Posted in Internet Marketing on 07. Feb, 2009
So, if you haven’t heard already, the fine folks over at IMBroadcast.com are hosting what some are calling the blow out internet marketing conference of the year. IM Spring Break will be a hyper-networking/hyper-educational event. They are capping attendees to 200, which means that there will be very focused & intimate discussions revolving all aspects of internet marketing. (more…)
It’s the holiday season which means that its that time of year that I feel a bit generous (yes, just once a year, live with it). Here’s a great way that you can show your generosity by helping a charity in need and getting massive amounts of links for your good deed.
Here’s the secret: Give the charity of your choice a page on your web site. The vast majority of work that we do at jozsoft is web development for non-profits. From my experience there are LOTS of small non-profits and local charities that could greatly benefit from a web presence, however lack the funds required to make that presence a reality. If I could I would give away all my services for free to non-profits, but then I would be out of work and never finish with the TONS of them that need web help. Trust me they are out there, just start looking.
Did you say something about links??
Yes, I did. There’s no reason that you shouldn’t get something out of being such a great guy or girl, right? Here’s how the links work: when you add the charity’s page to your site you are effectively extending your web presence into their organization. This is extremely powerful because, every member, volunteer, staff person, constituent, and supporter will automatically become your domain advocate and hopefully link builder.
I have done this several times and have seen huge success with each. But there are a few things to keep in mind that work best.
One Page – Why just one? It’s allot easier to do just one page and it will be easier to focus link juice to other parts of your site if you have fewer pages. All their information on one page means all links pointing to one place, you get the idea. Many don’t care putting all there info on one page when its free.
http://www.yoursite.com/non-profit-name.html
Linkable Content – Encourage the organization to provide content for the page that people want to tell others about or link to. Examples are: monthly calendars, fund raising messages, information about upcoming events, resources for their members, or even embeddable content like videos or slideshows from different events.
Active Orgs. – Organizations that stay active are the ones that will build the most links, because they are the ones that have the most to talk about. Examples of active groups would be church youth groups, boy and girl scouts, School PTAs, and others.
The Right Org. – Its important to pick an organization that you don’t have any fundamental disagreements with, otherwise you might have a problem if you have to remove their page in the future.
PageRank Sculpting – Ok I don’t want to advise that everyone does this because it is more on the grayer/black side of SEO. However, if you really want to send the most link juice possible to the rest of your site then at the very least you should include one or two links to your home page on the non-profit’s page. This can be done by including a link at the bottom that says something like, “this page is sponsored by jozsoft”. Then, “nofollow” the rest of the links except the one to your home page. Only do this in moderation because all of the authenticity that you have just received by helping a charity will be gone if caught.
I hope this is helpful and encourages you to help out a local non-profit or charity this holiday season. Remember, the links are the added bonus, and the better your free service to the charity is, the more links you will receive, people like talking about good things!
Posted in SEO on 01. Nov, 2008
Posted in SEO on 20. Oct, 2008
I just made my profile using the new Google Profiles. It appears to me that the links found inside the profiles are SEO friendly! Check out the screen shot I took below using FireBug to look at the code.
Am I dreaming here??
Posted in Uncategorized on 05. Oct, 2008
WhosTalkin.com is a social media search tool that allows users to search for conversations surrounding the topics that they care about most. Whether it be your favorite sport, favorite food, celebrity, or your company’s brand name; Whostalkin.com can help you join in on the conversations that you care about most.
Posted in SEO on 17. Sep, 2008
OK, I want to first start off by saying that this will be a short one because I am really busy today.
Lets start things off by pointing out a post at Michael Gray’s blog where he talks about Guy Kawasaki writing reviews for products that he has been given. This prompted the debate over the link aqquistion only for us all later to find out that Guy doesn’t really know that much about links to begin with!
Maybe Guy should take a look at Dave Snyder’s most recent post.
A local police department in Wisconsin opens up a criminal investigation after a woman links to their web site. The police department ordered a cease and desist of the link. The woman responded with a law suit against the city at large! Moral of the story here is what ever you do, don’t send any link juice to the Sheboygan Police Department (Oops!) What makes this get even more interesting is this article that describes this whole insanity. Scroll down to the bottom of the article and tell me if you see anything funny at the bottom right. 
Posted in Uncategorized on 26. Aug, 2008
Allen Stern just wrote a post in response to a post that Seth Godin wrote. Both of these men are exploring ways to compensate content creators, such as bloggers. They both are recommending that users click on the ads that bloggers display. Godin calls this a form of tipping. As you can assume there are quite a few that aren’t very happy about this.
Apparently Seth Godin has never worked for real tips, and might have never really appreciated any tips that he might have given. Why you ask? Real tips display gratitude based on transference of wealth. Click ads does not transfer any wealth from the person making the “tip” to the content creator.
To better understand this point lets pretend that I am at my favorite Italian restaurant “Gianotti’s”. If I have enjoyed my meal (which I always do) and if I have enjoyed the service then I enjoy leaving a tip for the server. This transference of wealth from my wallet to the server is genuine display of gratitude, because I am giving MY money for a service that I appreciate.
However, following the teachings of Godin and Stern, I should reach over to the guy sitting at the table beside me, take his wallet out and steal a few bucks from him and use it to tip my server.
If you have ever worked for tips you know that this is not only wrong for the obvious reason but it also looks disingenuous because you obviously haven’t valued their work enough to tip them with your own money, instead in the case of internet ads, you have made a simple click that require no extra effort or expense.
But there is a much deeper dangerous side to this practice that we as internet marketers should be concerned with. Click fraud devalues ad cost. If you really want to help the blogger then you will only click on the ads that you find useful and relevant. Why? Because the very basis for PPC is relevancy and if advertisers see a rise in CTR with out a rise in conversions then they will drop PPC ads like a bad habit FAST! Nobody likes wasting money on marketing!
So the question that Stern asked is still left unanswered. “How do you compensate content creators?” Here’s an idea: If content creators feel their content is valuable enough to receive compensation then why not add a PayPal Donate button to their side bar. This way visitors can actually give a real tip. Or if you would rather you could always give the content creator a bit more publicity by mentioning their post in your blog or telling folks about it There are numerous ways to compensate content creators with out cheating advertisers at the same time.
Posted in SEO, Uncategorized on 28. Jul, 2008
Not long ago, Marketing Pilgrim posted about some Hitwise data on real estate search terms and real estate web sites. As expected Realtor.com did very well ranking #1 as both the most visited real estate web site and the most used real estate search term. This wasn’t much of a surprise to those in the real estate industry. What surprised some (and still confuses me) is the list of most visited real estate web sites.
Hitwise Most Visited Real Estate Web Site Rankings
1. realtor.com – 9.08 percent
2. HomeGain – 2.44 percent
3. Yahoo Real Estate – 2.25 percent
4. RE/MAX real estate – 2.21 percent
5. Rent.com – 2.19 percent
6. Zillow – 2.06 percent
7. Apartments.com – 2 percent
8. Move.com – 1.91 percent
9. ZipRealty – 1.86 percent
10. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development – 1.42 percent.
When I first saw that list I had this gut feeling that something was off. If any of you are familiar with my work in the past you know that I love crunching the numbers. So, lets take a look at what the numbers say:
zillow.com trulia.com remax.com century21.com
As I expected my analysis shows Zillow.com doing better than REMAX.com. And, even more interesting is Trulia.com doing better than remax.com as well! Trulia.com isn’t even listed on Hitwise’s report!
Confused? So am I. But, don’t worry, I will explain all of this and more in a future guest post at Wolf-Howl.com….stay tuned!
Posted in Uncategorized on 28. Jul, 2008
From Cuil:
Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.
Then maybe someone can help me understand these searches I ran:
Am I missing something?? Saying that you are bigger than Google is a damn big statement, and I would think that you should have some data to back yourself up!
