OVBlogger: Blogging and SEO

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I saw a rumor in Facebook that says Google is dancing.

(For the non-SEO folks, that means they’re brewing up a new algorithm.)

Hmm…

That could be good.

That could be bad.

It may have something to do with the social aspects of the web these days, which I think is pretty smart. I’ve said it here before (and elsewhere) that it will one day become more about what the people think is good and want more of than what the spiders think.

Maybe Google will become like a Nielsen’s rating kind of company. You know, it’s a staid marketing tactic, right?

FIGURE OUT WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT AND THEN, GIVE IT TO THEM.

Interesting to speculate on what will happen, but of course, it’s all just speculation. We’ll have to see what Google’s change will bring.

I’m hoping it’s something that leans toward sites that are legitimately involved with social marketing. That would be cool. I love that end of things, and have been working in that milieu for about three years now.

‘course I was late to the game. Web 2.0 was really coined in 2004 by Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media. But I remember having a Del.icio.us account wow… about three years ago, I guess.

Anyway, as I’ve been saying, social marketing is going to play a huge roll in search. I can’t wait to see how it all plays out.

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So, the social milieu is ever morphing, and one of the very old standards is changing in a big way.

Social bookmarking practically started with Del.icio.us, but what a handle! I always thought it was suicidal in terms of marketing, but people found it and use the social bookmarking service all the time. I guess I learned about it in 2005 from Tim Linden, my old friend at StartXchange.

I thought it was kind of cool then, but didn’t have any idea how HUGE this stuff would get.

Anyway, Delicious is now Delicious.com–easier to deal with when typing the URL into the address bar. Easier to find for anyone who didn’t know the old .us domain.

And it looks a bit different. Still that nice four color square logo, but inside, Delicious is totally revamped and looking sweet.

You can check out bookmarks or tags on the front page, which is pretty cool.  But it also lets you subscribe to tags.

To check it out, I subscribed to the tag “internet marketing,” and got a bunch of interesting stuff back.

In fact, I learned that Mozilla just came out with Ubiquity, which will allow you to, and I quote from the Mozilla Labs blog:

“Ubiquity 0.1

• Lets you map and insert maps anywhere; translate on-page; search amazon, google, wikipedia, yahoo, youtube, etc.; digg and twitter; lookup and insert yelp review; get the weather; syntax highlight any code you find; and a lot more. Ubiquity “command list” to see them all.
  
• Find and install new commands to extend your browser’s vocabulary through a simple subscription mechanism
  
• Read about Ubiquity In Depth, or see a number of the commands in action (with screenshots) in the Ubiquity Tutorial.”

That’s pretty cool, no? I mean, I’m going to check that out. But if it weren’t for Delicious, I may not have found that intersting tidbit of information.

Web 2.0 rocks, and Delicious is a total cornerstone of it.

Wow! Imagine if they’d had this when I was researching stuff all the time. I go way back to pre-Internet days as a writer, and I can assure you that going to the library or running across town to interview the local expert wasn’t cutting it. Now, all the information in the world is right at your finger tips.

I feel blessed.  Going to add Ubiquity now.

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I remember when Traffic Geyser first opened. Tellman had Mike Koenigs on a call with us and we were all like, cool. Sounds like it can be a useful site. That was almost 2 years ago.

If you don’t know what Traffic Geyser is all about, it’s a video distribution site. You upload your video one time and Traffic Geyser does the rest for you. You can upload it to like 30 video sites now, the audio to like 16 podcasting sites, and bookmark it in 10 social bookmarking sites at the same time. How cool is that?

Wasn’t that big when they started out, and why I said it keeps getting better.

Plus, when you upload the video, you get to add tags, a good SEO title and a description which goes along with it to whatever site you submit it to via TG.

The biggest downside is that you have to go and join all the video sites, podcasting sites, etc. Still, it’s a small price to pay for getting the tool to work for you. Very powerful stuff.

Oh, and I forgot. It will distribute to blogs, too. You can choose from some of the hosted solutions or even customize and have it sent to your stand-alone WordPress blog. Kewl?

If you’re using video and not using Traffic Geyser, you’re wasting a WHOLE lot of time.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Jack Humphrey, who in my humble opinion is one of the best bloggers on the planet, wrote a post last week about the best social news sites online. And here’s the deal… At some point, I think that what people want and enjoy are going to supersede what the search engines think we should want. I could be wrong there, but consider the explosion in popularity for Web 2.0. Is it a fad? Hmm…

I don’t think so.

When I joined Twitter, there were hardly any Twitterers. It was just a few savvy marketers like Brad Fallon, who encouraged his list to join and why I was in so early, and now… I have like 80 people following my stuff. That’s pretty cool, and I’m following a bunch of other people. Plus, it’s just fun. If you’re not “tweeting,” you need to get on board.

But I digress. Twitter has become enormously popular in just a short time. And look at You Tube and then, we come to the social new or bookmarking sites. Which ones should you bother with? Hmm…

Jack has given a list in his post:

http://www.jackhumphrey.com/fridaytrafficreport/social-networking/top-10-social-news-sites/

I’ll share the top 5 with you, but you’ll have to read Jack’s post for the rest of the social news sites chosen by Google.

Number one is…

Drumroll please…

Digg! Well, who didn’t know that? Just remember that if you’re in the Internet marketing, you’ll not be totally welcomed if you throw a bunch of spammy plugs into the mix. So, don’t just go to Digg and plug your own stuff. Plug anything you think is cool, and give people a reason why. That’s how it’s supposed to work, and you should totally follow that mindset. Just Digg stuff you like or “Bury” stuff you hate.  It’s a totally audience driven milieu.

Number two is…

Propeller! Now, this is a surprise. Propeller used to be Netscape, but last year, Netscape changed the name to Propeller. I’ve been using this site for what feels like ages, and it’s pretty sweet. You can include video content there as well. Why I’m surprised is that when it was Netscape, it wasn’t terribly popular. Now, you give it a snappier Web 2.0 name and bingo! Propeller rules.

Number three is…

Reddit I like this site and you can get a lot of traffic from it, if you remember to use it for content. If you’re plugging a post, it should be a post with some great content, definitely not a sales page. And don’t piss the Reddit regulars off. You really don’t want to do that and be a reddit castaway.

Number four is…

Newsvine Wow! You know, I have to admit that this is one I’ve missed. Newsvine, huh? I totally have to get an account there and check it out.

And number five?

Fark Well, hell, you have to join that site just for the name alone. But you can rate your plugs from “Interesting” to “DumbAss” OK… That totally rules.

All of these sites are free. Use them and you’ll see your traffic build, especially if you’re in a niche.  If your niche is Internet marketing, be careful to follow the rules and to never make your plugging spammy. Once you lose the respect of one of these communities, it will be very hard to regain. Just check out my post of last year about Scribd. It was a very bad year.

So, I encourage you to go over to Jack’s blog and read his post in its entirety. And if you haven’t signed up for the Authority Black Book and The Friday Traffic Report, you’re missing tons of great stuff.

I’ve said that before, but Jack’s “Link Building and Blog Marketing” emails are in the class “Open now and read immediately” for me. I really enjoy them and learn a lot.  Get on the bus!

Hey, I’ve heard that somewhere before. Har.

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Well, I do. It’s a place where people can plug Internet marketing sites, just as they can at the mainstream sites like Digg and StumbleUpon.

But I really wish that they could get their programming together. I know how hard that is, though. I’ve been paying a programmer for weeks now just to get my site the way I need it to be, so blessings on its owner.

However, I don’t like having this little “My SQL error” in place of my widget. (May not be happening now, but does on occasion.) Though the PlugIM people didn’t create the widget, they need to either fix the one they have or create one themselves.

And then, when I go to the site, I try to click on a popular post or story and I get another screen error.

Argh!

And if you ever try to give people the news of your post, you go through all the filling out of the proper forums (The system won’t allow you to do it any other way.), you’re stopped at the send.

Frustrating, I tell ya.

But I’m not going to give up. PlugIM is a great site, and probably experiencing growing pains. I just hope they’re able to get their stuff together real soon.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Over at Search Engine Watch, Marty Weintraub posted about the “diehard members of social communities who want to keep marketers at bay.” There are? Whoa.

I’ve been doing StumbleUpon posts for more than a year now for Tellman’s stuff and my own. I never had anything like that happen. But here’s the thing… If it’s so bad for marketers to post at StumbleUpon, why then, is there a category for marketing? Doesn’t make sense, does it?

I was told to “gtfo” at reddit once. But that’s pretty mild compared to the stuff that Weintraub talks about. The post was about a sale I had for people to join Blogging4BoomersinBusiness.com and the headline was a bit spammy, I suppose. “Get $20 off today only” Well… I should have seen that one coming, right?

But I’m still of the opinion that if you post to social bookmarking sites with some meat in what you’ve written, and not just sales pitch, you won’t run into trouble. Or, maybe I’m asking for it by making this post. Weintraub says that he fell into bad graces with StumbleUpon long-time users because he posted in a search blog about how much he “loves” StumbleUpon.

Heavens!

Well, it is more serious than you may think. He had to call in the local FBI.

My advice to you is that if you’re in Internet marketing and you want to use StumbleUpon, only do it as Don Crowther says for your “best” stuff. Don’t bookmark every post you make, unless it’s got some real meat to it. Otherwise, you are spamming and that just sucks. Nobody, not even we marketers like spam.

Use the social networking and bookmarking sites wisely and you can do very well in terms of getting traffic and of building a relationship with a market.

Popularity: 28% [?]

I was over at Propeller today tagging a blog post, and I thought, OK, so people are reading and plugging and tagging at all the other Web 2.0 sites we know because we found some information that pleased or satisfied us. Great.

How do we know it’s right? I mean, if somebody just takes it into their head to write about pygmy ponies with blonde manes, what qualifies them? I mean, do they just know about these things or do they really KNOW about them? I’m sure there are some writers who do enough research to know that what they’re writing about is real. Of course, you never know these days. Even people at the NY Times make things up.

But how many people are taking some of what they read as verbatim, when it’s nothing more than guessture or supposition? Kind of scary when you think about it. Talk about your Urban Legends.

Some of this stuff is legends of cyberspace.

How do you tell the difference? Hmmm… Your first bet would be to look at the writing. If it sucks, that’s almost a dead giveaway. People who are passionate about a subject can usually talk or write about it with ease. I’d say the majority of them. You know how you put your heart & soul into something that you could discuss all day long just because it’s fun.

But here’s the thing… Just because someone has 230 Diggs or 5,000 Stumbles upon, that doesn’t make the information right. It could be, it’s true. But it’s the ‘Net, people. Come on. Relying on sites like Wikipedia, for example, is just ludicrous. Do we really want the overwhelming insanity that we call the Internet to shape things that are so important? I mean, do we really know how many people voted on something because it was good or whether they’re just in the same buzz group?

Information is great, if it’s real. If it’s just information pretending to be real because a group of people say it is, then… to me, it’s totally useless.

Stop wasting bandwidth.  Choose your Stumbles and Plugs wisely. If someone asks you to tag something, only do it if it makes sense to you. If what they’re asking you to tag just reeks, then, don’t do it.

Simple?

Popularity: 24% [?]