having issues serving up relevant results from tag clicks.
I ran seven tests on seven sites last month and more than half the time Technorati failed to show results from any of the sites. In fact they show an error message that states there are no pages from the blog about “search engine optimization”. It would almost be funny if you didn’t take into consideration the time wasted with Technorati widgets and plugins.
From an SEO standpoint I have seen 0 inbound links credited from Technorati in either Google or Yahoo. This is from seven sites that each have over a thousand inbound links from other sources. There were no other tangible benefits from Technorati tags from SEO or traffic. As far as the authority, the highest number I was able to achieve was 75 on a site that is in the top 125,000 in Alexa and has a 7 PR. The site gets over 1500 unique visitors a day and not 1 came from Technorati last month.
I have removed the simple tags plugin as well as the tags code from all the sites. The next test will be using the full features of WordPress tagging. I will keep you all informed on how that goes.
For now the conclusion is Technorati is a no go from all 3 standpoints:
- SEO – no benefits in search engine placement from Technorati Tags
- Usability – there is no benefit from having visitors leave your site and go to Technorati.
- Linking – I have seen no inbound link credit from Technorati in either Google or Yahoo.
My recommendation is to loose the Technorati widgets and not waste any time with specific plugins for their tags. I will still ping their system when my blogs are updated, but will no longer go out of my way to incorporate their stuff into my sites.
Managed Content Syndication Services
If you have a website or a blog by now you must know that it has to be promoted in one fashion or another. I have written a lot of posts about different ways in which to promote your sites in both search engines and RSS directories. I have been getting a lot of emails from people asking for an overview of website promotion. Rather than re-invent the wheel, I am going to talk about my company’s primary service and use that as a blueprint for those of you that do self promotion.
A lot of my peers have asked me why I give so much information away, particularly about marketing tactics and SEO. The fact is most of my readers are advanced users and would find this information either the way I have through trial and error, or by searching the Internet for it. SEO and Social Network Marketing, especially optimizing WordPress is a much covered subject. The clients that I have now and are on the lookout for, are companies that don’t have the personnel to execute a Web 2.0 marketing plan. Whether they lack the programmers or content writers, they just can’t put the time in to commit to Web 2.0. Make no mistake, if your business relies on the Internet, especially organic traffic, you must put in the time and resources to be successful.
Content Creation And Syndication
Assuming that you have either a website with a blog, or a blog system that serves as your site, the 2 primary things to work on is solid and optimized content, and syndication. I am working on several articles about WordPress optimization both from the writing side and from the server side. In fact I have been putting together a plugin package that will take your WordPress system to a new level. I know that not everyone uses WordPress so I am also creating a new real estate portal that will be using TypePad as well as another mortgage related portal that is using ModX as its content management system. I have a rather large real estate company as a client and have had unbelievable success with WordPress, but I do think it is wise to not put all my eggs in one basket. So as I work with these other systems I will post articles on the SEO progress of these other systems.
One last thing before I get started; all of the guides that have to do with WordPress are using standard SEO practices, so if you have a regular website you can take the tactics and easily apply them. The hardest part of Web 2.0 on a static site is RSS feeds. It is possible with either CaRP Evolution or even Feed For All to create dynamic news feeds from static pages. This will allow you to utilize feed and article planters as well as ping services and XML-RPC on a non-blog site. I have had a lot of skeptics that say XML-RPC on a static site is a waste of time, or too hard to implement and not worth the effort. I am running a major test series now on a high profile website. Next week will be the first post in a series of articles explaining XML-RPC and how to utilize it on static sites.
Get Found Now’s best selling service is the Managed Content Syndication Service. It basically is a Web 2.0 action plan for businesses with a static website. I have only done 2 jobs in the last 3 years for clients that had no web presence whatsoever, but I have done hundreds of upgrades and WordPress installs for businesses that have an existing site. The fact is we have had a great deal of success.
It all starts with a solid content plan that is based upon keyword research. By knowing my clients keywords, I can create URL’s and content that gives the website authority in the search engines for those keywords. It is all about authority. Your page must seem to be an authority on the keywords you are promoting. This is done by moderate keyword stuffing and link baiting the pages with inbound links that have those keywords in the anchor tags.
The key is to plan ahead in your content outline. On a static site I recommend bread crumb linking as the means to ferment deep link navigation, an essential part of SEO and usability. Read my article about Website Usability and Deep Link Navigation for more info. Once you have content the next goal is to get it out on the web.
RSS Syndication is the most powerful means for a website to reach the masses. Read this article if you want an Overview of RSS Syndication. By using RSS Syndication Services you can reach more readers than any other method of organic traffic acquisition. I use FeedBurner to manage all my feeds and have been beta testing FeedBurners RSS to Email service. While it isn’t as sexy as FeedBlitz, it is great to track all your subscribers at once rather than relying on separate analytics.
By taking standard SEO practices, providing original and optimized content, then submitting the site through syndication, Get Found Now has found a recipe for success in Internet Marketing. Our Managed Content Syndication Service is the heart of our social network marketing strategy.
Social Network Marketing: Web 2.0 Explained
You see it everywhere: Web 2.0, but what is it, what does it mean, why should you care? There is more to Web 2.0 than meets the eye. While it is true that sites like digg.com, youtube.com and myspace.com are getting the most press and are the examples most people use to explain Web 2.0, they are only examples of the personal aspects of social network marketing, not the commercial side.
What Web 2.0 Is And How It Can Help An Online Business
From a personal standpoint, Web 2.0 can be a powerful and cool way to share your thoughts, pictures, songs, playlists, videos, or whatever you’re into, with your friends and family or even co-workers. This is the underlying structure of Web 2.0, bonding and communicating outside of the normal world wide web. Think about it for a minute. The world wide web is really based upon hyperlinking. Sites get built are linked to by other sites, listed in directories, and found through search engines. It is the same with products and shopping carts, or auction sites like E-Bay. All these commercial applications revolve around users entering what they are looking for in a search engine and then following the results to what they are looking for.
Things are much different with Web 2.0. It started a while back with forums. Places where people can share ideas and information even experiences. These forum threads are then spidered and can be found in search engines so new users are able to find other peoples answers and opinions on products, services or ideals. While forums were once very popular and in some industries still are, especially for technical support sites, the fact is they are hardly a secure solution for most of us. I personally have had quite a few forums hacked no matter how many security updates I did.
Besides hackers, many users also find forums to be hard to follow, update, moderate and maintain. Along comes blogging. At first blogs were personal web logs, online journals used to save and share ideas. They hit the big time when Google purchased Blogger. Now everyone and their mother has a blog. In fact more and more industries are moving much of their organic marketing into blogging. When you look at the commenting feature within most blogging systems again the ability for discussion makes a blog a community portal.
The real estate industry is probably the largest commercial community to fully embrace blogging as a sales tool. My wife Victoria and I both are strong in that industry, bringing social network marketing to the forefront of Internet Marketing campaigns.
While it is true that hyperlinks are still the most common glue that binds sites together, there is now a more powerful tool of communication that is the fuel that drives Web 2.0: RSS. Read my article RSS Syndication Explained for an overview of Real Simple Syndication.
With RSS a whole new way exists for users to obtain information. Through feeds, users can customize their home pages with updates about whatever they are interested in from news to home listings and product updates. RSS is the underlying foundation for Web 2.0.
From a commercial perspective social network marketing is a powerful way to drive traffic to your website as well as communicate with your customers. It is also one of the best ways to maintain support for your products by keeping online support journals.
My next article about social network marketing will go into excruciating detail about the commercial applications of Web 2.0. Below is a great video I found on one of my favorite blogs which is by Lawrence Lessig I think it is the best graphical overview of Web 2.0 I have ever seen.