Five top-ranked search engine optimization blogs and five top online marketing blogs for your reading pleasure.
- How Interactive Media is Changing Marketing - 2007-06-28 04:59:55-04
I believe that the move toward efficiency by ad networks is hollowing out the profitability and sustainability of publishing business models that are not overtly biased.
- Rumor: Microsoft Testing AdSense Like ContentAds with Smaller Publishers - 2007-06-28 08:34:42-04
A DigitalPoint Forums thread has a member saying he has been beta testing the Microsoft alternative to Google's AdSense program, named ContentAds. He gave the new contextual ad program, from a publisher's perspective, a great review. To be honest is...
- Drew McLellan: A Logo in a Logo = the New Logo? - 2007-06-28 09:34:17-04
Scenario: Your client is a large retailer, Cooper's Pharmacopia. Among their customer group, they are very well known and established. They have done a good job of consistently branding themselves. Both their logo and tagline achieve high marks on recall research. They are the market leader.
They have also "owned" a signature event for the past five years. It has its own name and logo identity, with equally high recognition. It is one of the premiere events for their industry. Neither the name or logo of the event sound or look like Cooper's Pharmacopia. But most attendees would be very clear that they sponsor the event.
They just got a new marketing director. Your new client. He would like you to take the event logo (it's round) and merge it into the company's logo by replacing one of the o's in Cooper's Pharmacopia with the event logo. That would become the new event logo.
Question: From a strategic point of view (not if the round logo looks good as an o) what is your response?
Should you take an established "sub brand" and blend it with the corporate brand? Or, should the parent company and the sub branded event each retain their own identity?
Which strategy strengthens both the company and the event's brand?
- Mack Collier: Got Comments? How to Get More Interaction on Your Blog - 2007-06-28 09:43:40-04
The other day I was checking out Monster's blog, and while at first glance it appears to be a solid company blog, I noted a glaring problem. The blog's comment policy states that "Comments are moderated; they should appear on the Monster Blog within one business day."
One business day? Are you kidding me?
To me, that long of a delay is totally unacceptable for a company blog. Can it happen occasionally over the weekend? Sure, and most readers will forgive leaving a comment on Sunday at noon, and not having it show up till 9 am on Monday. But during business hours, a delay of even an hour is too long.
But more than anything, that policy screams that Monster doesn't value input from its blog readers. Which is a horrible mistake, as a company that blogs should be doing everything possible to encourage its readers to leave comments. The more input from its readers, the more valuable feedback the company can collect.
And there are so many very simple things that companies can do to encourage its readers to leave comments:
1 - If you moderate comments, approve them as quickly as possible. This is a simple courtesy to your readers that shows them that you value their input.
2 - Post regularly. This encourages visitors to become readers, and readers are far more likely to leave comments than visitors that have found your blog for the first time.
3 - Reply to comments from your readers! Another no-brainer, but so many companies overlook this. It shows your readers that you are actually paying attention to their comments, and want to hear what they have to say. And the more comments a post has, the more likely readers are to check out the comments.
4 - Read the blogs of your regular commenters, and comment on THEIR blog as much as possible. This is a wonderful way to build community for your blog, and it's another way to show your readers that you value their input. Then after you've discovered these wonderful blogs that your readers have, why not add a link to them on YOUR blog's sidebar?
5 - Add a "window" to the comments. I love this one. Let's say you leave a post, and Laura leaves an absolutely amazing comment. Almost immediately, other readers start commenting on Laura's comment! So a great way to 'thank' Laura for that comment, and to let your readers know about it, is to add her comment to the bottom of your post! Just add at the bottom of the post 'Laura says in the comments', and then Laura's comment. And remember to 'thank' Laura, by also linking to her blog when you add her comment to your post! I do this by adding the blog link to the person's name. You get to thank a reader for a great comment, and also let your other readers know about the party that's happening in the comments to that post!
6 - Ask your readers for their comments! The other day I posted on The Viral Garden about Monster's comment policy. I started to just say what I thought was wrong with the policy, and leave it at that. But instead, I simply posted Monster's comment policy, and asked my readers what they thought of it. As a result, I got far more comments than I likely would have, and probably better ones as well since I didn't take a stand and let the readers run with the comments!
And speaking of point #6, what are YOUR tips for how to encourage more comments on your blog? If you have any, please leave a comment! (See how easy it is?)
- Whiteboard Friday - "Sneaky Link Liaison" - 2007-06-28 10:19:50-04
Posted by great scott!
Greeting Whiteboard Friday fans! We've finally convinced Rand to reprise his role as "Dude with Whiteboard" for this week's edition of Whiteboard Friday.
In his comeback performance, Rand discusses online branding and marketing channels that don't involve organic search listings (he got hit on the head while he was gone, you'll see what I mean). This is actually something we're going to work on bringing you more of: online marketing beyond strictly organic SEO. White-hat SEO will always be our primary focus, but let's face it, there are other fish in the sea, and we're always trying to be the best tackle box.
Also available on my YouTube page.
This week's featured music is Kyrie by Mr. Mister, on special request from Rebecca. And yes, shor, it's '80's. It's so 80's it might just rock a little too hard!
- MySpace Rivals YouTube: A Comparison of Both Services - 2007-06-28 10:52:35-04
digg_url='http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/014024.html'; A WebmasterWorld thread points us to a Telegraph.co.uk article that says that MySpace intends to launch a rival to YouTube allowing for video sharing. The new product, dubbed MySpaceTV, allows users who are not members of MySpace to...
- The Move to WordPress is Official - 2007-06-28 11:19:48-04
Regular visitors to this blog may note a slightly different look today. I have migrated this entire blog to WordPress. I am very excited about the expanded possibilities this platform gives me. The folks at WordPress have been a great source of help in this process, which in my case was not an easy one. You may [...]
- Google AdWords Tests Campaign Optimizer Tool - 2007-06-28 11:53:25-04
A number of people are reporting that Google has implemented an AdWords Campaign Optimizer tool. We were first alerted to this on the Search Engine Roundtable Forums, where PPCblogger kindly provided us with some detailed screenshots of the tool in...
- How Often Should You Update Your Content? - 2007-06-28 12:16:48-04
When you maintain a blog or a regularly updated website, is there an optimal amount of time you should wait before updating your articles, or should you post them all at once? In a WebmasterWorld thread, a website publisher is...
- Build Your Boats Before You Need Them - 2007-06-28 14:30:18-04
A lot of folks thinking about starting a business spend all their time doing the typical start-up stuff like incorporating, finding office space, and designing business cards. All good and needed steps mind you, but don't neglect the most important step. If you are employed today and thinking about going out on your own, start talking [...]
- Reader Poll: Best Blog Content - 2007-06-28 14:47:44-04
If you're a regular reader of Online Marketing Blog, you'll know we like to tweak things on a pretty regular basis. I send such refinement requests to Thomas, my blogmaster, just about every day. "Make this bigger, make that smaller, add xyz plug-in or check on something with our host VISI". I'm sure it's [...]
- Has the CEO Heard of You? - 2007-06-28 16:14:08-04
Many small businesses have products and services that are pitched at various levels inside organizations. Most the time all of the effort and messaging is focused on that buyer, division, or purchasing agent. While this is a necessary approach if you are to make the sale, you can't ignore other layers in the environment. You should [...]
- LinkedIn Preempts Facebook with Facebook Application - 2007-06-28 16:54:20-04
In an effort to preempt any perceived potential threat to the business-oriented professional social networking site in case Facebook launches similar features, LinkedIn has launched a Facebook application that lends one of the networks services to Facebook.
Aptly named "My Company's Hiring", the application is very basic and though it is branded with the LinkedIn logo, it has absolutely no connection with LinkedIn or your profile on LinkedIn. Quite simply it is a way to post what jobs are open at your company, into your Facebook profile.
Simply activate the application, and fill out the company's name, location, the positions you are hiring people for, a description, and if needed, a link for where people can get more information from,
and the application will insert a notification box in your profile giving a preview of what position is available.
It's interesting to note that the application preview box actually has no indication of it being from LinkedIn. Not until you click on the position to see more details do you see any hint of who's behind it.
In its current state, the move on LinkedIn's part is symbolic at best. While I was disappointed to see that there is absolutely zero integration with LinkedIn, the application shows Facebook that the professional social network is serious about protecting its turf, that they are already developing ways to bring their functionality into Facebook and that Facebook better not try and compete with them.
The application is getting some decent adoption considering it has just been launched:
Thanks to Ben for pointing this out.
- Why Use Digg Search When You Have Google Search? - 2007-06-28 17:29:44-04
If you don't like Digg's site search bar you are not alone. Many Digg users recently expressed their hatred for this feature in a submission on the social news site. While many others that I have talked to say they have simply stopped using Digg's search features and instead have opted for Google Search (by using the site:digg.com [query]).
This made me start thinking about how often is Google crawling Digg and so I decided to do a little reasearch, with interesting results.
To begin my research I looked at the Digg queue, picked 11 random stories, and performed a Google search for each title. When this was completed I looked at the cached text for each article because it is completely stored on the Google servers. The first thing I did with each article was verify there were no comments, because this could cause Google to crawl the page again. From this point I looked at the section that tells how long ago the article was submitted, and of the 11 articles:
5 were cached within in 8 minutes,
1 was cached within 9 minutes,
1 was cached within 10 minutes,
1 cached within 15 minutes,
1 cached within 16 minutes,
1 within 34 minutes,Making the average of the crawl 12.4 minutes.
This is good considering the amount of data Google has to scan externally. However, if Digg were to use one of the Google appliances this time would be cut down to almost nothing and for about $30,000 there would be no need to maintain a propriety Digg search. I'm also pretty sure if Digg were to partner with Google this would cut down the crawl time quite significantly, and would increase the site's revenue substantially.
- Yahoo Panama Recent Upgrades - 2007-06-28 18:00:36-04
Yahoo Panama is on the upgrade path today with several new features to help advertisers streamline account management: Move/copy keywords: You can now move and copy keywords from one ad group to another without doing the copy/paste/delete thing. On the Ad Group page under the "Campaigns" tab, you'll now see a "Move" button which [...]
- Google Custom Search Engine - 2007-06-28 21:09:22-04
Google recently made it far easier and faster to create Google custom topic related search engines.
- Do You Make These Mistakes When You Write? - 2007-06-28 23:53:13-04
It's time once again to review those nasty errors that damage our credibility when we write. Not normally a fun task, but absolutely necessary. I promise to try and keep you amused to diminish the pain. As with the last time we explored grammatical errors, I feel compelled to mention that copywriting and blogging should be [...]
- Synergy Between Domain Names & Keyword Based Search Engine Optimization Strategies - 2007-06-29 00:38:04-04
Comprehensive overview of how domain names play into SEO and online marketing.
- Search Marketing Blogs Update 072907 - 2007-06-29 07:57:22-04
I know you've been waiting all week to see how there could possibly be more SEO and SEM blogs that haven't been added to the BIGLIST yet. Please have faith dear reader, for this week we have a nice collection of Logical Gypsy Banditos from Google Webmaster Help Rambling and Pushing us Online. PushONline Marketing - [...]
- Network Solutions Guarantees Top Search Engine Rankings - 2007-06-29 07:58:27-04
It appears that Network Solutions, the domain name registrar, is now in the search engine optimization. They have a page guaranteeing top search engine results or your money back. Here are the various plans: You can pay $1800 and get...
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