Streamlining Social Media: facebook Connect
January 15, 2010
I admit it, I have a love hate relationship with social media.
I know all the experts say it’s important, but I also know it can be a real time sucker. One of my goals for this year is to streamline my social media time.
Social Media Goals
Does this mean I’ll still goof off on facebook sometimes?- you bet. Will I still click that irrelevant yet funny link on Twitter?- of course. I don’t want to suck the life out of my work after all. Even people with office jobs chat with co-workers or eat doughnuts in the break room from time to time.
So, inspired by my social media goals, I found a post by Jay Baer to be most interesting and helpful. It’s titled 11 Mind-Blowing reasons Your Business Needs Facebook (link below). And from a practical standpoint, this post is very insightful.
Disqus and facebook Connect
I recently tried out a new Disqus plugin for comments on Blue Duck- partially because I wanted something better than the standard WP version, and partly because it came up in my research about facebook Connect. Disqus gives readers the option of signing in using a facebook account. It also makes it easy for readers to invite facebook friends to view a post or update a facebook status with a link to the website and the post they are reading. I’m liking the Disqus plugin very much, and I am also liking what I am reading about facebook Connect.
Jay lists facebook Connect as one of the biggest potentials to come from the facebook craze, and I tend to agree. I was also intrigued to read the statistics he gives about facebook usage and growth trends. I also noticed that I spend WAY more time on facebook each day than the average user. Time to curb those status checking impulses a little better. Thanks, Jay, for calling it to my attention.
11 Mind-Blowing reasons Your Business Needs Facebook (Jay has a very neat website, too. Check it out! 
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SEO and Writing News Worth Reading
January 13, 2010
Looking for something worthwhile to read on the Net? Aren’t we all. I found a few little gems tucked away in the folds of the Internet this week and thought I would pass them along.
- Ten Search Engines Powered by Twitter from Search Engine Guide, shows that even your Tweets matter to SEO.
- 80 Ways to Use twitter as a Small Business Owner by Lisa Barone has some good tips for getting the most out of your TwitterTime.
- Dragon Slaying 101: How to Use Heroic Language to Battle Boring Copy by Ali Hale made me smile and made a good point, even the most boring drivel can be perked up by a little creative copy.
- In Creative Block #1: I’m Not Creative , Mark McGuinness tells us, ” Forget about ‘Being Creative’- Start Creating“
- Find something to blog about with 100+ SMB Blogging Ideas to Kick Start 2010 by Lisa Barone
- The Launch Coach tells us to stop fussing and start doing business in The Big Secret to Success? Run with What You Have.
- “You can write blog posts from now until doomsday, and if no one reads them, you might as well be picking your nose.” from Jonathan Morrow at Copybloggger.
and… last but not least, I found a nice little video from Chris Lumpkin about landing pages:
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, yes, I do write landing page content. 
Press Releases are Good for SEO
December 22, 2009
If you promote, work for, or own an online business, you know that Search Engine ranking can make or break your business. You can create the most attractive website on the Net that sells the hottest, in-demand products at dirt-cheap prices… but if Internet searchers can’t find your website, you don’t exist. Let’s look at an example.
Girlz Rule
Priscilla Pretty loves pink. Anything pink will do. Her pink fetish creates a voracious spending appetite and she needs money. She’s about to graduate from college and she decides to start her own business instead of working as an intern in a stuffy office cubicle for peanuts while she lives in her parents’ basement and pays off her student loans. She comes up with an idea for Girlz Rule, an online shop that sells all things pink, girlie, and great.
Her dorm roommate is a design and IT major, and after some haggling over the trading of a pair of pink Jimmy Choos they both love, she produces an awesomely pink, edgy website for Priscilla’s new business. Priscilla chooses her favorite pink products on the web, taps into an automated checkout system that lets her visitors order from her website, and sets up the products to ship directly form a third party vendor.
Easy-As-Pie, right? Wrong. Even though Girlz Rule has the new 5th generation hot pink iPod nano for $100, no one is ordering because no one is visiting the website. It’s lost in CyberSpace.
So, what’s Priscilla to do?
Content (and girls) Rule(s)
She can optimize her content. Contrary to popular opinion, SEO content does not have to be boring or stuffed to the brim with keywords.
You can have exciting, spunky, sassy, classy, or edgy content and be search engine optimized. SEO writing can be as fun and creative as any other type of writing, it just takes a skilled SEO writer to pull it off. So Priscilla hires an SEO writer to produce her website content and she starts getting natural, relevant traffic to her website- and a few sales. But she needs more sales to save up for a down payment on a loft apartment, so she asks her SEO writer for help, who recommends an SEO press release.
SEO Press Releases
In Priscilla’s case, an SEO press release is a news-style article detailing the arrival of Girlz Rule. It contains all the details of the new website, its owner, the products sold, guarantees offered, special promotions, and background information. It’s sort of like a newspaper article and sales flyer combined. It even includes a link back to a special landing page on the Girlz Rule website.
The SEO press release is then distributed to key websites throughout the Internet, where visitors can read about the new business. But more importantly, the information (and the link back to Girlz Rule) is indexed and crawled by search engine spiders- on a regular basis. The repeated mention of the Girlz Rule link boosts Priscilla’s search engine ranking because her website content has been optimized for relevancy to her target audience and it draws relevant visitors to her website who buy her products.
Proof in the Pudding
WebPro News recently published a report on How Press Releases Can Be Great for Search. They cite a study by Arketi Group, that shows the media regularly uses the Internet as a tool to help determine what gets covered in the press. Wouldn’t it be great if the media came across your business on the Net and found it to be newsworthy?
By the way, Priscilla is doing great with her new business. She moved out of her parent’s basement and recently struck up a deal with a clothing designer to produce eco-friendly pink t-shirts to sell to Prius owners. Sean Platt is Priscilla’s biggest fan. He is anxiously awaiting the arrival of this week’s package. (He bought three iPods and a t-shirt, cause real men aren’t afraid to wear pink.) 
The History and Future of Search (according to Google)
December 17, 2009
This is an interesting, but lengthy, video of Google’s presentation on the history and future of Search.
Seth on SEO
April 13, 2009
If you work online, you know who Seth Godin is. Heck, even if you don’t work online, you probably know who Seth is. He’s the one who cuts through all the crap related to marketing. He’s a trendsetter in the business and doesn’t mince words. Seth’s written a post about making money with SEO, and it’s well worth a read.
How to make Money With SEO by Seth Godin
Oh! And because bloggers are on top of things today, Aaron Wall of SEOBook has written a post about Seth’s latest. You can read it here: Aaron Wall on SEO strategies.
SEO Writing Tips: Keyword Ranking
March 27, 2009
If you are new to SEO writing, or are looking for a way to boost your online business, I have a million dollar tool for you. Imagine if you could travel back in time and snatch up desirable domain names, like Business.com, Loans.com, or Sex.com, before anyone knew they were valuable. You’d be a millionaire billionaire, right? Well, there are keywords out there that will be just as valuable in 20 years, we just don’t know what they are yet. That million dollar keyword could come from your website if you only knew how to market it properly and could accurately predict future consumer trends (or you could invest in a crystal ball and hope you get lucky).
Not interested in fame, just the fortune? Want a more realistic plan for online business success? You could concentrate on making the best of your website with SEO practices. The right keyword is a powerful tool. When carefully selected and put to work properly, it holds the potential to make your online business an instant success.
The Honeymoon’s Over
Selecting the perfect keyword phrase for your website is pretty anticlimactic. You sweat, cry and bleed over the keyboard for days, researching different keyword combinations. You finally find the perfect keyword for your niche with good search traffic, a decent PPC return, and a low page rank. You snatch it up, register a domain name, sit back, and scratch your head. Now what?
Well, lots of SEO blogs will tell you to run right out and hire an SEO writer to incorporate your new found treasure into your website before Google launches you out of the Sandbox. But the truth is, that may not be the first thing to do. In fact, your primary keyword phrase may not even show up on your website.
What You Talkin’ Bout Willis?
SEO experts have shown that it is possible to rank highly for a given keyword that rarely or never shows on your website. That means, in theory, you could select “Ice Cream Dream” as your primary keyword phrase for your Dairy Queen knock-off website, but not list it in your meta description, headers, domain name, or content, and still rank in the top ten for that phrase. How? Through inbound links.
Search engines currently place great value on anchor text. (That’s the blue text that is highlighted when a live link is displayed on a website.) With that in mind, imagine what would happen if you invested two hours a day sowing quality backlinks containing your primary keyword phrase as anchor text. Excited yet?
Have you ever gotten a comment on your blog that reads: Jamie Simmerman- SEO Writer, and wondered what the heck possessed that girl to post her name like that? Well, Ms. Simmerman is sowing her keyword phrase on your website to help boost her SERPs.
Now, before you feel used and offended, keep in mind that if someone is sowing backlinks on your website, they feel your website has something to offer them. You either have quality traffic, quality content, decent page ranking, or a heck of a lot of potential for them to invest their time in leaving a link. It’s a lot like putting a seal of approval on a website- they like you and think you’re cool enough to hang out with the popular kids at recess.
On Your Mark, Get Set…
So where the heck do you put all these lovely backlinks? You find websites that relate to your keyword and you join the discussion on their latest blog post, or even an archived blog post if you like. Websites with higher page ranks are obviously a natural choice, but any relevant site will do if the content is regularly updated and they draw traffic. (We’ll talk about how to determine those qualities in a later post, so don’t worry if you don’t know how to check the profitability of a website.)
That means commenting on your competition’s website is a definite plus. If you sell ice cream, you want to comment on every post Dairy Queen publishes. You also want to locate other blogs that talk about making ice cream, list ice cream facts, websites that sell ice cream, hate ice cream, or have ice cream fetishes. You want to place your name and backlink any place your target audience is likely to visit or congregate.
You may also want to spend some time finding higher Page Rank websites of any topic that allow backlinks, even if they are REF=NoFollow. (But you still have to follow etiquette and abide the rules below.)
STOP!
What you don’t want to do is contribute to the huge amount of worthless content floating around on servers and clogging up an otherwise good system. Only comment if you have something intelligent or helpful to say. Comments like “nice post” or “you suck” are inevitably destined for the spam file. If you can’t participate in the discussion, do some research or read along for a few days until you catch on. This not only helps build your SERPs, but your online reputation as well.
Always play nice. If you can’t say something nice, then keep your fingers off the keyboard. If you have a legitimate gripe or an opposing view, be responsible and state your comment without attacking or belittling anyone. You don’t always have to agree, but you don’t have the right to give a complete stranger a tongue lashing Internet-style either.
GO!
If you read the blogs of your friends or family members on a regular basis, ask them about backlinking before you post. Explain what you’d like to do and ask permission first, it’s considered polite to bring it up if you have a personal relationship with the blogger or webmaster. With that said, you should know that Blue Duck posts all backlinks, as long as they are not spam-y or offensive. Feel free to link to your heart’s content.
Keep in mind that it might take an obscene number of backlinks to see the results you want. Be patient and remember that every link counts.
BONUS SEO TIP: If you haven’t seen results in several months, you may need to rethink your keyword phrase. It’s possible that too many other SEO savvy bloggers are competing for the same phrase.
We’ll post another SEO writing tip next week, so stay tuned. And if you have an SEO writing related question, feel free to drop us a line in the comments section of this blog, via the Blue Duck contact form, or in an email.
