SEO Tips & Tricks

Coffee Table Tags

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:15:00 EDT

Embedding tags in books is probably the most obvious way to connect print content with online content so it's surprising more book publishers are not following Rough Guide's lead. Their new coffee table book, Earthbound: a Rough Guide to the World in Pictures is tag-enabled.Each image in the book is linked to a QR Code that resolves to a Google map of the location for more context-specific Stewart McKienoreply@blogger.com0

Corporate Blogging Framework - Where to Start?

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 23:00:00 EDT

There's been a lot published and dissected over the value and methods for successful corporate blogging, and the intersections between corporate and employee use of social media. What's not been discussed much is the application of Systems Engineering Methodology, within the Information Management Architecture Domain, to implementation of corporate blogging. Being that a corporate blogging program is essentially part of a corporation's "Information-Sharing Line of Business", integrated with and supported by other corporate operational domains (like Marketing & Communications, IT Operations, and Organizational Change Management), it's therefore an IT program -and IT programs are best managed through standardized IT Investment and Systems Engineering Lifecycle methods.

To start, therefore, a corporate blogging program, a framework should be established for program planning, resource scheduling and alignment. This framework will help generate a program CONOPS (concept of operations), solution architecture, program plan and performance measurement indicators. These program artifacts, as any IT Project Manager worth their salt understands, are essential to establishing early buy-in, investment approval, compliance and risk mitigation.

Blogging does introduce 2 very important elements in particular to your Marketing & Communications (Marcom) efforts. First, it’s a new (or another) online content management and distribution platform for corporate information. It needs to be integrated into your overall Information Management infrastructure. Secondly, and most importantly, it’s a new forum for online conversation between your corporation, its employees and/or representatives, and the public. The blog speaks directly to individuals, and they to you – and this conversation needs to reflect the right balance of personable though moderated and useful dialogue.

Here are some facets to consider, in suggested priority order, when establishing your corporate blogging framework - there are many more details and methods to consider (both standard and contextual to a particular company) once the framework matures; these are only initial guidelines.

Governance

1. Executive commitment and approval – share the idea and collect feedback regarding corporate blogging from key executives and corporate legal, policy, public relations and marketing. Simply raising and discussing the initiative, along with some basic education (not everyone understands blogging or microblogging) and examples, will go a long way towards buy-in, integration with other Marcom activities, and a successful governance framework (i.e. who approves what).

2. Champion/Evangelist – establish the “Corporate Blogger Champion/Evangelist” – a well-coordinate program will require some ongoing, insistent initiative by someone who’s ready to answer questions about blogging and social media, and coach others through the learning processes. This person will also take the lead regarding translation of blogging needs and processes to IT requirements, own the ROI – i.e. setting up and reporting tracking metrics, observing the readership trends, adjusting the blog content, process or template, etc.

3. Create a basic, sample decision-making process. Start with the example that a corporate officer/employee announces they will be speaking at an upcoming industry event. Start backwards with the decision-making:

• Who “presses the button” to publish the blog entry?
• Who reviews, edits and approves the final content?
• Who reviews and approves the draft submission?
• Does the employee need approval to create the draft content?

Note that you may end up with several decision workflows, depending on what kind of blog entry it is. At the end of the day, well-balanced blog content will probably be a mix of “corporate” managed content, “employee” direct submissions, “syndicated” content (i.e. brought in or copied from somewhere else) and user/reader submissions. The blogging framework may in fact become multiple blogs – but try to start with just one. There’s a lot of trial and error along the way – and there WILL be some slip-ups in what gets published and how; simply be prepared to deal with this as a course of business.

Note also that your overall "Content Management" workflow may end up with blog entries authored and published internally, and via some kind of content management or "social media governance" process, get published externally (i.e. to your Internet-hosted blog).

Employee Communications and Awareness

1. Share the initiative with employees and trusted advisors – start an internal conversation, perhaps a volunteer working group. What do they think?

2. Survey/canvass your employees – are they already active in social media? Do you have any “employee blogging stars” already, with personal online brands? (Check yourself – “Google” employee names and your corporate name – is anyone already an accomplished blogger?) From the reverse perspective – are there reputation management concerns to address, i.e. an erstwhile professional blogger is less constrained with Facebook postings?

Authors

1. “Authorship” is a tricky subject – some great corporate blogs are written by corporate executives, others are wholly supplied by direct employee submissions. Some are simply automatic syndications of content published elsewhere. As the blog matures, it’s likely many authors will be attributed. Start simply for now – establish the “corporate” persona (i.e. “this entry published by –your company-”), and who will actually “be” this persona initially. Should the blog be immediately successful, it’s important to be ready to “reveal” the person behind the persona.

2. For your core authors, determine how they’ll be attributed. (a) Do they want to be personally identified, or anonymized? (b) We recommend only first names for authors who are essentially unknown publically; if the author is already a well-known, public figure online, already associated with your company – then use the whole name. No other PII (personally-identifiable information); no sense in creating new opportunities for spam or online security problems. (c) Use anonymity/corporate persona really only for authorship of posts that truly aren’t suited for personable dialogue – like press releases or announcements.

Topics

1. What to post about? The corporate blog really shouldn’t be just another advertising, marketing or PR vehicle – it’s an opportunity for more personable and honest dialogue. You seek to share information with your readers that you really want and appreciate their input about. (Of course, the ROI is enhanced by inclusion of marketing messages and advertising techniques; to be further discussed). Think about both your SEO keywords AND major sections of your website – what are the top 5 keywords or “tags” you’d use to categorize the blog entries? For example, “zzz”, “xxx”, “xxx News”, “zzz people”, “zzz events” – where “zzz” is your corporate name, and “xxx” is your topical keyword.

2. Align with industry news – while the blogging initiative may eventually result in many threads of dialogue across many topics – start first with your primary marketing agenda, and in particular, items that are timely in the industry. The very best corporate blog entries match targeted keywords with current industry events or news – people exploring popular media-generated news and events should also “run across” your related information.

Content

1. Regardless of the actual subject matter, the blog “content” can take many forms. Simple text, links, external or embedded attachments, photos, videos, scripts/widgets, flash movies, rich internet applications (RIAs). Most search engines can index most of this content, in terms of the text embedded within – but straight HTML text is probably the most important content from an SEO perspective. Focus first on getting the blog text, tags and titles correct, and perhaps some limited use of photos/illustrations. Remember a blog enables syndication of its information to many other websites, mobile devices, readers and applications – always consider how easy it is for others to “consume”, read and re-purpose your content through RSS.

2. Other content can be added as (A) part of the overall blog design (it is a website, after all), and (B) as reusable digital assets are identified within your company, that you’d like to leverage into the blog. The most important point is that the search engines and readers see a constant stream of new, unique, interesting, timely, relevant headlines with basic supporting information and specific keywords, that effectively directs further action (i.e. “read more”, “contact us”, “discuss this”, “support this”, etc.).

Blog Platform/Channels

1. The best objective for a blog platform, is to use an internal, corporate-hosted software product – many content management products (like Sharepoint and Drupal) offer this (though you’ll need to get the components necessary for external publishing “through the firewall” to your external, Internet-hosted website). Wordpress is a free, popular product, on the other end of the spectrum, and can be customized to match your website’s branding, look and feel. (Note – for very sophisticated, highly customized and high traffic blogs, you’ll probably need to spend some money – but the blog initiative budget should be considered as part of your overall Marketing and IT budget).

2. If you’re not ready to devote the time and resources to install/implement an internal blog platform, Internet-hosted blogging services can be leveraged – though you’ll need to consider how to protect these "digital assets" hosted outside your company. There are no guarantees that anything posted on 3rd-party services like wordpress.com or blogger.com will be maintained or protected to your standards – at the very least, blog content should be created and protected internally, before published externally. In fact, such services are known to simply disappear quickly into a larger corporation's acquisition strategy. Take a look at the popular platforms like Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, Blogsmith - there are pros and cons for each (While I'm a big Wordpress fan, the Blogger capability for FTP'ing content to other websites is really why this blog is hosted by Google).

It’s also important, when using a hosted service, to set up the publishing and links in a manner that generates maximum SEO and Conversion value – by proper linkages back to your website, through syndication of the content back to your site (via RSS widgets or RSS to HTML converters), and by basic copywriting techniques. For example, the external blog “catches” readers with some information, but to get more, and also to subscribe for monthly updates, readers are linked back to your website contact page/subscription process.

3. If you’re really not ready to implement an actual, corporate-branded blog – consider starting to blog in existing forums – i.e., an employee is a member of a LinkedIn group, and posts regular “discussion items”, responds to industry blogs and discussion, etc. It’s a good entry vehicle to testing the “art of public discourse”, choosing and testing keywords, etc.

4. If you do create a blog, whether internally or externally hosted, be prepared for some design/configuration activity, with some knowledge of HTML/RSS required – it is a website, after all, and there are most definitely useful guidelines available for properly designing and optimizing blogs vs. more traditional sites.

After considering these guidelines, you'll likely be ready to construct the Information Management Framework, composed of the Systems Engineering artifacts indicated above, that will enable your Corporate Blogging Framework. Or maybe you're just ready to start blogging!

Stay with this blog for more information about Corporate Blogging Frameworks, or contact me directly for specific help.

The Secret to SEO Search Engine Optimization

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:30:00 EDT

That's the word from veteran SEO expert Heather Lloyd-Martin SEO is not about creating a website sausage overstuffed with key words and phrases. It’s all about creating relevant and compelling content that transforms you into a thought leader who can become a trusted provider. You can, then, readily convert visitors into buyers Of course, this is gospel for me and many content marketers. But, it is poorly understood by many marketers and SEO practitioners who still think cramming a ton of words and phrases deemed to be search engine friendly in every nook and cranny of your website will place you high on the results page. So, I was both encouraged and inspired by Heather Lloyd-Martin's recent post who has been helping clients get great search results for more than a decade. Since she does search engine optimization for a living, it's wonderful to hear her say that it's ultimately all about the content.

Should Exact Match Domain Names Rank So Well In 2009?

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:45:00 EDT

An exact match domain name is a web address with the same EXACT words in it that make up a popular search. As an example, I have these two (at the moment, I use for nothing more than testing). OK – you can forgive search engines for thinking a 100% relevant web address might be indication of a site’s relevance to the term – or well I did in 2005. I honestly thought the top search engines would have got smarter when it came to exact match domains.

Proof Anchor Text Links from Unrelated Sites Are Gold Too

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 06:00:00 EDT

Google used to say something along the lines of getting links from sites relevant to your website (now Google says tell the world about your site)You see it doesn’t matter if your site has earned links from some industry respected, related by theme, sites around the world:

Why Do You Want To Rank No1 In Google Anyways?

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:45:00 EDT

Some companies want to rank for diferent things and certain links and strategies achieve different results. That’s the end of link building for beginners month on the Hobo site – hope you found it useful. I’d thought I’d close mentioning you really should have a specific goal every time you start linkbuilding.

A Beginners Guide To On-Site and On-Page SEO FAQ

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:15:00 EDT

If you like our DIY seo guide, Del.icio.us it! A sort-of-beginners-guide to on-site and on-page seo FAQ. I think you could read these (about) 30 posts and go away and create a successful site. I deliberately steered clear of things that might be a bit gray, and I assume you’ve done your keyword research – I might go into that shortly. I just wanted to stay largely onsite seo for the duration of the tutorial, and lay down actual seo advice you could use. I knocked them out with no little planning – so forgive me if the advice is a bit all over the place. I will be checking the information again, after a break.

Cutting-Edge Video Search Capabilities

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:15:00 EDT

blinkx, the world's largest video search engine, today announced a technology partnership with Votan Research Corporation, a research and development organization that develops technologies for visual interactive telecommunication and information sciences. Votan creates advanced technology solutions for a wide range of customers, from enterprise to transportation clients, delivering real-time information and video whenever and wherever needed. Under the terms of the agreement, Votan will utilize blinkx's video search technology to enhance its custom broadcast monitoring platform.

Does Your Company Have A Press Release Link-To Policy?

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 08:45:00 EDT

Some traditional companies create Press Releases and don’t think for a minute how these could be used to successfully promote their website when syndicated online. If you do a lot of these, don’t just send out your press releases without considering a link-to strategy for your company. Every time you send out a press release, you should be ensuring you’re getting a few things right. For instance, you should know by now you should always include your web address. It’s amazing the press releases I see and I see no web address!

Do Article Submissions and Press Releases Still Work?

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:30:00 EDT

The answer is yes, suprememly well in terms of promoting your site rather than improving your website ranking in Google. The question is, where you syndicate your articles to, and in turn, which news and press outlets pick those articles up for maximum exposure, and also if those articles on the submission site have a chance of ranking themselves. I avoid article submision sites these days, although they can still be useful. The problem is the competiton is so intense in these places, why bother if you can cut them out altogether?

Buying Old Domains & Redirect Them to Get High Rankings

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:30:00 EDT

Say you see an old site that is ranking in Google for a lot of terms and there is an opportunity to buy that dmain and redirect it to your site – will you keep those Google rankings? I’ve not actually bought someone else’s domain for a long term myself, but I’ve redirected plenty. The way I see it, Google ranks pages because of the trust of a particular domain it’s on, the links that point to it and the content it has on it. If you keep most of these in tact, buying old domains and redirecting them to similar content shouldn’t be a problem.

Links From Unrelated Sites

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:30:00 EDT

Free Search Engine Optimisation Tips By Hobo.

Links From Unrelated Sites

Free Search Engine Optimisation Tips By Hobo. Links From Unrelated Sites You do not always need to get links from related sites (in your niche, subject area) to rank better in Google. I’ve engineered better rankings for sites getting links from unrelated sites so I would say getting links from unrelated sites is not a bad thing in [...]

Are Directory Links Still Worth It?

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:30:00 EDT

The problem with trying to answer such a generic question is that not all directory sites are treated equally. Some are good sites, and some are spam. Inbetween the vast majority of directories are just so wide in depth and so narrow in keyword diversity and so strung out in terms of pagerank (or ranking ability) and full of pages Google doesn’t want to list in search results to make them very low quality links to your site.

WOW – Google Actually Penalises Spammy Titles BADLY Now

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 09:50:00 EDT

So, remember way back when I pointed out Google would read a lot of characters in your title? Perhaps that’s not the case now! In the case I’m showing Google has bumped the title completely and it’s affecting the site badly. There are H1s on the page (multiples too) – but perhaps if created corectly, Google would use these H1 as the title tag. Unfortunately, they are using images in H1 Tags – lordy. Recently I have spotted Google helping sites with just Home in their Page Title, and using other methods to form a Page Title. It *might* be that Google is now kicking back against clearly manipulative spammy titles – it certanly appears so for this search for the company name – so even more reason to optimise your page titles properly for Google. I’ve never seen Google kill a site like that before – then again I don’t do spam, and there are some other issues the site has…. oh well, back to work.

Google Latitude For iPhone – Sweet!

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:00:00 EDT

Google has launched Google Latitude For Iphone – a service that lets you tell your friends where you are. Big brother has landed You control who gets to see your location and where on the map you appear to others. Today, we’re releasing Google Latitude for iPhone and iPod touch, available in the Safari browser. You can add a bookmark to your iphone home screen to quickly launch Google Latitude. Visit google.com/latitude from your iphone to start using Latitude. Just open Latitude in Safari and tap the + icon > Add to Home Screen > Add. There’s more info on the Google Mobile Blog. I’ll be signing up for that tomorrow to see exactly what’s in store – cool! Iphone at the ready...

Got a Question About Linkbuilding?

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 08:00:00 EDT

Almost finished linkbuilding for beginners month at Hobo to keep the summer traffic slump at bay – I actually scheduled the posts today as I normally do before I get bogged down in client work during the week. I thought it would be cool to have a linkbuilding frequently asked questions post if I’ve not covered it already. if you are a novice at this game you can ask a question about linkbuilding in the comments and I’ll do my best to give you an honest answer based on my experience or point to a resource I know you can find more info.

Syndicate The $h!# Out Of Your Content Via RSS

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:00:00 EDT

You will see a lot of people bemoaning other people nicking their content and using it to power crappy spam sites plastered with Adsense. While this is a real concern, generally speaking I don’t mind people republishing my content (on this site anyway – hey it’s creative commons seo anyway) as long as they link back to the original article. Syndicating via RSS is a great way of adding links to your link profile, and driving traffic to your site. ALWAYS link to other articles on your blog in an article you write, even if it’s just spam blogs that are scraping your content.

Are Self Pings Nuking Your Wordpress Blog’s Pagerank?

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:15:00 EDT

By now everybody knows internal linking is very important – it gives you a chance to add keywords into your link profile and lets users navigate your website via contextual links. Wordpress self ping trackbacks in comments are a different beast though and if we are to believe the recent announcement on how Google treats nofollow links they might actually be sucking the PR right out of your blog. I was reading a blog earlier today and noticed they’d self pinged an article about 50 times from their own blog post!

Link Building – Should I Avoid Reciprocal Links?

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 11:00:00 EDT

A lot of seo will say avoid reciprocal links becuase they are less benefit today. Some years ago it had seemed apparent that ranking improvements via reciprocal linking strategies had been to a large extent nuliified. I remember reading in the forums something like a 90% reduction in forums – statistics, eh?. Theory – If someone links to my site, and I don’t link back to them, that’s said to be a good link. A one way link. When you link back to that site, that’s what a reciprocal link is.

Finding Suspended Websites and Link Opportunities With Google

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:15:00 EDT

If you’re reading this months Hobo linkbuilding tips, you’ll see that I laid down a strategy for getting good backlinks. I thought it was worth a post specifically on finding suspended accounts with Google. I really don’t want to cause other sites trouble, so most of my tips you’ve got to use your brain a bit. Here’s an example: Basically, you find suspended accounts using Google which are related to your site, find out who links to them, and contact the linking sites informing them they link to a dead /suspended account, and ask them to link to yours instead.

How I Got 500 Real Backlinks In Two Minutes

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:30:00 EDT

Only last week I used a very simple method to get 500 links from a PR 5 site with over 3000 links to it. Yes a REAL site. Best of all, I’ve used the same method to contact 10 other sites with exactly the same request about the exact same matter. I’ve used this method quite a bit over the last couple of years. Looking at the SERPS I was interested in, I spotted an expried domain that was ranking for a term I cherised. The site was actually suspended, and had been like that for the last six months. There was no content on the site, so I knew immediately it was the strength of the incoming backlinks alone that was keeping this high. I could of course look to buy the expired domain (but it belongs to a competitor – I’m sure if I expressed a value in it I’d lose out!)

Should I Buy Links To Improve Google Rankings?

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Buying links that are search engine friendly is against Google TOS. If you buy links to take the risk Google will penalise you (from a reduction in your toolbar pagerank, up to removing your site from it’s index). If buying links was innefective, it wouldn’t be against Google TOS. Think about that. I can’t remember the last vertical I checked there wasn’t people buying links to improve search engine placement – so the competition is doing it. Last time I checked, they were ranking pretty good.

How To Get Quality Back Links The Top Competition Has

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:15:00 EDT

Here’s a quick strategy to get quality links anyone can do – it’s white hat and gets you pagerank, trust, authority and rankings. Depending on the type of niche you’re in, you may have to go slightly off-topic in your linkbuilding efforts, but these are real quality links – the type SEO talk about but many don’t actually explain where to get them.

Monetizing Twitter

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 22:15:00 EDT

A whole lot of programs have sprouted to get into this anticipated market although monetizing model itself has not materialized. Some of the more popular programs that I have come across are TweetDeck,Tweetie, Seesmic, Twitpic, Hootsuite etc. While some run on browsers others are using Adobe Air. This site gives a list of Twitter programs (Jan 2009) that you can find on the internet.

Google Voice

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:47:00 EDT

Quick note from my iPhone — my friend (and my wife’s high school classmate) Kevin Mullet told me over the weekend that he had just been approved for Google Voice. I was SO jealous! If you haven’t explored what it will do — you need to take a look, and apply, right away! (Check it [...]

First Rule About SEO Fight Club

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:15:00 EDT

There’s a reason I don’t take linkbacks from SEO clients from their site to boost my own sites ranking in Google even though I’m missing a big trick SEO companies use to rank their own sites. We only take linkbacks from web design clients and even then sometimes I nofollow it and usually today we use Hobo or Hobo-web as the linkback (purely because that direct link can mean sales if people like that site).There’s a reason we only host clients we design and build (or maintain) websites for, not linkbuild to, on our servers today.

Using Twitter & Tweetstats To Optimise Your Productivity?

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:15:00 EDT

Do you know how much time your staff are spending on Twitter? Join in with me as I optimise a member of my web design teams productivity, and even have a say what I greet him with in the morning. The rise of Twitter as a social networking / promotion tool is well documented, even in this blog. Tweetstats actually give you individual users twitter activity stats. I thought it would be fun to have a look at one of the young folk at Hobo to see how he was using it.

13 Reasons Being A Web Designer F***ing Sucks

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:30:00 EDT

A (Nearly) Bulletproof Web Design & Development Project Checklist for clients and designers. If you’re aiming to agree a fixed price for the development of the website, as we do, ensure the project goes smoothly before you start, by communicating with your client at the outset. They’ll appreciate you for it, there will be less surprises, and you may be able to start making a profit from fixed cost website design jobs again;

Limit Anchor SEO Text Links To 55 Characters?

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:30:00 EDT

This of course has an impact in writing your titles for pieces you want linked to – especially for those with a habit of taking the article title and linking it to the page. Most are aware a title should be under 70 characters to have maximum impact in Google. From a test I did, Google ignored words in a title after 70+ characters. But if Google only attributes the first 55 characters in a link, does this mean there’s at least a 10-20 character no-man’s land to consider when creating links & headlines?

Awesome SEO Opportunity

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 15:30:00 EDT

Last week was a big traffic week for me. I had a trifecta of posts that happened to pull in a bunch of traffic, which turned me into a stats addict. In looking at the log files, I wanted to see where the search traffic was coming from and the associated search terms. There was [...]

Welcome to My Ulitzer Home Page

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:30:00 EDT

I'm Robin Van Auken, a consultant specializing in historical, editorial and literary topics. I help my clients preserve, present and profit from their most distinctive asset: their history. From heritage projects and exhibits, to Internet sites, books and oral histories, to anniversary master plans, and more, I assist others as they unlock the hidden value of their past. As an editorial specialist, I assist in many stages of creative development and promotion. I enjoy working with individuals, non-profit organizations, schools, colleges, private companies and municipalities to develop public and personal histories and projects. Please explore this Web site and if you are interested in my services, please don't hesitate to contact me.

My professional memberships include:

Register of Professional Archaeologists
Society for Historical Archaeology
Society for PA Archaeology
Northcentral Chapter 8 SPA
Society for Pennsylvania Archaeology
American Assoc. State, Local History

Editorial Services

Editorial assistance is available for municipalities, companies, non-profits and individuals who wish to develop public and personal histories, reports, presentations or articles. I have the experience to help you with a variety of projects, including grant writing and most aspects of book development and production. Web design and maintenance also is available.

Historical Research

Offering a range of historical and editorial services, I work with clients to create a variety of products including exhibits, promotional booklets, historical time lines, Internet sites and exhibits. I can help you tell your story in the format that suits you while adhering to the highest standards of historical practice. Other services include archival researches, investigating census records and other documents, and interviewing people about their knowledge of the past (oral history).

Public Archaeology

Specializing in promoting archaeology and preservation, my small, woman-owned company works with archaeologists in the areas of research, writing and editing technical archaeological monographs, managing publications and producing reports, organizing and producing written documents as both Web-based and traditional publications. I have the experience to produce a final product, or work with a professional publisher.

Browse Books

Historical non-fiction is my area of concentration, both as an author and an editor. To date, I have published ten books. Perhaps you require a specialist to chronicle and illustrate your company's story for publication. I provide guidance for new or existing book projects.

The Flavius amphitheatre is the most famous monument in Rome and is known as the "Colosseum".

Micro-Blogging in the Enterprise

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:00:00 EDT

Over the next few months I hope to interview carefully chosen executives who I believe will have an impact on how companies optimize revenue. I was lucky enough to come across Socialcast, a young company based in San Francisco, California. I thought Tim Young to be patient, thoughtful and very tuned in to the topics of the day. He certainly has the disposition to be a visionary in this space.

Here are the questions I posed to Tim and his an…

Ulitzer vs. Ning - a Quick Review

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 08:30:00 EDT

Having used both sites for about two weeks, there is still a great deal I am learning to do with both Ulitzer and Ning, but a reader asked if I would do a quick comparison, so I will.

Best Read "Content Marketing Today" Posts

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 20:45:00 EDT

Proving again that our readers like to dig into a variety of topics under the broad content marketing umbrella. While you’re enjoying the beach or a barbecue this 4th of July weekend, take a few minutes to ponder how effective content marketing can make you independent of the old-fashioned way of doing things. Here’s the tasty [...]

Get To The Top of Google in Five Easy Steps

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:15:00 EDT

Learn how the professionals get their web pages to the top of the search engines for the keywords they target.

Rebel Brown's eBook It's Not About You Anymore

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:30:00 EDT

We are very excited to bring to you Rebel Brown's Positioning eBook It's Not About You Anymore. Rebel Brown is a go-to-market strategist and Spin Doctor specializing in start ups, turnarounds and start-arounds in the high technology arena. She has helped to define, position and launch over 75 individual products and companies since she began consulting 20 years ago. Her clients who are technology vendors and venture firms leverage her strategic marketing and go-to-market expertise. She identifies and transforms differentiation - customer's crown jewels - into compelling, customer-centric value that sells. Her business is PeopleWhoKnow. Rebel's Blog is Phoenix Rising. Rebel's Twitter handle is RebelBrown.

How to Lead on Search Engine Result Pages in 2009

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 07:52:00 EDT

Since there are lot many websites that are activated on the internet on the daily basis, it has become to market them regularly. The search engine marketing and SEO are the tools generally used to do the marketing of the websites on the internet. However, the online market is also as dynamic as the real stock market. There are new standards and upgrades everyday in the field of SEM and SEO. Yet so there are certain factors that remain consistent no matter whatever changes occur. Let’s just lo...

How To Change Domain Names & Keep Your Rankings in Google

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:30:00 EDT

We’ve all been there. Sometimes when you rebrand, you want to transfer your old domain to a shiny new web address. Many don’t realise though that you should actually ensure you transfer the age, authority and trust your site has in Google to this new web address.

Which Search Engine Is Really Your Fav?

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:00:00 EDT

As consumers, we’re loyal to our brands. Whether it’s Mac vs. PC, Nike vs. Adidas, or Starbucks vs. Dunkin Donuts, we like what we like. And it’s tough to convince us that some other product/service/website is as good as our favorite. Companies go to great lengths and expense to try and alter our preferences (who could forget the Pepsi Challenge?), but all too often, we walk away feeling marketed to (read as: manipulated).

Introducing AskBing The PowerShell Bing Twitter Proxy

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:05:00 EDT

Last week I posted a PowerShell function library for Microsoft’s newly introduced search engine at Bing.com. The function library was appropriately named PoshBing. There was a log of interest in the script so I quickly moved it off my blog and onto a CodePlex project under PoshBing.