She’s quoting Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield in this:
“The reason the company — Google — doesn’t care is that the basic functionality of social platforms like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter is diminishing the importance of search. He points to users growing inclination to search for specific information by tapping into friends and colleagues knowledge through platforms like Twitter’s own search product, as well Facebook’s status update tool.”
Ha!
Apparently, I’m not the only one wondering if search will become less relevant over time. I mean, if you want to check out the lunar space station, you wouldn’t go to Facebook, right? (Or maybe it has a Facebook account now, too, I’m not sure)
But if you want to know if a piece of software works, who would you ask? Someone who has used it, or several someones who have used it and get their opinions before you buy, right? Or, where would you go to get contact lenses online? Google will tell you where, but not how good the service is.
Years back, we Netizens just accepted what was served up to us. There was only interaction on Usenet or in IRC (Internet Relay Chat), but only a small segment of the population used those vehicles to communicate with peers. I loved it back in the mid-90’s and was often found in my Usenet home first thing in the morning to check up with friends.
But now EVERYbody is on Facebook or Twitter or MySpace or whatever, and I can communicate with them. I mean, I finally got my 71-year-old sister to sign up for a Facebook account, and she’s no slouch when it comes to computers. She just didn’t see the benefit. Guess what? Her attitude has changed because Facebook is just plain fun.
Although I think Google will still be around for a very long time to come, I also think that Google’s heyday of preaching to us what we can and can’t do online so that we’re its “good graces” will pass. The fact that Google seems to be kicking and screaming and NOT fully entering the social end of Web 2.0 just shows us how scary it is for them to think about.
I think that’s a good thing. Although Google is indeed a great free service and has tons of incredible features, I just think we’ve given the search engine too much power. It’s time that online, we at least get this slogan going again: “Power to the people!”
Some people are really sick and tired of hearing about Twitter, and it’s true… Twitter has become the new fad for online enthusiasts, marketers and non-marketers alike.
But if you’re a marketer, have you thought about this?
It’s like having a sub-list. I mean, you can’t email these people, but you can tweet your followers anytime you want. So, if you’re like me, you write a blog post and BOOM! goes directly to Twitter. That way, I’m connecting with my followers on a bigger scale than a mere 140 characters, right? When people like my post, they sign up for my list or at least, subscribe to my feed. But you can’t just send blog posts. You need to interact.
Twitter is a great tool for networking, but it can be a powerful way to get traffic to your site, as well.
That’s not to say that you should post marketing stuff to Twitter. That’s out, pretty much. I mean, if you tweet every day, folks might be OK with you dropping an AWeber message into Twitter every now and then, especially if you’re giving something away. But direct marketing is out, frowned upon, and if you do it very much, you’ll lose tons of followers. So, you’ll be defeating your own purpose.
Twitter is more like a guerrilla marketing tactic.
But then, making friends with people is the key to all marketing isn’t it? Who trusts you more than a friend?
If you want to get more friends on Twitter, be sure to participate in a quasi-nouveau tradition called #followfriday. The # tag will allows folks to go to TwitterSearch and find all the tweets that have #followfriday. Tags can be created for any purpose.
So, pick a few cool people from your list and tweet away, like this:
And so on up to 140 characters. People on your list see that you like the folks in the #followfriday tweet and if they like you, they’ll check out your pals, too, and probably follow them, as well. It’s fun and very cool. And if you’re consistent with your #followfriday’s, you’ll be in lists that other folks send out, too.
Only one caveat about #followfriday… Only do it on Fridays. Otherwise, you have to find another # like #woofwednesday or something else.
Come follow me at http://Twitter.com/PatMarcello and let’s get acquainted. Put #OVBlogger into your post and let’s see how many people we can get in that #!
Have you ever sat back and wondered how your site was faring in several of the Google Data Centers? Or what about how many links you have coming back to your site from outside? What about mod rewrites… any good at creating those? META tags?
And on and on…
There are metrics that we all like to check out occasionally when it comes to our site. Where do we rank? How do we stack up to the competition?
Of course, if you’re ranking #1 for several keyword phrases at Google, it’s not such a big deal, right? Your SEO plan is working.
But what if you’re not ranking that high or ranking at all? What if your site’s been up a while, but you’re still not seeing your site in the SERPs (search engine results pages)? Where do you need to tweak things to make a difference?
I have a great SEO tools site for you that I just stumbled upon! It’s called “Link Vendor,” and you can visit at: http://linkvendor.com
The Searchmetrics Report there is fascinating. You plug in your URL and it tells you how you’re doing in terms of simple SEO, META data, technoology, social bookmarking, and more. Very cool.
Anyway, if you’re a stats loving strange person like me, this site will totally turn you on. Check it out!
“SEO is [not] a set-it-and-forget-it item you tick off a to-do list,” remarked author Rebecca Lieb. In an article by David Berkowitz in Media Post’s Search Insider, entitled “You Can Still Handle These SEO Truths,” Lieb answered a few questions about SEO and her new book.
Whoa. What she said is so totally true, and I say the same all the time. To me, SEO is like a living, breathing matrix that constantly has to be monitored and adjusted with the changes in the environment. Search is always changing, and so, SEOs and anyone who wants good search engine ranking has to change with it.
Lieb is a woman after my own heart, and I plan to check out her new book, The Truth about Search Engine Optimization, for sure. I’m guessing there will be many more, “Right on sistah!s” in there, too.
Here’s another quote from the article: “And if you’ll indulge me a second, there’s another myth I’d like to bust: that search is for geeks and techno-nerds. I’m not a developer; I’m a writer and editor, but search turns me on.” Whoa. She could BE me. LOL
What about search turns me on? The fact that it’s an inexact science. It is never static (as aforementioned) and it’s totally exciting. What new curve will the Google ghods throw at us today, folks? And about that, here’s something I never understood. Google does the “dance,” but they should revise that term. We’re the ones whose feet are being shot at all the time!
And that keeps it really exciting. Are you up on the latest stuff? How valid is what you learned last year? What changes have to be made because of this zig or that zag? Are you sick of constantly having to learn new stuff? Oh, man… That’s what turns me on! I love learning!
And SEO always keeps you guessing.
And why many of the top gurus, including my own boss, don’t see extremely high value in SEO.
Of course, they’re wrrr… wrrrong. Eh!
What’s better than getting streams of traffic you never have to pay for? Not much. And the funny part for me is that I study it all the time, but rarely get to put this stuff into practice. There’s never enough time at Overcome Everything, and because I’m working for that company, my own company is like the shoemaker’s children. It never has shoes.
Ah well…
In a perfect world, Google wouldn’t make us crazy by trying to outsmart us outsmarters, and I’d have time to prove that SEO is the most important (not the least important) part of your business.
If you don’t have time for all the ins and outs of SEO, just take enough time to do proper keyword research, and use keywords in everything you do. That’s the least you can do, and over time, it will help your business. You may not get to the top of Google for a keyword like “golf,” but you might be surprised at terms you are ranking for and getting some of that cool search engine goodness after all.
So, thanks to Rebecca Lieb and people like here that are out there laying down interesting stuff about SEO. To me, it’s the best!
Have you ever held a teleseminar with a JV partner? No? What are you waiting for? I mean, the power of teleseminars is E-normous!
When you get on the phone with a group of people and show expertise in your niche, they’re ready to follow you. They get it that you know your stuff and want to learn from you. They want to join your membership site or just pick your brain, but even before the call begins, people opt into a list to be able to get on the call.
When you hold a teleseminar, you’re getting the benefit of the other person’s list when they send people to your squeeze page to register. When you present on a teleseminar, the other person should be having people register at their own squeeze page and be getting the benefit of your list. So, you’re exchanging list members. You’re both building your list!
I don’t get it why people just don’t think to do this. It’s totally powerful and really important! List Building is all of it. That’s it. There are no magic weapons. Everything you do should be about building your list and a teleseminar is a perfect way to get that to happen for both partners.
Plus, when you sell your JV partners’ stuff on a teleseminar you host, you make money. You get half; they get half, right? When you’re a guest, you get to sell your stuff and they get half of your profits. Everybody wins on these things!
So, what are you waiting for? Find someone whose list is about the same size as yours and just exchange teleseminars. You’ll be so happy with the results.
Do you like the ability to interact with your audience? I do, and about six months ago or more I found a great plugin that allows me to answer questions people have about my niche. Notice the top navigatin panel, which has “Blogging Questions,” “SEO Questions,” etc. Those are the result of using FAQ-tastic.
FAQ-Tastic isn’t hard to use, but don’t try it if you’re a beginner. It does involve adding pages and code to those pages so they pages will interact with the software. I mean, it’s not rocket science, and anyone who knows HTML probably won’t have any problems with it at all.
But what it does is give your readers the opportunity to ask you questions. They can be questions about what you’re posting or anything having to do with the categories you design in FAQ-Tastic. Pretty neat. I love helping folks and answering questions is what I do about 55% of my time, so it’s a no-brainer for me to have this plugin. It’s a way for me to keep in touch with my readers, too.
Another great plugin is Comment Remix (and you can search for either of these plugins right from your blog). This allows you to order the comments the way you want them to be (newest first, rather than the other way around), and the sweetest feature perhaps is that it gives you a “reply” button. You can hit it on any comment and just reply. If you don’t have this, you have to edit the post in most themes, and put your answer into the original comment, which is a pain in the butt.
With Comment Remix, you simple click the reply button, and a write blank opens up. You reply right there and be on your way.
I really like these two plugins and I’ve been using them long enough to recommend them. I hope you’ll love them as much as I do.
I have spent the past couple of years touting the coolness of the All-in-One SEO Pack plugin for WordPress. This one lets you add a title and description to every post you make, which is super important for SEO. As I’ve mentioned here before, the title and description are the most important parts of any web page, and the benefit of being able to add these to every post you make is HUGE!
Then today, I was reading an article in SiteProNews, “Blogs, WordPress and Google,” by Scott Van Achte and I was curious. So… I headed over to Urban Giraffe, and watched the video:
So, I’m thinking I’ll give it a try. I installed it and then went in to tweak the settings. Wow! You can give a title and description to every KIND of page in your blog: categories, tags, about, even 404. Making each one individual is a great help for your SEO advantage.
And, as you see in the video, it will suggest tags and keywords for you from the post. Pretty cool, I’d say.
I’m going to try it for a few days and see how I like it. If it’s as good as it looks, it could be my new recommendation. So far, I like it!
After you make a post, you go down to the HeadSpace area, and click on Page Title. Your title automatically populates. It creates a description for you that you can easily edit. AND, it suggests tags from what you’ve written, too.
It allows you to highlight the cool part of a web page, and it saves whatever you choose as an entry in your Inbox on the site. You can go there, and compile a blog post from it or you can just Twitter stuff.
Very sweet!
You can also publish what you find to Wiki-Lights, a sister site by the same people.
You have to register, but TwitterLights is free to use and enjoy. It will make tweeting a tad simpler, if you’re someone who likes to present interesting finds to your Twitterverse.
Blogging what you find along your day is made simple, too, which will really come in handy for me. Plus, you can add notes to what you find, like adding a Post-It® Note, right? It’s totally cool.
Take this one to the bank, my friends! It’s a winner!
One of the ways that SEOs stop page rank bleed from one page to another is by using the “no follow” tag in URLs.
For example, on your home page, it does you no good whatsoever to have search engine spiders follow links to your terms of service or privacy policy pages. Do you really want those ranked in Google? No. So, rather than allow your home page to distribute some of its page rank to those pages, you add a “no follow” tag to the URLs, like this:
This way, the spider sees the nofollow and stops right there and your home page PR is more concentrated. That means that important links to other pages in your site get greater benefit.
No follow is also used on websites to prevent spiders from following the links to other websites. For example, if you look at Wikipedia, all of the outbound links from there are “no follow” links. They pass no PR goodness on, and so, it prevents spammers from bothering with the site. Good idea, right?
Yes and no.
“No follow” also prevents comments on your blog. If you use the standard WordPress configuration, it makes every comment link no follow by default. You need a plugin like “Do Follow” to change that. I have “Do Follow” because I think that anyone who comments should get the benefit of that comment, and have good spam checkers in place so that I don’t get spammed too radically.
So, it’s up to you. My advice is to definitely use no follow tags for any pages on your home page that you don’t want indexed in the search engines, and to leave all others alone. Unless you get as big as Wikipedia, anyway.
