Today’s search engine marketing news and opinion: Obama’s Link Strategy Fuels Election Victory; The Account Quality Score: Money Pit for the Uninformed; Yang Says Microsoft Deal is Best Bet for Yahoo; and more. Continue to read more…
As I downloaded yet more of Metallica yesterday from iTunes (the new stuff freaking rocks btw) it got me thinking of how some bands are embracing social communities and growing bigger because of them. Also, bands like Metallica are finally starting to figure out the power of the Internet, and embrace its users more […]
As I downloaded yet more of Metallica yesterday from iTunes (the new stuff freaking rocks btw) it got me thinking of how some bands are embracing social communities and growing bigger because of them. Also, bands like Metallica are finally starting to figure out the power of the Internet, and embrace its users more to grow their fan base (and maybe win back some fans in their case).
What can a no name band do to get its name out there more with social media? What can be done with these kind of “rock band” websites or profiles to help them go viral? The more and more I think about this, the more amazing ideas keep coming to my mind what a band could do to get its name out there.
A good friend of mine, Chris Catero (far left in the picture below) is bass player for a little known band (except for the Phoenix area) called Razer, a band he started almost 15 years ago (that started off as Wardog and was pretty big in Europe, but never broke in the US) What can these guys do to get their names out there? Embrace social media sites like MySpace of course, but its going to take more then that.
Some ideas that came to my mind, thinking of how good Razer is, but yet nobody’s heard of them (to get the word out) could be “10 Of The Greatest Rock Bands You Have Never Heard Of” or “10 Of The Most Incredible Guitar Riffs You Have Never Heard” or “Ten Of The Craziest Rock Videos You Have Never Seen” and then of course on each give a link to the iTunes download page, or wherever you can get their music. In the list of the 10 bands do your research and find some pretty amazing local bands that you may know of (if this is your industry you will know) and include them, but of course include yourself as well, and yes … its ok if a post like this is on your bands website/blog - it will only do you good! Then everyone who is following you on your MySpace page - send them to one of the communities like Stumble Upon, or Digg and have them all push it up. You will be amazed at the response it gets.
If I had the time I’d prepare a professionally produced training video on search engine optimizing your WordPress blog/site, but I don’t, so instead I’ll just direct you to the video that John Pozadzides recorded of my 30 minute long presentation at WordCamp San Francisco from several months ago here, or simply watch the embedded video below:
Enjoy! Feedback is welcome.
If I had the time I’d prepare a professionally produced training video on search engine optimizing your WordPress blog/site, but I don’t, so instead I’ll just direct you to the video that John Pozadzides recorded of my 30 minute long presentation at WordCamp San Francisco from several months ago here, or simply watch the embedded video below:
Enjoy! Feedback is welcome.
A few weeks ago during SMX East, one of the subjects that came up was pagerank sculpting and use of nofollow. Most of the panelists didn’t use the practice, and Googler Matt Cutts has said it’s ok but not something he would put a high priority on if you set up your site correctly. Xoogler […]
A few weeks ago during SMX East, one of the subjects that came up was pagerank sculpting and use of nofollow. Most of the panelists didn’t use the practice, and Googler Matt Cutts has said it’s ok but not something he would put a high priority on if you set up your site correctly. Xoogler Vanessa Fox has similar sentiments. So if there’s so many high profile authority figures downplaying it, why are we still having this discussion? The problem is it’s a matter of scale and where you fall on the food chain, on whether or not it’s worth your time. Allow me to make an analogy …
Imagine for a moment that you are the owner of a 1972 Ford AMC Gremlin (nit pickers 
)
photo credit: zappowbang
Is putting a set of four high speed performance racing tires really going to make a difference? In fact considering they are probably going to cost as much as the car is worth probably not. You would be pretty safe saying it’s not worth the time energy and effort.
Now let’s assume that instead of the Ford gremlin you have a Ferrari Enzo …
Is putting a set of high perfermance racing tires on this car going to make a difference … abso-freekin-lutely ! In fact driving a car like this without a set of performance tires would be complete waste.
The tires on your car are the touch points between your car and the road. The links on your website are touch points between your website and Google’s crawling and indexing spiders. Much like cars not all websites are the same, not all websites have the “horsepower” to take advantage of tactics like nofollow and pagerank sculpting. The key is figuring out if you are closer to the Ford Gremlin or the Ferarri Enzo and adjusting your strategy accordingly.
For some websites using nofollow and pagerank sculpting is a complete waste of time, energy and resources. For other websites there may be some moderate level of benefit, and for some websites ignoring pagerank sculpting may be costing you traffic and sales.
Need SEO help with your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant.
NoFollow and PageRank Sculpting is it Worth the Effort
For Halloween this year, I decided to be Rick Astley. With a little bit of hair spray, spray-on hair color, and some make-up for a widow’s peak, it looks like this: What fun. To make the costume complete, I took my Android G1 phone and bought a copy of Never Gonna Give You Up from Amazon […]
For Halloween this year, I decided to be Rick Astley. With a little bit of hair spray, spray-on hair color, and some make-up for a widow’s peak, it looks like this:
What fun. To make the costume complete, I took my Android G1 phone and bought a copy of Never Gonna Give You Up from Amazon for $.99. Then I put the song on continuous loop and turned on the external speaker. The G1 can really belt out music! Presto, not only do I look like Rick Astley, but I’m Rickrolling everyone who comes within ten feet of me!
In order for you to fully appreciate the experience, I’ve added an “embed” code into this blog so you can experience the costume for yourself. Let me know if it works for you. 
(Update: Apparently Firefox and Chrome don’t like embedded MIDIs and other Web 0.1 technology, so I’ll spare you the audio experience of getting rickroll’ed.) Thanks to my wonderful wife for the idea and for her help with the costume this year. She also made a special treat for people at work:
Yummy mummy cupcakes!
Other Halloween fun from previous years.
The local search market is a hard nut to crack. It seems you need to go door to door to extract information. That’s what Google are doing. Well, they’re paying people to do so. They’ve launched a program called Google Local Business Referrals. “(Google) paying independent contractors, called business referral representatives, to visit local businesses to collect information about them — Continue to read more…
This week it seems like I have had so many conversations with people about the simple things they can do to their website to make it social media optimized, and because of that I wanted to take that approach with today’s viral media post. Has anyone (other Internet marketers) else noticed how good CNN […]
This week it seems like I have had so many conversations with people about the simple things they can do to their website to make it social media optimized, and because of that I wanted to take that approach with today’s viral media post.
Has anyone (other Internet marketers) else noticed how good CNN is doing lately with embracing social media and trying to connect with the users of it? You can follow them on Twitter, Facebook and more. You can even create your own “widgets, profiles and badges” on the CNN site talking about your issues and who YOU are. When I give this as an example to people (that I am working with) they tell me that they hear them talking about this stuff on CNN but have no clue what a profile “badge” is? If you are an Internet business owner, you need to have a clue and embrace the world of social media.
Social media sites continue to gain a huge following, and if you are not allowing your site to grow the the changing Internet environment then you are going to be left behind. Let me explain it to you this way; Google does get the majority of the search traffic, yes that is a given. The people who understand SEO (I mean really get it and understand) will always be able to achieve high natural rankings by understanding what the algorithm is looking for. The users of social media, and sites like Delicious try to counteract that by giving results based on what users are recommending - In other words, your content ain’t going anywhere on sites like Delicious unless its good and other people are saving it. Let me go even further, it does not even have to be “good” for it to be embraced by these communities, you just have to make it more available (easier) to the users of these communities.
If I come across a site that I like, and I see they have a Delicious button on their homepage, then I am going to save them because its there (and easy), whereas if they didn’t I would probably just pass them by trying to remember the site next time I was in my Delicious account. The same is true with Stumble Upon, I will usually give a site that I like the benefit of the doubt and “stumble” them if they have the SU button on their site. This is the same respect I am giving CNN and the anchors I watch by following them on their social media accounts and interacting with them that way. I have no time to be watching news all day, but if Rick Sanchez puts out an update on Twitter - I know about it (instantly) and I can take the time to watch or read, but before (or if he wasn’t doing this) I would not have had a clue as to what was going on (on his program). I would have just kept in my own little Internet world, working away and only interacting with other users of social media that I am connected with.
The simple point here for Internet business owners (that have not embraced social media) is to make sure that they have these social media icons on their site, and they let people know what communities they are a part of. A huge part of that is also understanding what communities to put where on your site. Understand that having a Digg icon on the homepage of your website is pretty much useless, and it needs to be where articles, blog posts, or news is at on your site (more potential for being “Digg-worthy”). Also understand that having “social bookmarking” icons like Delicious and Stumble Upon on your homepage would be ok. Once you understand the community and what they are looking for, the better.
There are reasons these social communities give you the ability to make your own widgets and badges promoting your profiles and what communities you are a part of, and its not just for promoting them. I would suggest getting in to the social communities that you are a part of and learning all the tools and services they have to offer. I mean, really get in and learn what having a Twitter account can do for your blog. You might think its silly to have a “micro-blog” when you are already blogging, but this is a great way to let people know of new content, things on your mind, and especially a great way to connect with people who may have never found your blog.
I know there was not a whole lot of “how to” on this post (that will come later), but I hope this at least gets you thinking of how you need to be including social media into your “over all” Internet marketing plan, and especially be embracing it on the simplest of levels - your website!
As a lot of people have heard the ex-Googlers at Cuil have launch their “Efficient Google Killer”, which seems to have become the laughing stock of the SEO Community for terrible results and matching up images with search results that don’t belong to the same website. Today out of curiosity I thought I would “Cuil” my own name and see what kind of results came up, and apparently I resemble a Continue to read more…
