A lifetime supply of beer: free; keeping your country in EURO 2008: priceless
By murph | June 13, 2008
Okay so those of you that know me well know my passion for football (soccer in this country). I just got back from New Jersey this weekend after covering the USA versus Argentina Match and have been floating in the sky since half of my summer will be spent watching EURO 2008s, World Cup qualifiers, Olympic matches and world transfer rumors. But the story of the summer so far for me isn’t Mourinho to Inter, Scolari to Chelsea, Modric to Tottenham or stories that the National BS Association is actually fixed.
The story of the summer for me came yesterday in the Austria vs Poland match. The match was an absolute snoozer. Poland went up 1-0 on a controversial goal in which the Polish player appeared offsides. The rest of the game was a bore and Austria didn’t seem to have it in them to win the game. But, in the 92nd minute, English referee Howard Webb (who had his doubters after his fellow English referees, Graham Poll, gave a player three yellow cards in the 2006 World Cup) awarded a controversial penalty to the Austrians after some shirt tugging in the box.
Up steps the oldest player in the tournament, Ivica Vastic, who smashes home the penalty kick for the host country Austria. He saved whatever chance the host country had of remaining in the tournament, but guess what else he won?
A lifetime supply of beer from Austrian brewery Ottakringer (check out their website and tell me they don’t have the coolest beer song in the background, it just makes me thirsty!). Ottakringer promised to supply anyone from the Austrian National team who scored a goal in the tournament with a lifetime supply of beer, which was later revoked today after tournament officials decided that it was in conflict with tournament sponsors like Carlsberg (who sponsor Liverpool so who gives a F what they think!) but Vastic will still get his booze.
So what does this have to do with SEO or marketing? It’s pretty genius if you ask me. Even if Vastic goes from world-class athlete to obese over-drinker and has a bottle of Austrian brew hooked up to him as an IV for the next 30 years, they will definitely see a return on investment from this move. It made front-page international headlines for two days straight, and since someone actually scored and they have to make right on the promise, it will continue to be until tomorrow. Not to mention the countless number of blogs and message boards that are writing about the story.
Their sales in Austria alone will likely triple after the beer-maker showed such great patriotism in giving their national team motivation to do whatever they can to help their team move on, and I’m not sure where in Baltimore they sell Ottakringer but I’m going to be sure to check around. Google trends didn’t show anything in the past few days for Ottakringer , but I’m sure in football-friendly countries all over the world it’s different.
To their marketing department: well in my son!
Topics: SEO Tips | No Comments »
Well done Verizon you cheeky bastards…
By murph | June 2, 2008
It’s been a while since I’ve posted because I’ve been busy with SEM/SEO work but I wanted to share this thought…
To say that mass mail marketing campaigns are hit or miss would probably be an understatement. With the ridiculous amount of junk mail that the average resident receives can be overwhelming. And I’m sure all of you fellow homeowners are sick of the endless refinance, insurance, and other junk mail that can be deceitful at times in regards to it’s appearance. I’ve seen a few letters come with what was supposed to be handwritten name and address on the envelope but it’s obvious that it has been printed.
And it looks like Verizon is paying to take their mass mailing campaign to a whole ‘nother level. Check out this envelope I received this weekend (sorry for the crappy pic quality I took it with my PPC-6800 phone):
Look a little similar to a USPS Priority envelope?
Yes, you can see it has been opened. I wouldn’t say that I fell for it but I was more curious to see what was so important inside that Verizon paid so much more extra for these larger and custom envelopes. It was an offer for their FiOS service.
So I’m curious to hear from everyone to see if you would consider this unethical? The similarity between this and a USPS envelope is obvious, and the word “PRIORITY” is printed on the front. It is obvious that Verizon sent this out to deceive recipients to thinking it is something more important.
Topics: SEO Tips | 1 Comment »
Comcast becomming radically transparent?
By murph | May 9, 2008
A few posts ago I mentioned that I was reading the PR book Radically Transparent and how the book manages to make the connection to SEO and online public relations and reputation management. What position you come up on for Google searches isn’t all about generating revenue, so much as your overall online reputation. Like I mentioned a while back, it’s always best to Google your company name to see what kind of reviews and feedback are out there. It’s much easier to be heard online these days now that anyone can start a blog in 20 minutes or post something on a messageboard.
Well I was reading an article in the Baltimore Sun a few weeks ago (the article isn’t available online, but the same basic information can be found on numerous sites) about how Comcast has recently implemented a Comcast Cares online reputation management team after numerous service complaints and the launch of ComcastMustDie.com.
Comcast launched it’s own Twitter Pagewhich allows concerned customers to post problems with service or customer service, in which they are responded to in a timely fashion, usually same day. I decided to E-mail Frank Eliason who is in charge of the project and ask if he’d be willing to answer a few questions about online reputation management in regards to SEO. He returned my e-mail within 2 hours and was happy to help.
Frank mentioned that, with all of the recent (positive) publicity about his department, they have been extremely busy lately. He said he joined Comcast in September to start reviewing and monitoring blogs, which naturally led to assisting customers and helping them with resolutions.
The Comcastcares team is still being assembled, but he said seven people have recently jumped on board to help with different initiatives. Frank said that among some of the techniques that they use to proactively monitor blogs and other Comcast PR issues are Technorati, Google Alerts, Google Blogsearch, and Blogscope .
Comcast is a company that provides an important service to a large community, so naturally there will be quite a few complaints out there. What has been the biggest obstacle so far
The anonymous nature of much of the Internet, especially since the blogosphere makes it difficult to ensure resolution, unless the customer actually responds
Frank also mentioned that Comcast seems happy with the progress of ComcastCares. He was obviously tied down with other issues so I was happy with his brief and to-the-point answers.
A lot of large companies who are facing customer service and reputation issues (Sprint, Home Depot, and whoever else is outsourcing their customer level service efforts) can learn from larger companies like Dell and Comcast who are launching these programs. But it’s not just about repairing your reputation after sites like Ihatedell.com and Comcastsucks.org launch, and it’s not just the large companies who can hire their own team to handle these issues that need to look into monitoring their reputations. Basic SEO and SEM techniques can help determine what kind of image you are portraying online, which is becoming more and more important now that everyone can be heard.
Topics: SEO Tips | 2 Comments »
Catchy Titles like this one are key!
By murph | April 23, 2008
The title of your page is one of the most important on-page factors that spiders look at when crawling your web page because it is basically a summary of what information the page should include. Don’t believe me? Check out this awesome post by a bunch of SEO consultants over at SEOMoz which ranks on-page and off-page factors and how important they are. See title at number one?
Lots of small businesses and other local companies have a hard time coming up with a title that utilizes their keywords but also keeps the company name and theme involved at the same time. When the page is first published and all of the cosmetic features are finished, most of the time the web designers will title every page on the site with the company name. Business owners think this is best for the site because it portrays a professional image of the company, but there are a couple of ways to have the keyword(s) you want to optimize in the title along with your company name.
One of them: “By”
This is one word that can help. QualityAir, a local HVAC company, wants to promote their new ductless air conditioning system. The current title of every page on their site is “QualityAir, LLC Baltimore Maryland” which is really only promoting the company name and location. Each page on their website ( plumbing, heating, repair. etc) should have a unique title to help optimize every service they offer. So instead of “QualityAir, LLC Baltimore Maryland” we can change is to something like “Ductless Air Conditioning Systems by QualityAir of Baltimore”. This optimizes both the service that they offer, as well as the company name and location, all very key aspects when improving SERP.
What if they have an Adword landing page that promotes two unrelated services, like bathroom plumbing and Eco-friendly heating? Two symbols come in handy in this case, “-” and “|”. Instead of using “and”, which works but doesn’t really help tie two services that are completely unrelated together, try something like “Energy Saving Heating - Same Day Plumbing - QualityAir Baltimore” or “Affordable Bathroom Plumbing | Heating Systems | QualityAir” This helps the reader (yes, they do look at the title) understand that the company offers these services, and infers that this is only a few of the services they offer.
I always recommend that the title is less than 8 or 9 words because you can actually hurt your chances by being too descriptive. When search engines see that you have too many words in the title they will thing you are stuffing it with irrelevant keywords and throw you on the back burner.
The title page is very important for your web site, make sure you are using strategic titles on EACH PAGE with it’s own unique keyword(s) to help optimize your entire site.
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Buying a Website or Blog
By murph | April 21, 2008
SEO from the ground up can be a VERY daunting task, especially when site owners have been set the wrong expectations after seeing offshore companies guaranteeing to get them on Google page 1 after only one month. Most SEO consultants (including myself for the most part) refuse to even work with a site that has not been indexed and doesn’t have a Pagerank of at least 2 or 3 (and when I say ”for the most part”, I’ll accept the project if the customer is ready to pay for a year of SEO services because that is at least what it will take). So if you’re looking to start a website from the ground up, have your wallet ready.
Or, why start new? There are plenty of resources (check the Websites for Sale links under my blogroll) available for you to utilize in order to buy an already established website. Here are some things to check for when looking to buy an established site:
1. The current position for designated keywords. It’s funny reading some of the descriptions for sites for sale. One I came across was titles “Miami site for sale #1 position on Google” and was only $250. I opened it out of curiosity, and come to find out that the keyword that it was ranking number one for was actually M-I-A-M-I. I didn’t check the numbers but I’m pretty sure I can count the number of people who do Google searches for “M-I-A-M-I” on a daily basis on one hand.
2. How long the site has been established/Pagerank. To be completely honest, Pagerank doesn’t hold a lot of meaning in my book, it doesn’t affect your site’s position at all. But it can tell you how important Google thinks the site is, and more importantly how long the site has been around. Stay away from anything without a Pagerank or anything under a 2/10 (and that’s being nice).
3. Traffic. See how many vistors the site is getting, but also try to get a detailed analytics and Alexa report if possible. Sure the site may be getting 17,000 views per month, but what is the click-through and conversion rates? Are the visitors just coming and going, or are leads or revenue being generated on a high percentage? Also try to find out where the sources of traffic are from.
4. Revenue and expenses. Is the site making money from Adsense, advertising, or affiliate programs? Is the site currently paying for authors of content, hosting costs, or any other expenses? This is good information if you plan on financing the purchase of your website because if revenue is already being generated from the site, it can help with any monthly payments you may need to make to a lender when you make the purchase. Just make sure that you have a plan of action to make the site more profitable, whether it be by generating more leads for your business or whatever other plans you may have.
5. Reputation. Do a Google search on the site address or current company name and see what people have to say about it. Don’t buy a website with bad customer reviews. It’s not like a gas station where you can throw up an “Under New Management” banner and expect people to think things have changed. If the negative reviews have already been posted and indexed by Google, they’re not going anywhere.
6. Transition. Will the current owner help you in the next month or two if necessary to make the transition (hosting company change, FTP access, content management, etc.) go as smoothly as possible?
7. What is included? I’ve seen sites for sale that includes all current content and domain name, but the site is a blog that uses a special Wordpress skin that the owner had to pay for the rights to.
These are a few but probably not all of the questions you should ask when looking to buy a website. I’m sure I’ll add to this as time goes on, and if you have any questions or need help with your purchase I’m always an e-mail away.
Topics: SEO Tips | 2 Comments »
Radically Transparent
By murph | April 17, 2008
Reputation transparency is a good thing these days if you’re a business of any size. People like to think they can relate to you and that you’re not perfect and make mistakes, and how you answer those mistakes and improve on them should be visible.
I just started reading Radically Transparent by Andy Beal and Judy Strauss and I have to say that so far so good. A lot of what it takes to be an SEO consultant has to do with PR. How well you market yourself will be how well companies think you can market them, and keep up a positive reputation for the company. This ties back in to my last post, how negative reviews on review sites and blogs can dramatically damage a company’s reputation, but this holds true for a company of ANY size. I don’t care if you’re a one-man Air Conditioning company who has a 200 square-foot storage space, if you have a dissatisfied customer, chances are that it can end up on the web no matter who your clientele is. Think just because you’re putting duct work in a hood house in West Baltimore that they can’t jump on Insiderpages.com or Google/Yahoo! local and rip your ass to shreds?
The book also mentions how companies such as Wal-Mart who go out of their way to post ghost reviews who are favorable to absolutely everything about their own company have suffered once they were exposed. JetBlue bouncing back from their Valentine’s Day ice storm debacle, Dell fighting fire with fire after they created their own blog to receive customer feedback and suggestions after a famous blogger questioned their warranty procedures resulting in a mass uprising, and Home Depot’s customer service issues (which I’m always a fan of considering I spend half of my life and income there) are a few topics touched on so far.
The best part about the book is that is is recently published and up-to-date enough to pass on some imprtant modern resources like Technorati, Flickr, Youtube, the rise of Facebook founder Matt Cutts(if you google “Matt” he comes up about 20 times. Now THAT’s e-power), and a few basic SEO pointers.
I recommend checking this out, I’ll post some quotes after I finish reading.
Topics: SEO Tips | 1 Comment »
Ever Google’d yourself?
By murph | April 9, 2008
Have you ever actually sat down and looked at what comes up when you do a Google search on your company name?
You’d be surprised how many companies I talk to on a daily basis that stress over how high their SERPs are for a particular keyword, but had no idea that when I do a Google search to research their company, they have a bunch of bad reviews come up on local directory sites.
What do you think is hurting their online publicity more, being on page 2 of a Google search or having 20 irate customers posting negative reviews about their company?
Do a Google search at least once a month and see what comes up, you may be surprised.
Topics: SEO Tips | No Comments »
Only YOU can prevent SEO negligence
By murph | April 2, 2008
Black hat, white hat, Orioles hat… what’s the difference?
SEO kingpin Bruce Clay has published an SEO Code Of Ethics, but it’s pretty broad.
So what are all of the SEO bad guys using as black hat techniques? There are a few.
Ever go on craigslist and search for something, and in the results there are a few things that have nothing to do with what you searched for? This is likely because spammers inserted invisible text at the bottom of the listing so that their listings would come up more often. Invisible text is definitely a black hat technique, but this is also an example of keyword stuffing where keywords are either improperly used or overused on a page to try to deceive the search engine spiders of how much keyword relevance their page actually has. It is true that by strategically placing your keywords you have a chance of optimizing your content, but using the same keyword five hundred times in three paragraphs may be a little over the top. Spamdexing is similar, where certain phrases are repeated constantly on a page.
Another black hat technique that is very popular these days is using link farms to build backlinks. A company will promise to get your site 3-500 backlinks in a month, but how are they doing this? They’re using a network of irrelevant spam sites to back link to your page. These sites are likely already exposed by Google as being unimportant, and have received a pagerank of 0 for their efforts. Think this is damaging your sites chances of moving up the search result pages? Quite a bit, actually.
Text link ads are beneficial depending on what sites they are placed on, but I would highly recommend checking the page rank of any sites where your site will be backlinked from, as well as routinely monitoring what sites have you backlinked to make sure you’re not screwing up your chances with the search engines.
There are a few other methods of Black Hat techniques, such as Blog spamming, redirecting, comment spam, and more.
Spamming is lame. SEO is a 6-month and longer process because it takes a lot of hard work to build resources, backlinks, and optimized content for your site. So anyone promising quick results for a set amount of money is likely using one or all of these techniques, but it’s nothing but a quick fix that will damage your site’s reputation in the long run.
Topics: SEO Tips | 1 Comment »
It’s not easy being small
By murph | April 1, 2008
Any small business that is just starting off is always going to encounter problems. I remember reading INC magazine about a year ago, they conducted a study of the reasons why small businesses don’t make it and have to fold, and I think it was 60% of them called it quits because of inadequate funding. The best part about SEO consulting? There’s not a lot of up-front investing, unless you consider the countless hours it takes convincing a company to invest a couple of hundred dollars a month in something that won’t begin producing results until the 5th or 6th month, very rarely any sooner.
A lot of SEO experts say that a good SEO consultant shouldn’t have to look for business, because they are already up to their ears in work for existing clients and don’t have time for new business. I can’t wait for that day to come, although I’m sure in a year or so I’ll look back on this and disagree.
A new company without a proven portfolio of satisfied clients and results will have a hard time finding new customers. So how do you compete and survive with offshore companies popping up with colorful and attractive web sites promising to optimize 300 keywords, get you on page 2 of Google within 3 months, write unique and original articles and send you a Christmas card?
Any reputable SEO consultant knows this is all bogus, and the companies that actually do this without using black hat techniques simply outsource this to a number of companies/individuals, tell you they have 300 employees, and charge you a few hundred dollars extra so that they can make a profit.
The one positive thing about SEO, however? It’s still a very unsaturated industry.
There may be 5 or 6 full-time SEO consultants in a major city, which means there is plenty of work out there to be found if time is dedicated to doing so. But balancing self-marketing and client marketing can be a very difficult task. Time management is key, and how many billable hours you complete for the small amount of clients you currently have vs. how many hours you spend blogging, posting in message-board forums, posting ads on craigslist and going “door-to-door” to try to drum up new business, while being careful to not overextend yourself, can be tough.
I’ve found that a good way of finding potential clients is by finding small local companies who have invested money in advertising, either by buying ads in small local newspapers (I say small and local because most of the bigger companies who advertise in the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun likely already have full-time SEO/SEM marketers, but it may be worth a shot) or whatever other types of local advertising you notice. Send a quick e-mail offering your services, making a few observations about what can be done better (I notice your keywords are too broad, your content could definitely be optimized, etc.) making it sound like it’s coming from a personal level and less like a spammer. Companies like to have hungry small businesses working for them, especially if they know that you have the time and resources to make an SEO campaign a success; as long as you’re setting the right expectations and not promising them anything in the first few months, but still detailing the work you are performing when billing them for the time.
Small business owners love barter deals as well. Try to work out trade deals; get your house painted, your kitchen cabinets, plumbing work done…whatever you can think of, service in trade for service. Not only are you saving money by not reaching into your pocket, but you’re also building a satisfied client base without them feeling like they’re taking a chance by spending money without proven results.
Taken from BusinessPundit.com: 75% of entrepreneurs would be better off financially with a regular job. You could counter by saying that wages may suffer but you can build wealth through your business, but you would be wrong again. The majority of entrepreneurs have $20,000 or less in business equity, and 30% of them have zero business equity. Surprising? Probably not given how many new businesses fail. One paper on entrepreneurs and optimism starts off this way:
Entrepreneurs make peculiar financial choices. They hold poorly diversified portfolios (Gentry and Hubbard, 2001; Heaton and Lucas, 2000). They bear excessive risk for the returns they earn (Moskowitz and Vissing-Jorgensen, 2002). They accept lower median life-time earnings than similarly skilled wage-earners (Hamilton, 2000).
Hey, if it was easy everyone would be doing it, right? Me or any other newbie SEO consultant bringing in six digits in the next 3 or 4 years is not something that should be planned on realistically happening. But finding the balance and freedom of being self-employed (regardless of the 12 hour days I’ll be putting in)? That’s what I’m talking about.
Topics: SEO Tips | No Comments »
Use Technorati for your blog!
By murph | March 31, 2008
A few good articles on the power of Technorati
Recent Comscore stats show Technorati
continuing to surge in traffic, more than tripling since a year ago. Founder and CEO Dave Sifry recently mentioned about this staggering growth in a blog post. Technorati’s internal numbers showed massive growth early this year. They had nine million unique visitors in March, up from 3.5 million two months prior. And page views, he said, were up 141% over the previous three months.
There just isn’t any plausible explanation for traffic gains like these. Except that the company has perfected their search engine optimization approach, particularly with regard to Google.
For the last several months, Technorati “tag” results have risen steadily in Google search rankings. Technorati is now linked in the top few results for thousands of high-volume search terms: See MySpace (6th), Facebook (4th), Wikipedia (4th), etc.
The reason these terms are appearing high in Google search results is because Technorati was synonymous with tagging, and most tagging plugins for blogs default their tag links back to Technorati. Each day, tens of thousands of blogs have multiple links back to Technorati; one for each tag they use to describe their post. All of those links create massive search engine relevance and drive Technorati results higher in search results for commonly tagged words.
But there is a big problem looming for Technorati: their tag results pages are essentially search results. And Google doesn’t like to show search results within search results. Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team, recently wrote a post called “Search Results in Search Results” on his personal blog. He says that Google generally looks to exclude search results from their web search index; and they suggest to other search engines that they include a “disallow” note in their robots.txt file to let Google know that they results shouldn’t be indexed.
Google wants to keep people from clicking more than once to get where they want to go. Having them do a search on Google, and then being directed to Technorati to see a tag search, is counter to that goal.
But Technorati doesn’t disallow tag search within their robots.txt file. Compare Technorati’s file to what Google uses for their own blog search engine.
Technorati will argue that tag search isn’t normal search, and so the results should be indexed. But Google does not index tag results pages for its own YouTube property. Technorati tags are directly analogous to YouTube tags, and there is no reason why Google would keep Technorati in the index, but exclude their own properties.
But what really matters here is what Google thinks, and whether they will take steps sometime soon to remove those results from the Google index. If that were to happen, Technorati’s traffic would plummet. And their lucrative traffic party would come to an end.
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