Shaun Low

In a recent post about who is in the conversation John Batelle said that while the  online conversation has very obvious benefits for the users, one of the troublemsome spots has been how do we keep it going and still pay the rent?  Or the hosting, in this case.

Most writers who have a following online write because it’s a passion. Readers/viewers come back because the content is compelling and they value the conversation.

Batelle makes the case that advertisers who are joining the conversation - those who are brave and innovative enough to learn the grammar and language - get the most bang for their marketing buck.

He cites some good examples in this long post about Conversational Marketing

Advertisers who use the medium to actually talk to their readers and get their  feedback?   Now where have I heard the phrases ‘establishing and maintaining relationships with your audience’ and  ‘creating a climate of mutual understanding between an organization and its publics’?  Oh yes, it’s in the definition of public relations.

Seems the ad folk are using PR tactics, And it’s working.  

Take a leaf out of their book. Figure out where the your particular pilgrims are pitching their tents and learn the language and grammar of their conversation.

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About the Author

Sally is the author of Website Content Strategy blog: Information about the shifts in media consumption and the use of technology in marketing and PR so business can stay in touch with their rapidly moving audiences.

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A Google Webmaster Tools article explains how you can make your site more Google-friendly.

You can “Get Google’s view of your website, and diagnose potential problems.

See how Google crawls and indexes your site and learn about specific problems we’re having accessing it.”

You can assess the performance of your site “Learn which queries drive traffic to your site, and see exactly how users arrive there.”

Further you can share information with Google to help them crawl your site better. It says “Tell us about your pages: which ones are most important to you and how often they change. You can also let us know how you would like the URLs we index to appear.”

The best part is that its free, to use it “Simply log in with your Google Account and add your site URL to get started. It’s an easy and free way to have a more interactive experience with Google.”

The Google Webmaster Central Blog further elaborates on the releases “we have two new features: Content analysis and Sitemap details. We hope these features help you to build a site you could compare to a fine wine — getting better and better over time.”

Content analysis “…contains feedback about issues that may impact the user experience or that may make it difficult for Google to crawl and index pages on your site. By reviewing the areas we’ve highlighted, you can help eliminate potential issues that could affect your site’s ability to be crawled and indexed. This results in better indexing of your site by Google and other search engines.”

The Content analysis summary page has three main categories, they are Title tag issues, Meta description issues, Non-indexable content issues. You simply need to click on these to get details.

If you’d select the “Duplicate title tags” you’d get a list of “repeated page titles along with a count of how many pages contain that title.” As of now they “present up to thirty duplicated page titles on the details page. If the duplicate title issues shown are corrected, we’ll update the list to reflect any other pages that share duplicate titles the next time your website is crawled.”

“Long title tags” and “Short title tags” in the Title tag issues category are meant to “identify title tags that are way too short (for example “IT” isn’t generally a good title tag) or way too long (title tag was never intended to mean <insert epic novel here>).” Additionally there’s an algorithm to identify potentially problematic meta description tags. These pointers can help your site display better titles and snippets in search results, which is likely to increase visitor traffic, however they won’t help your rankings directly.

For the “Non-indexable content issues” they say “we give you a heads-up of areas that aren’t as friendly to our more text-based crawler. And be sure to check out our posts on Flash and images to learn how to make these items more search-engine friendly.”

About the Sitemap details page’s functionality they say “If you’ve submitted a Sitemap, you’ll be happy when you see the additional information in Webmaster Tools revealing how your Sitemap was processed.”

This information can be found on the Sitemap Details page in addition to the information that was previously provided for each of the Sitemaps. The information would show the number of the pages from your Sitemap that have been indexed. A word of caution though “Keep in mind the number of pages indexed from your Sitemap may not be 100% accurate because the indexed number is updated periodically, but it’s more accurate than running a “site:example.com” query on Google.”

On the Sitemap Details page you’d also get a list of “any errors or warnings that were encountered when specific pages from your Sitemap were crawled.” It’ll save time that was earlier spent on crafting custom Google queries to determine how many pages from your Sitemap were indexed.

Guess what else do they have to offer? “Webmaster Tools now available in Czech & Hungarian.”

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About the Authors

Nav is the founder and CEO of PageTraffic, a premier search engine company known for its assured SEO service, web design and development, copywriting and full time SEO professionals.

Navneet has wide experience in natural search engine optimization, internet marketing and PPC campaigns. He is a prolific writer and his articles can be found in the “Best Articles” section of many websites and article banks. As a search engine analyst , he has over 9 years of experience and his knowledge is in application here.

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Hitwise today announced the addition of several new features to its Search Intelligence™ product, including Paid and Organic and Fast Moving Search Terms data.

Hitwise Search Intelligence™ provides the industry’s deepest and timeliest search behavior analysis available and is part of the Hitwise Competitive Intelligence service, which is based on how 10 million U.S. Internet users interact with more than one million websites on a daily basis.

The new features enable marketers to pinpoint opportunities to refine keyword portfolios and improve the effectiveness of search marketing campaigns.

Paid and Organic reports allow marketers to analyze which paid terms and organic listings have been most successful in driving traffic to competitive websites.

Fast Moving Search Term reports identify the terms that have increased in popularity each week across all search engines. This data can identify emerging search behavior trends to better understand what is top of mind with consumers.

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About the Author

Manoj has been working in the search engine marketing industry since 2002. He started out as a software developer but now provides in-depth web site analysis using web analytics.

http://www.enquiro.com

Manoj is also the author of Web Analytics World. Web Analytics is an essential component in developing a successful online campaign. Help convert visitors into customers by understanding them.

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Have you heard the words, “reputation management” applied to SEO before? Well, if you haven’t, you certainly should. Where some corporations might argue that the blogosphere isn’t important, Zappos, the web’s biggest shoe store would, no doubt, disagree. If you have any questions about how positive the blogosphere can be for links (and traffic), grab a box of tissues and read this post entitled, “I heart Zappos.” The blogger bought a pair of women’s shoes for her mom. The post is currently ranked #12 in Google for “zappos” (and #9 in Yahoo). Want to learn how you, too can garner link love and traffic for your brand? Here are some great lessons we can learn from this story to help you manage your online reputation…

Bend Corporate Policy When Appropriate: Per the post about Zappos, they typically have a 15-day return policy for their products, even though they pay for shipping both ways. Due to the death of the customer’s mother, they had no problem making an exception given the tragedy the customer was dealing with.

Be Accessible: How many times have you tried to contact a company to lodge a customer complaint? How many hours of your life have you wasted in so-called “phone purgatory”? Unlike the “Spirit Airlines Story, Zappos was easily accessible and had a great response time. By giving your customers a way to easily provide positive (and negative) feedback about customer service issues, it prevents your customers from jumping to conclusions and blogging about it. Remember, that timing is everything.

Be Human: By putting yourself in your customer’s shoes, you will no doubt achieve customer service excellence. When Zappos found out that their customer’s mother had passed away, they arranged for their product pick-up and sent a huge bouquet of flowers. How’s that for reaching out and being nice to someone? Not only did they do something nice, their humanity turned into link bait — because their customer happened to be a blogger with an audience.

Practice Company Values: One of the best ways to preserve your reputation is to take a hard look on how you are selling your customer service. If you are billing “premier customer service,” then do whatever you can to back it up. That way, not only do your customers know what to expect, but they will be eager to refer your company to other individuals. Comments on blog posts like the “I Heart Zappos” showed that her referral drove new customers and traffic to their online store, just because Zappos practices what they preach.

Don’t Invalidate or Ignore Negative Responses: One negative response, if handled improperly, can be more powerful than you think. Type in “Spirit Airlines” and the #2 position in Google is a blog post that declares “Do not Fly Spirit Airlines.” Another big name company, Dell, had a policy not to respond to bloggers that was eventually reversed, but not before the blogosphere picked up on “Dell Hell.” Type that search into Google and find millions of blog posts, articles, and negative reviews all dedicated to talking poorly about Dell. If handled appropriately, you can turn a complaint into a positive experience, to change customer perspectives and get them blogging about you–in a good way.

Be Proactive, Not Reactive: Instead of reacting to when things go wrong, put yourself out there via a personalized email or note to your customers and let them know what happened if you made a mistake. If a customer is that unhappy with your products or services, offer multiple choices to let them choose what works best for them. Keep in mind that, by owning up to your mistakes and read about it for a week in the news, you will prevent getting attention from a group of angry, irate customers (potential bloggers) who then create something like “Dell hell” which will be around for a long, long time.

By keeping these thoughts in mind, and following Zappos example, not only will you preserve your brand’s reputation, but you will also increase brand loyalty. When you think about it, being nice to your customers is a lot like karma. The nicer you are, the more traffic you’ll get and, ultimately, the more links you’ll build.

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About the Author

Chris formerly headed up the Advanced Technology Department for Verizon Superpages.com (later spun off under Idearc Media), where he worked for ten years, specializing in patent-pending work in mapping, local search, analytics, and SEO. As the natural search optimization expert for Idearc, he founded and chaired the company’s SEO Council. Chris is currently a Lead Search Strategist for Netconcepts, a search optimization firm. Chris is a regular columnist for Search Engine Land, covering the ‘local search’ beat. He also blogs for Natural Search Blog, and speaks at industry conferences such as Search Engine Strategies.

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This is a great article by Chris Winfield, one of the top social media marketing specialists and a frequent collaborator with The Happy Guy Marketing: You’ve Made Digg - Now What?

As with so many business decisions, people tend to rush in without a long-range plan. The script is usually the same…

Hey, let’s get the latest gadget.

Now what?

I wrote about the same problem in this article about website planning, because so many companies still are rushing out to build a website without a clue what they want that website to do for them.

Chris offers a few good suggestions on what to do about a page that has benefited from a surge in popularity as the result of a home page Digg appearance, including reoptimizing the page, adding calls to action, advertising on it, or redirecting it to another page. I would add that basically you can do pretty much anything you want with the page. For example, you could simply add the page a related survey geared to building leads for your telemarketing operations. Just keep in mind what people visiting it will be expecting. If they come expecting a video on how to carve fruits for a New Year’s Eve party, don’t fill the page with wallpaper remover products.

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About the Author

David Leonhardt is a Canada-based SEO and viral marketing consultant. He operates in English, French and Spanish, providing custom SEO programs for clients aiming to be top players in their niches.

http://www.seo-writer.com/blog/

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Back in the days, Web 2.0 was defined as a new medium that allows people to share things. Blogs and social sites were Web 2.0 and forums and personal sites were 1.0.

State of the Web and the forums

In a Cre8asite Forums thread, a question is raised about the state of the Web and where forums find themselves in it.

And while this is a very good question, it got me thinking. What makes a forum and what makes a social site?

While a forum is open two way communication (compared to one way blogging or social sites, where members can’t write anything unless someone [blog or article author] has already written on the topic), surely there are other differences between forums and the social sites?

How are forums, blogs and social sites different?

In my opinion, the difference is the people and how people interact there.

The difference between Cre8asite Forums and Digital Point forums is the people. They make one forum the most populated and polluted one and the other the most tactful and thoughtful. And, ultimately, the people that post there give the newcomers a chance to make their choice, whether they want to stay there or not.

If we take social sites into account, people there can:

* learn what other people think on the topic

* discuss it with them

* share things of common interests

While this relation isn’t as strong as on the forum or via email, it still allows people to feel alive and useful and spend their time doing something more interesting, than staring at an empty ceiling (or working ).

How forums, blogs and social sites are different?

Often, a question is raised about the difference between forums, blogs and social sites. People start naming technologies, such as RSS, AJAX, comments, etc, but no one really mentions the people themselves.

Since all of the sites offer various kinds of communications, various types of people are attracted there (or at least for various reasons).

* If you want to ask a question from a knowledgeable community, you go to a forum (or email a blogger, which is harder to do, though).

* If you want to read an opinion on something, you go to your favorite blogs in your RSS reader or to Digg.

* If you want to learn the latest news in your field, you go to your social site, or Digg, if you are into technology.

Alternatively, on any of them, you interact with different people in a different way, thus making your experience unique and uninterchangable.

Why Sphinn is the best of them all

All in all, I think that’s why the launch of Sphinn for the Web building community means a lot (Slashdot tried, but isn’t as close, IMHO). Sphinn (or “Spin”) has it all:

* plenty of knowledgeable people

* a chance to start a discussion without an URL to link to

* post comments and discuss the topic, either in a discussion or some post

Sadly, because the discussion isn’t very actively encouraged there - or maybe because the people don’t participate them eagerly, Sphinn hasn’t yet become The place to go to discuss things. But it’s getting there.

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About the Author

Yuri Filimonov is a freelance website optimization and usability consultant, who writes about improving websites to gain more visitors, customers and profit at his blog, http://www.ImproveTheWeb.com.

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After falling victim to having an entire article of mine being copied word for word and claimed as someone else’s content I thought it was time to make a little copyright page of my own. You can find the copyright page at the top of this site. It’s not very complicated, only a few guidelines to follow but I think it is necessary. Included in the copyrright page are a few commenting policies. So far I haven’t had any comment spams or anything but a few other blogs have a comment policy so I decided to make one for myself.

I wrote an article dedicated to copyright infringement and how it affects bloggers, if you missed that feel free to check it out here.

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We all know that we can make money from Google AdSense and that some keywords pay more than other keywords. But which keywords pay the most cost per click?

Thanks to CyberWyre we have a list of the Highest Paying Search Terms. The list includes the top 230 paying search keywords. The top 10 paying keywords all pay more than $38.00 per click:

$54.33 mesothelioma lawyers
$47.79 what is mesothelioma
$47.72 peritoneal mesothelioma
$47.25 consolidate loans
$47.16 refinancing mortgage
$45.55 tax attorney
$41.22 mesothelioma
$38.86 car accident lawyer
$38.68 ameriquest mortgage
$38.03 mortgage refinance

Remember that there has not been a confirmed list about the top AdSense keywords and the cost per click is a dynamic automated system that will continue to change. Now that you have a list of the top paying keywords don’t stuff your site with these keywords. Great content is what keeps your readers coming back to your site .

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