Archive for September, 2008

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 Matt McGee Podcast Interview: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I was very fortunate today to be able to speak with Matt McGee, a SEO industry expert that writes primarily about small business and local search marketing topics. Matt’s most well known blog is the Small Business Search Marketing Blog but he also writes on a blog called Hyper Local Blogger that gives tips on marketing smaller niche blogs focused on local areas.

Matt has always seemed to be a really down to earth kind of guy, and it was really great to get him on the phone and discuss some of the success he’s had with his local blogs, and hear some tips on social networking and social media based SEO.

Here are some things I brought away from the interview…

Social Media and Participation

• Matt hasn’t spend a huge amount of time on traditional SEO for his 4 hyperlocal real estate blogs in regards to link building.  It sounds like he has had more success with social media participation.  He shared a story about how he shot some local video of a minor league baseball game that featured a draft pick for the Colorado Rockies.  After shooting the video, he contacted some bloggers in Colorado to see if they would be interested in the video, and shortly thereafter, they featured his video and linked to his blog.  He seems to have focused more on building unique content that people want to share as a link building technique.
• He shared another tip for local blogging that included participating on photo sharing websites like Flickr that have small internal local groups.  His blogs have received a decent amount of traffic from these groups, and because the people are local, he has a great opportunity to build local relationships.
• I found it interesting that Matt isn’t a huge fan of syndicating content or writing on social networking type websites since those websites are not an asset that he owns.  He prefers to stick with building quality content and value on his own sites.  In the conversation I used the example of Activerain, and I completely understand his viewpoint.  For one thing… you can write great content for a site like Activerain, but customers on the site can be on someone else’s profile within 2 clicks.  And all the while, you are only helping to build the value and authority of their domain name.

Tips on Finding Blog Content & Managing Your Time as a Blogger

• Matt had some great tips on finding good local content: subscribe to local RSS feeds for newspapers, news sites and tv stations.  School district websites, utility companies, chamber of commerce, visitor’s bureau, local periodicals, etc.
• Create a calendar for local events, and attend the events to get pictures and video
• Matt writes at a furious pace, and the best tip he had to improve time management was to simply set a realistic goal for yourself for a certain number of posts per week.

Starting a local blog as a place for local conversation, information and events

• The local blogs Matt started were purposely not attempting to be a blatant marketing tool, but a place where the community could come to get information, news, and join in a local conversation.
• It is refreshing to see a model like this that focuses more on quality information instead of trying to shove a marketing message down someone’s throat.
• Matt does have plans to transition the blogs to become more of a marketing tool once the sites have a decent amount of subscribers and readership built up.

Thank you again Matt for the interview!

If you enjoy articles about local blogging, you will really enjoy this short series by Matt:

• Planning A Hyperlocal Blog Strategy
• Setting Up a Hyperlocal Blog (or Four)
• Content Development for Our Hyperlocal Blogs
• Marketing A Hyperlocal Blog
• Hyperlocal Blogging: Successes and Failures So Far

Start Stumbling!

If you all remember, last month I posted a brief overview about Social Media and some of it’s many uses for SEO and exposure. Well, in this post and several to follow, we will explore a handful of sites in some detail.

The first Social Media site I want to look at is StumbleUpon

What is it?

Simple Description:

Owned by eBay StumbleUpon is similar to YouTube but very different (and broader) in it’s media content. StumbleUpon is a user driven platform where “Stumblers” specify the content they want the technology to find and display. Once the user selects their preferences the videos, news, photos, websites, blogs and over 500 topics/categories will then be found and displayed with a click.

Each item displayed is filtered through your preselected preferences, we’ve gone from Surfing to Stumbling! Not sure if that’s good or bad? Nevertheless it’s addicting! One could spend hours Stumbling! The simple user interface can be installed and embedded into your browser so there’s no need to go to a specific site to search for stuff, all you do is click “Stumble” and…well, your Stumbling or surfing or…guess it depends on what you did the night before?

Here is a capture of my StumbleUpon toolbar.

One cool feature of the toolbar is the user’s ability to select the channel they desire to pull content from. For example, you’ll notice in my tool bar from left to right - Stumble All, Stumble Favorites and Friends, Stumble Images, Stumble Videos, Stumble People, News, and so on, you decide. The entire interface can be set up within your browser and you can set all your preferences, sign in and out, and for the most part do it all from there!

Another neat feature is you will know if your website or any website for that matter has been Stumbled and tagged by other users. You will see the “thumbs up” along with a “star rating” of the page.

Here’s and example…

OK, so your asking the question, “what does this mean to me” right? Or, “how can I use this as a tool to gain exposure,” I wouldn’t leave that out! Besides the cool little rating feature above there’s more…

Social Bookmarking and Publishing (Or Social Stumbling your stuff)

The toolbar is very fluid and easy to use and this is where the benefit to you comes in. Let’s say you write and publish a new article on your Blog, good for you. Stumble it!

Like or Not?

You like your own Blog article right? Well, tell others! Get them to like it! Sign into your account, find the page you want to share and give it the “thumbs up!” You can select the appropriate category and add a little text if you’d like but that’s it, you have now just exposed your piece to a potential 6 million plus Stumblers! This might be why people say “Hey, I stumbled across your website and….” Happy Stumbling!

You’ve seen them before.  The small little pictures that are used to identify profiles online.  You may even use one without even knowing it.  Those little pictures are called avatars.

An Avatar is simply: “a computer user’s representation of himself or herself”.  This could be a three dimensional representation in a game like Second Life, or a 2 dimensional graphic in a website profile.

With all the social based websites out there these days, chances are you already use an avatar on a website like Myspace, Facebook, Linkedin, Digg, Twitter, etc…  This is not rocket science… but it is important to follow a couple of guidelines (suggestions) when creating these avatars.

Branding, Facial Awareness, and Improved Visibility

One cool thing that happens when you graphically represent yourself is that you start branding (for lack of a better term), you could also call it “building awareness”, or creating “mind share”.  In simple terms, you’re creating a visual reminder of who you are for people that see your avatar multiple times.

An avatar doesn’t always have to be a picture of yourself.  Many people make this mistake, in thinking they don’t have any options in this regard.  You can really use anything you want.

You need to ask yourself, what are you really trying to create awareness of??  Your face, your company, your website, your logo?  The answer may determine what you decide to use.  Many people opt for an avatar that really has no meaning, but simply stands out from the crowd.  Others use an artistic representation.  There really isn’t any right or wrong way to do it except to say that if you are trying to create awareness for you, your business, or your website, you may want to consider using something that relates to that purpose.

Some Twitter Examples:

The “I like to photoshop my face”

The “I brand the first letter of my name”

The “I’ll just use my logo”

The “I just like my face”

The “I prefer a graphic representation of myself”

The “I like randomness”

The “I like using props on my face”

The “I like my dog”

The “I brand my face and company for maximum avatar domination”

Services You Need to Sign up For if you Haven’t Already:

MyBlogLog.com - Sign up for a free account.  You don’t even have to have a blog or website.  But your avatar will appear on websites that have the Mybloglog widget installed (like this one)… which is a good thing!  Why not brand everywhere you go?

BlogCatalog.com - Same as Mybloglog, just a little less popular.

Gravatar.com - Becoming very important.  It’s used to identify you all over the internet including when you make comments on certain sites (like this one).

Blogger.com - If you ever comment on a Blogger blog, you’ll want to set up a basic account and upload your picture so it shows up when you comment.

Wordpress.com - Same as Blogger.

Avatars.Yahoo.com - Yahoo is such a huge web portal, once you upload your picture to Yahoo Avatars, it will show up in many places all over the web as you participate

Other Places Online That Allow Avatars:

Forums & Message Boards - Involved in any forums, message boards or blogs that make you sign up to participate?  99% of these probably have a way to upload your avatar.  I find that this is the place where people forget to upload profile pics the most often.

Industry Specific Sites - There are tons of sites specific to each industry that allow profile pictures. In real estate, you have Activerain, Trulia, REW, Zolve, etc.

Specialty Sites - These sites aren’t really that special, I just didn’t know what else to call them:  Twitter, Plaxo, Friendfeed, Facebook, Friendster, Flickr, etc…

Tools for Creating Avatars:

http://mypictr.com - Online tool that helps crop larger pictures

http://www.reducephoto.com/step1avatar.asp - Online tool for creating specific sized avatars

http://www.gizmoz.com - Create animated avatars and place your head on strange bodies, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP7l8rbn9rA - Video on creating an Avatar in photoshop

Final Tips:

Choose Wisely My Son:  It’s a true pain in the rear to change multiple avatars if you decide you want to use a different avatar somewhere down the road.  You may want to consider using something that will work for you 1 year from now.

Ask Your Friends: This simple tip may save you from using a stupid avatar.

One Avatar in Multiple Places: It would be wise not to use different avatars on different sites.  You’ll miss out on a branding opportunity for people that may see you on multiple sites.

Don’t use Random Graphics:  If you can’t find something good, wait.  This is important.  You don’t want to be using an old picture of yourself, or a silly picture of an inanimate object simply because you had nothing better at the time.

Use Photoshop: There is nothing worse than seeing a blurry or stretched picture of yourself, or an unreadable logo because you were too lazy to resize the picture properly.

Be Professional: If you are using your online identity to improve business for yourself and promote professional networking, make sure you don’t use an inappropriate picture of yourself or morally questionable object.

This video post is all about why it’s important to build relationships online.

The Value of Social Networking Relationships from Justin Smith on Vimeo.
Social Networking is such a huge topic these days, but I don’t find many people that truly understand the value behind building online relationships.  Most people I meet are sort of haphazardly participating on these social networking sites and have a basic understanding of their value, but don’t really get the point.

This video attempts to explain that much of the value of networking online comes with tapping into a wider audience.

It has been so cool to see the evolution of blogs in the last year. One of the biggest changes in my opinion has come with the look and feel of blogs. We haven’t necessarily seen any revolutions in content or even delivery aside from a few innovations. But the biggest shift has seem to come with design.

Since I’m a Wordpress junkie; I love previewing and testing new themes…  I’m far from an expert on CSS or design, but I get a kick out of seeing the new designs that are out there. And nothing has impressed me more than the newer CMS (Content Management System) themes. So, I simply wanted to take a few minutes to preview a few of these themes for my readers.

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Vibrant CMS by: Woo Themes

You’ll immediately notice the lack of a blog on the home page.  I love the idea of having a huge attention grabbing slideshow right at the forefront that can be used to feature certain products and services.  The entire “storefront” of the site is all about the company/products/solutions the business has to offer.

But… this is still wordpress, so you have a very powerful blog engine built in, and you can see that the main page has a company/product news section that pulls right from the blog.

Revolution News Theme  by: Brian Gardner

The Revolution set of themes is really built for sites that are media centric.  The music, news and sports themes all have big emphasis on large picture headings and video.  These are all great options for the company that’s big on creating visually based content.

Magazine News Theme  by: Zidalgo

One of the biggest innovations in themes has been the move towards “magazine themes”.  These are themes that move away from the standard blog look and have really changed the way that content flows over the page.  Most of these themes have a featured post section that dominates the page like the one above, and also leave default space for advertisements which is another popular shift in blogs that is a topic for another day…

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The mindshift that has come in blog design has been born out of the necessity for customization.  The standard blog layout had to be uprooted at some point.  I never thought I’d say it, but I’m getting sick of the same old reverse chronological order, categories, comments, Blah, Blah Blah…

It’s about time we had revolution in this area.  If you or your business is shopping around for a website design, a CMS blogsite may be the perfect solution.

RSS is such an interesting technology.  It has truly spearheaded a complete mind shift in the way people design, look at, and interact with the internet.

When I first read an e-book in 2003 about this new RSS technology that was becoming more mainstream, I have to admit, it was a little fuzzy.  The only RSS readers available were software programs you had to download and install.  Only a few sites even published RSS feeds, and the few popular blogs that existed only had a handful of subscribers.  But even in my ignorance, I ran out to get a blog realizing at the time, that it was one of the fastest and cheapest ways to publish your own RSS feed.

Now look at where we are today!  Most sites that publish content on a regular basis have an RSS feed.  All blogs have one, or multiple feeds.  We have over a dozen very high quality web based RSS readers that keep getting better, and subscription options are more plentiful than ever.

Awareness of RSS is still growing, and it has really begun to pick up steam in the last 2 years.  Even for people that aren’t very technically saavy… it’s easier than ever to get them plugged in as an RSS subscriber through new easy to use tools.

Still Unclear About RSS?  Here are some resources and a video that will help:

• Seth Godin’s Squidoo page on understanding RSS
• Justin’s - Beginner’s Guide to RSS
• Jim Cronin’s Real Estate Tomato RSS Explanation

Great Video Explaining RSS:

If you are just getting started, I highly recommend the new version of bloglines, which can be found at: http://beta.bloglines.com or Goolge Reader.  Both offer easy ways to subscribe to new feeds, and are really easy to manage.  I particularly like Bloglines because it has a great folder organizing option, and automatically checks off articles you’ve already read.

Quick Steps to Getting Started as an RSS User/Reader/Subscriber

If you are still unclear about how to sign up to an RSS feed, I’ll make it really easy for you:

Step 1:  Make sure you have Firefox 3.0, or Internet Explorer 7 or 8 installed.

Step 2: Navigate to a website you want to subscribe to.

Step 3: Find the Orange RSS Icon in the browser bar and click on it.  (some sites don’t have an RSS feed)

Step 4: Choose Your feed reader

Step 5: Visit your RSS reader to make sure you subscribed (optional)

Do You Publish An RSS Feed?  If You Have a Blog, Then The Answer Is YES!!

In this post, I want to review not only what it means to be an RSS user/reader/subscriber, but what it means to be an RSS publisher! If you have a blog, chances are you already have an RSS feed

First, find your RSS feed by navigating to your website or blog and following the instructions I gave above.

This RSS feed is important, it’s your lifeline to your readers.  One of your primary goals as a blogger is to get as many people as possible to subscribe to your feed.  The beautiful thing about RSS is that your content will be pushed to your subscribers.  You won’t have to trust that people will come back to your blog every time they want to read your articles (which isn’t likely to happen).

Your basic RSS feed is a good thing, but it can have it’s shortcomings…

What is Feedburner, and Why Should You Care?

Feedburner is a Google owned company (as of recently), that is in the business of RSS delivery.  In a nutshell, they will take your plain old RSS feed, and will provide a number of services including:  more browser flexibility, more subscription options, subscriber statistics, RSS email delivery, and alot more…  Feedburner is your RSS feed on steroids.

If you are serious about getting RSS subscribers, giving your readers more flexibility, viewing subscriber stats, and delivering your feed via email, then I HIGHLY suggest you sign up for feedburner.

Getting Your RSS Feed Set Up With Feedburner:

Step 1: Sign up for an account at Feedburner.com

Step 2: “Burn” your RSS feed.  (tell Feedburner to start managing your RSS feed)

Step 3: You’re done…. wasn’t that easy?  Now you simply need to promote your feed.

How to Promote Your Feedburner Email Subscription Form

Next I want to go over a few ideas for promoting your Feedburner email form.  You’ve probably noticed by now that the html form I showed you last time isn’t compatible in many places.  You can’t place it into many blog platforms, and you can’t place it in your email signature.  Unfortunately, there are many places you can’t place an html form.  But, the good news is that you have other options.

Just because you don’t have a nice form to give to people doesn’t mean you’re out of luck.  At this point, I think it would be helpful to point out where you can get a hyperlink to your email form.  A hyperlink has ultimate versatility.  You can attach it to a banner or button, you can put it in your email signature, you can create a text link… you can use it just about anywhere.

But, to get the link you need, you’ll have to follow a couple steps.

First, navigate to your Feedburner feed.  Mine is at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/hismove

Then, follow these steps:

Make sure to hang on to this link.  Bookmark it, write it down, whatever… just don’t lose it.  You’ll want to use it later.

Pretty simple so far right?  Remember, you can take this link just about anywhere to allow people to sign up via email.

In my opinion, your email subscription tool is one of the most powerful in your entire arsenal.  You should be promoting it religiously everywhere you leave a footprint online.  You can even promote it offline if you have the means.  I had a student that sent out blog announcements to their SOI offering a free $5 Starbucks card for the first 50 email subscribers.  It was a great way to build awareness and get new subscribers.

Tips on Increasing Your RSS Subscribers

Here are some tips that I’ve personally used to help increase my RSS subscribers:

1. Write Great Content - Ok, ok… it’s not earth shattering, but you have to have a solid base to work from.  If you write bad articles, building a subscriber base will be excruciatingly difficult.
2. Write Consistently - This was found to be one of the number one reasons why people UN-subscribe from a blog.  Lack of consistency will kill you.  Even if you can only realistically write 2 posts per month, that’s better then setting a 1 post/day precedent, then not writing for 3 weeks.
3. Give Some Incentive - People like free stuff.  A gift card can work well, but if you’re working on “the cheap”, try offering a free e-book to subscribers.  If you promote it right you’ll create a great value, and build your subscribers at the same time.  If you really want to get advanced, you could offer exclusive content in the feed itself.  This would create a sort of “secret tips” feed that only your subscribers can see.  There is a post here on how to do it.
4. Don’t Just Promote It On Your Blog - If you’re like most bloggers, you probably have a pretty large online footprint… Social Networking, Forums, Bookmarking, Social Media…  these are all places where you can promote your feed.  We typically use our websites as a signature, but why not our RSS URL’s as well?
5. Publish a Full RSS Feed - It’s tempting to want to publish a truncated version of your feed to try to drive traffic back to the site, but it rarely works like that. What you end up doing is just making people mad.  This was listed as the 3rd most popular reason why people UN-subscribe from blogs.
6. Place an RSS Icon in a Prominent Place - This is an easy one, but you’d be suprised how much it can help.
7. Seek Out People that Didn’t Confirm - One of the frustrations of Feedburner is that it’s a double opt-in system.  It’ good for protecting spam, but sometimes people will try to subscribe but never confirm their subscription.  These people are listed in your Feeburner account.  Simply email them again asking them to confirm their subscription.
8. Stay on Topic & Don’t Overpost - These were both popular reasons why people UN-subscribed from blogs.  If you write a mortgage news blog, don’t write about what you had for breakfast.  No one cares.  And if you’re a prolific writer, try to keep it down to 1 per day.  Each post you write should be very high quality.  If you have too much to say try using Twitter as an outlet…
9. Write Great Content - Um… did I already mention this?

I hope this guide was helpful to you as an RSS publisher.  Please email me if you have any questions about how to implement the above tips and suggestions on your site.

Oh… and don’t forget to sign up to my blog!  

Email:  www.searchingsolutions.com/email

RSS: www.searchingsolutions.com/rss

I’m proud to announce the addition of a new product here at Searching Solutions.  Professional website reviews!

Those of you that know me, know that I’ve been offering real estate website reviews through the Real Estate Tomato for about a month now.  I’ve had such great feedback from these reviews that I’ve decided to expand this service to the greater public.

The reason I believe these reviews are so needed in the SEM (Search Engine Marketing) industry is twofold:

First: There are plenty of tools out there that allow you to collect data on keywords, competition, structural analysis, etc.  But there are very few tools that actually synthesize the results for you in an understandable form.  None of them actually.  In all cases, it’s up to you to take the information and figure out how to implement it on your website.

Second: There are SEO companies out there that will give you a site audit and website review.  But these services don’t come cheap.  In most cases you are looking at $2,000+  for a website review/audit that goes into any kind of detail about your site.

Conclusion:

The SEO industry could use a no-nonsense webiste review service that is: scalable, inexpensive, and easy to implement.

Here Are the Packages That We’re Offering:

#1:  Standard Website Review: ($99)

• Keyword Suggestion Report
• Volume of Searches for the Suggested Keywords
• Structural Analysis Report  (Crawl Testing, Error Reports, Structural Integrity)
• Full Backlink Report
• Detailed Anchor Text Report
• Google Current Ranking Report for Suggested Keywords
• Detailed Beginner’s Guide to SEO (e-Book)

#2:  Advanced Website Review: ($149)

• Includes the entire Standard Website Review Package
• Meta Tag Suggestions for Top Pages (based on research from the Standard Review)
• Competitive Analysis Report (identifies your top competitors)
• Competition Reverse Engineered Report (intense research on your competition)
• Link Building Guide (e-Book)

#3:  Comprehensive Website Review: ($199)

• Includes the Standard and Advanced Website Review Packages
• SEO Resource Guide (e-Book)
• 1 on 1 coaching  (1 hour)

Screenshots of Website Reviews:  (click to expand)

If you are interested in ordering or learning more, please click here to request your Custom Website SEO Review, or feel free to give me a call at: 720-670-0742.

Thank you!

Your Advocate For Online Success,

Justin Smith