Archive for the ‘Blog’ Category
100 Best SEO Blog Posts
Thursday, November 19, 2009 11:16 2 CommentsI just realised I actually published 99 Posts on the SEO Consultant blog. So this is the 100th blog post. I thought I should do something special here, like an ‘Anniversary’ or something similar. 100 blog posts is a milestone for a blog. Not the first and certainly not the last milestone. So this blog post with the really fancy title: 100 Best SEO Blog Posts, isn’t really a list of the best SEO related blog posts. It is the 100 SEO blog posts that I wrote and published. Good or bad – you can judge yourself!
So here is the list of the 100 Best Blog Posts:
Are the Right People on Your Marketing Team?
Internet Marketing Strategy: Content
Senior Manager of Emerging Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing – How to start?
Facebook has 200 million active users
Twitter and European Elections in Dublin South
Search Engine Optimization spend is on the rise
Irish Internet Association Congress 2009
Social Networks will waste your time – if not used properly!
You Oughta Know Inbound Marketing
Recession is bad for Internet Traffic
Unique Web Content equals High Ranking in Google
Recession in the Irish PPC Market
Link Building is like Sailing!
Understanding your web site visitors
Search Engine Optimization is like Fishing
Search Engine Optimization is like….
Google Analytics Custom Reporting
Search Phrase in the Domain Name
Internet Advertising Revenue 2008
Search Engine Marketing in Ireland
Search Engine Optimization Cost
Doodle 4 Google by Google Ireland
Ireland Search Engine Marketing Report 2008
How Does SEO Fall Into Your Company
BLOG = Better Listings On Google
To Outsource SEO or not to Outsource SEO?
Outsourcing your web site SEO Service?
Driving traffic with inbound links
Alan Shortall & SEO Consultant
SEO Consultant first in Google Chrome
Google Chrome Browser is here!
Google doesn’t like Ciul as a Search Engine!
Blogging is a way of building the inbound links
Invert Pyramid – Writing for the Web
KeywordSpy – The Ultimate Competitor Intelligence Tool
Google PageRank (PR) Update – SEO Consultant down to PR 4
SEO Consultant is 4 months old today!
SEO: To Outsource or Not to Outsource?
Google Webmaster Tools – Visual Ranking Reporting
Irish Google speaks American English
Free SEO Tools: Stompernet Site Seer
SEO Budget? How much does it all cost?
Google Webmaster Tools the Judge of Google.ie Speed Test
Google Experimental Labs > Experimental Search
Dynamic MetaTags, Dynamic Title, URL Rewriting, H1, H2,… are all a MUST HAVE for any CMS today.
Google Webmaster Tools Gadgets Bug
There is no such thing as Bad Web Traffic!
Good Google Web Traffic and Bad Google Web Traffic
Google is showing different search results during weekends!
WordPress as a SEO Springboard
Search Engine Optimisation vs. Search Engine Marketing
Google: Search Engine Optimization
22 hours later – SEO Consultant in Google index!
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Reports
Are the Right People on Your Marketing Team?
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 17:01 No Comments
HubSpot is definitely a company everyone in the online marketing world should watch closely! I wrote about them before, and still use their Grader products.
I got a preview of the new book by: Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, both co-founders of HubSpot: Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media). A great read really. Since the in my ‘past life’ I was into the recruitment and jobs, it was really interesting to read the part about the Recruitment of the Marketing Team. Here is a short snippet:
What does this change mean for your marketing staff? Simply put, your hiring
criteria need to change and your way of measuring performance needs to change
along with it. The following is a suggested framework called DARC for hiring and
developing inbound marketing savvy employees.
- D = Hire Digital Citizens
- A = Hire for Analytical chops
- R = Hire for Web Reach
- C = Hire Content Creators
They also wrote a long list of the handy questions for the recruiters hiring Inbound marketing staff. The list is really, really good:
- What RSS reader do you use? Can you show it to me?
- What blogs do you read?
- Do you rank first for your name in Google?
- Do you use Delicious? Can you show it to me?
- Do you have a blog? Can you show it to me?
- Do you use Facebook or LinkedIn? When was the last time you updated
your profile? - Do you use Twitter? Can you show me?
- Do you have a channel on YouTube? Can you show it to me?
Interview questions about the Reach:
- How many subscribers to your blog? Do you talk about our industry on
your blog or about personal stuff? - How many Facebook followers do you have? Do you talk about our
industry at all on your Facebook account? - How many LinkedIn followers do you have?
- How many Twitter followers?
The writing style is extremely light. A complete novice to the digital marketing should have no problems following the book. There are tons of good tips, pointing a reader on how to organise the Inbound Marketing team in the eBook itself. Well worth reading!!!!
Internet Marketing Strategy: Content
Thursday, October 22, 2009 17:21 No CommentsYour Internet marketing strategy should start with creating of the Internet Marketing Plan. It should start with the definition of all the aspects of your web site content.
Here is a short guide for developing an effective content marketing strategy.
1. Research
In a nutshell, do your homework:
•Research competitors web sites content. Whether you’re launching a full web site or just a blog, see what the competitors are doing. What do you like from waht you see and what not? Can you replicate the good aspects and perhaps even build upon?
•Concept your style based on audience and type of content. Conversational for B2C, More professional with B2B communication. Your style should be reflect who you write to.
•Define the clear goals and message of your content. You will most likely confuse your audience if you do not have a strong definition, and if you do not follow it.
2. Design
Step 2 is all about planning
•Determine responsibilities. Before deploying a content marketing plan, ensure that you’ve outlined who will be responsible for the content. If you are not in a position to hire a dedicated resource, it’s essential to appoint someone to incorporate content maintenance into his or her current responsibilities (be realistic here). Content maintenance could also entail tasking each employee to contribute one piece of content per week or month.
•Organize content. Think structure here. Make it easy to search for a particular topic? If your readers have a difficult time navigating through your site to find useful content, they’re not likely to stick around for very long.
3. Build
Steps 1 and 2 complete, you’re ready to start putting the wheels in motion:
•Plan a style guide. Include as much information as possible regarding everything from tone and voice to target word count. Provide best practices for optimizing content. Include writing checklists.
•Create a copy deck. A copy deck is essentially a roadmap for your content pages, including text, graphics, advertising and links. It can be developed in stages, starting with writing a few paragraphs to describe the content.
4. Publish
With the first 3 steps in place, a content marketing strategy is finally ready for deployment:
•Maintain. It’s crucial to have a plan in place to continuously update content. Outdated content will quickly turn readers away. The stagnant site will not flourish in search engine results.
•Monitor. Leverage analytics tools to gauge what worked best and what failed. Look for patterns in the most popular types of content—i.e., checklists, charts, case studies. What search phrases do visitors search for when they come to your site? What do they read? What is the best article length for your site? What titles work best? Do images help?
5. Rinse & Repeat
The final step to creating an effective content marketing strategy is ongoing:
•React and Respond. No content marketing strategy was made perfect. Based on analytics reports, continuously tweak your content efforts to maximize results.
What steps would you add to create an effective content marketing strategy?
Why Social Networking?
Thursday, October 22, 2009 16:12 No CommentsSEO Consultant in the press again. This time in the InBusiness magazine by Chambers Ireland. Here are a few snippets:
Social networking websites have been around for quite a while now, with early models emerging in the mid-‘90s. Websites such as Theglobe.com and Tripod.com sought to bring online users together to interact with each other through chat rooms and shared personal information. However, no one could have been prepared for the rapid increase and popularity of sites such as Facebook and MySpace over the course of the last five or six years. Now, marketing and advertising professionals are jumping on the social networking bandwagon and offering clients online marketing packages which include profile pages on social networking websites.
According to Ivan Stojanovic, Founder and Director of SEOConsultant.ie, a consultancy firm specialising in online marketing and search engine optimisation, companies are in danger of being left behind if they fail to implement a social media marketing plan.“Companies staying away from social networking sites are going to get into a situation where their much smaller competitors all of the sudden become more well-known brands,” says Stojanovic. “The speed and reach of online social media is unmatched by anything yet,” he added.
Senior Manager of Emerging Media Marketing
Thursday, October 1, 2009 17:23 No CommentsBlogging for Business article described where and how blogging falls into your company organisation structure. The Chief Blogger was the role. A year later blogs still have the tremendous importance in the online marketing but the social networks are here, and are here to stay. The online communication technologies are changing in the accelerated pace, so we know now that the next year is again most likely to bring jet another way we will communicate online. Hence the online marketing title for the ‘Public Online Representative’ of your company should be:
Senior Manager of Emerging Media Marketing
Senior – Why Senior? Think about it, it is that one position, that one role, that will represent your whole company.
Emerging – Blogs, Social Bookmarking, Social Networking,… we cannot be sure what will even the next few months bring in the online marketing arena. The person needs to be forward thinking and listening to what is happening online worldwide and in their own market.
Marketing – Remember that your blogger is not your IT geek. IF you sell IT geeky stuff – you can get your IT geek who maintains your web site. If you sell anything else, you need to find a person who will appeal to your target market.
Here are a few tips to get you started on your selection program in finding your future Senior Manager of Emerging Media Marketing:
Requirements:
LinkedIN profile – 100% completed, with +500 connections, +10 recommendations, +5 Best Answers…
Twitter – with +1000 followers
Facebook – again decent account like the above
Active Blogging experience for +12 months. Multiple blogs are the advantage. Blog comment posting and management experience.
Understanding of the acronyms: RSS, SEM, SEO, PPC, CPM, CPC, LOL, IMHO, WTF, API, B2C, B2B, CTR, IM, PV, RON, WWW, TTYL, LMAO, ROTFLMAO, WYSIWYG and, most importantly, RTFM
Copywriting skills
Nice to have skills:
Search Engine Optimisation – samples of high rankings in Google for search phrases with large search volumes (cars, phones, insurance,…)
Google AdWords and Google AdSense experience
Link-baiting skills – creativity!
For a one man band situations the following will come handy:
Basic HTML skills
Basic PhotoShop skills
Did I miss anything in defining my Senior Manager of Emerging Media Marketing job specification?
Web Site Hosting Blues
Tuesday, July 14, 2009 9:30 1 CommentWhere to host a web site?
What hosting company?
What country to host a web site?
What hosting platform to choose?
Microsoft Hosting? Linux Hosting?
What hosting package to choose?
What optional add-ons like backup, secure server, domain name,. …. do I need?
All those are the questions you will need to answer when you decide to publish your web site. Some of those answers will have an impact on your SEO as well, like the location, and the domain name.
The most important thing you have to read is the small print from your hosting company! Here is the real life example, how you can get seriously scr…d up by a hosting company. And we are not talking about any ‘Two Boys in the Shed’ company, but one of the largest if not the largest hosting company in Ireland – Register365, purchased last year by even bigger player in the UK Namesco.
Register365 decided to ‘Upgrade’ their services, and the result is that the prices are drastically higher, and they also included a handy feature of not letting you send the outgoing mail. So if you are like the most of us, but also use the email, Register365 will kindly let you receive your email on your PC. But not send any mail yourself!? They will kindly explain that you can send mail via their provided web mail, or use some other mail server to send your email. Or,… yes there is also an option to ‘Purchase’ the ‘Email sending option’ that costs roughly just about the same as your hosting package.
Almost every hosting package or every hosting company has its benefits and drawbacks. There probably is no perfect hosting package. You need to decide what do you really need, how will you use it, and then talk to the customers of the company you are considering to use for your hosting needs. The best people to talk to is the ones who have various accounts with many different hosting companies. Search blogs for reviews, search forums and any social media for the honest reviews and discussions.
When you make a shortlist of the hosting companies you are considering – get into their small print. Hosting365 was really a great company, and probably a largest shared hosting company at the time they have been purchased by Namesco and rebranded as Register365. It was great! But obviously not so great if you also intend to send email…
Free SEO
Monday, July 13, 2009 11:13 1 CommentIrish web development companies are giving away a free SEO services to their clients.
Sounds like a dream?
In most cases it is not really free as advertised. In most cases it is a free SEO package offered to the clients who purchase a web site from a web development company. Another approach that web development companies take is to offer a free SEO service as a ‘Draw’. To enter a draw, they will ask you to send them an email, or fill a questionnaire online where they will ask you all about your company, and your marketing and SEO budget. A bit like the shops ask you to reveal a bit of your privacy, and take their shopping card so that they can understand your shopping habits, usually for a bunch of vouchers worth up to 1% of your purchases.
It is a nice way of collecting leads for the web development companies selling SEO services, and if marketed properly it generates good leads and business as a result.
Here is an example of Irish web development ICAN giving away a free SEO service and advertising it currently via Google AdWords in IIA web site Blog.
Free SEO anyone?
Social Media Marketing – How to start?
Friday, May 29, 2009 14:33 No CommentsHow to plan, start and organise your Social Media Marketing?
To market yourself you can use a number of online tools. Here are just the main ones:
1. Your web site
2. Your blog
3. Twitter
4. LinkedIN
5. Facebook
The list is endless. What will work for you might not be the best for everyone else. You need to understand where your target market ‘hangs out’, and use those sites.
Your Web site
Using one of those tools by itself is good. The true success in social media marketing is when you start combining them. Years ago, having a web site was enough. Then the search engines came and it was important that your web site is search engine optimised. Otherwise no one has seen it! Today, the number of optimised sites is so huge, and the size of the data published online that SEO itself is not enough anymore.
What become the powerful tool is the subscriptions to ezines and newsletters. You captured the web site visitor and he agreed to get an email whenever you decided to send one. It’s all great but we all started getting far too much mail we really wanted. As a publisher of a web site you always wanted to ‘talk’ to your visitors. Here comes ‘The Blog’…
Your Blog
Blogs are a bit magical from a number of aspects:
1. Interaction with the visitors via the blog comments is unique. The web site visitors can have their say on your web site! Unique.
2. RSS feed subscription enables everyone to subscribe to your updates and read them where and when they like, in a very manageable format.
3. From the search engine optimization perspective blogs are almost always performing better than your own web site. In majority of the cases a blog will attract a multiplication of the total number your own web site can attract.
So what do you do with all your blog visitors now? You get them subscribed to your feed or at least on Twitter. The best exit path from your blog after the ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Subscribe’ (or whatever is a conversion on your site) is ‘Follow me on Twitter’.
Let your visitors connect to you via LinkedIN. There you capture their name, phone, email and actually their whole professional life is logged there. It is quite easy to export your LinkedIN Contacts, and here is your perfect marketing list.
Similar to Twitter as it is another permission based (marketing) message broadcasting channel. Facebook is more ‘feature rich’ compared to Twitter. Get your web and blog visitors to Connect to your on Facebook.
So why getting your web site visitors to the social networking sites to connect to you? Simply to capture their details, and enable them to start and engage in the conversation with you. You then use the social networks to advertise your new products, special offers, services… and back they come to your web site and your blog. The big red ‘Buy now’ button is jet again in front of them. And again, and again…
Any of the online marketing tools alone cannot achieve anything similar by itself. Your offering will determine what will you use, but you have to use either a web site or a blog, and you have to use at least one social network. The choice what to use will not be based on what you like, but based on what your target market is using .
Facebook has 200 million active users
Thursday, May 28, 2009 18:26 1 CommentLast week I was invited and have attended IIA Congress 2009 and the IIA & Enterprise Ireland Net Visionary Awards 2009 on 21-22 May. It really was nice, and I would like to compliment the organisers and thank again for the invitation.
Colm Long from facebook had an interesting presentation, and I guess the most impressive fact and slide was the ‘stickability’ of facebook. Curently they are at 200 million users who are active on the site (have logged on in last 30 days).
Just a clarification that is this many users: 200000000
(for the record…)
The Welcome Pack of the IIA Congress 2009 was also nice. Inside was also a sponsored USB Memory Stick by Elucidate. When I plugged it in I was a bit disappointed that the capacity was only 512 Mb. Lately when I think of the storage I think in gigabytes and terabytes. Then again it was a really pleasant surprise that the memory chip is obviously quite fast since my Microsoft Windows Vista accepted it as a storage for the ReadyBoost – extension of your RAM on the external disc. The Elucidate Flash Drive will obviously be a very good friend of my Notebook that has ‘only’ 2 GB of RAM, so additional 512MB is more than welcome!
Social Networks will waste your time – if not used properly!
Wednesday, May 6, 2009 10:32 1 CommentThe fact that my last blog post is about 2 months old is a sign that something happened to the blog, or actually happened to the author of the blog. So what happened exactly that made me effectively stop blogging?
Twitter, Blogger, Facebook and LinkedIN happened!!!
When you interlink Twitter, LinkedIN, Facebook and your own Blog, strange things happen.
LinkedIN – ‘The Professionals Social Network’
The Social Networks drive traffic to your blog, that sends them back to your Social Networks. The referral web traffic is just huge! A single LinkedIN Group article posting (super targeted audience!) can bring hundreds of people within a day to your site, and literally thousands within a 30 day period. Remember it is only the people within that LinkedIN group who see that link to your site so you actually see the LinkedIN Profiles of your incoming web site traffic.
Twitter – ‘The Time Waster’
Whoever tells you that he knows how to use Twitter for anything business related is probably smarter than people who invented Twitter themselves. There is no Cook Book on how to use Twitter successfully. There are lot of eBooks on how to use Twitter, but none is promising ANY success. No one can tell you how will Twitter positively affect your revenue. Anyone who used Twitter can tell you how Twitter will kill your productivity!
The success in using Twitter or the successes we (heavy users – with lots of time invested in it) all had are all sporadic and completely unpredictable. We cannot really define why any of them happened. This is why Twitter usage is unpredictable, and the success path is less obvious than with any other social network.
Just be aware that Twitter as well as LinkedIN drives extremely targeted traffic to your site. So use it wisely. 140 characters (minus the length of your URL) is a very short message space!
Facebook – ‘My Private Life and just FUN!’
The European usage of Facebook greatly differs from the way they use it in the US. On our side of the ‘pond’ we use Facebook for fun. Your Friends and Family are in your Facebook contacts far more often that someone you do or plan to do business with.
Niche Social Networking Sites
There are a lot of industry specific networks, based most often on NING or similar platforms. Those as well give you a chance to drive their web traffic to your site, but publishing articles on those networks inviting the users to come and see more info on your own site. This is again targeted referral traffic – so the highest quality visitors that you can imagine.
Inbound Linking
One aspect of the usage of the Social Networking sites for building web traffic is to get the referral traffic from them. The other aspect is the inbound linking. If the links on those sites are ‘Clean Links’, meaning no redirects or the nofollow tag used – those are nice inbound links to your site. Since the search engines just love the social networking sites, especially the ones where the whole content is ‘open to them’ – meaning no user login is required to read all the pages, the links from those sites are very good form the search engine perspective. A good social networker will therefore use the social networks to get the referral traffic, and in the same time place lots of one way inbound links to his site.