Do You Have To? No.
There are a lot of “social media experts” out there screaming that “YOU HAVE TO USE LINKBAIT!!! YOU HAVE TO SUBMIT TO SOCIAL MEDIA SITES!!!” Sure there are definite advantages to doing these things… quick traffic, a few new links, etc but… do you really have to?
I am going to have to say that no, no you do not. I hate to say it, but the overused cliche really does apply: “If you build it (great), they will come.” By this, I mean if you really want a large audience of viewers that read, talk about, share with friends and really LOVE your work – you only need to write great content. Great content will be found (and linked to) no matter how you promote it.
Case in point: I was honored to discover last week that this blog has been included in the SEO category of “Alltop” – Guy Kawasaki’s new site. I hadn’t sought this out, submitted by blog to be included; it happened by itself.
This is easier said than done of course; you actually have to know what you are talking about and, as I have said before, you should have a passion for your writing! That is what makes people read your blog day in and day out. Striving to write better, more informative posts is what will make your blog a success. It’s not the one-time traffic surge of StumbleUpon or Digg; it’s the writers who day in and day out produce great content that is helpful for their readers.
Here are just a few great blogs where the authors really get that content is what it’s all about: SEOMoz, ProBlogger, DoshDosh, WolfHowl. (I subscribe to hundreds of great blogs in my news reader; I wish I could list them all here!)
Manage Your Reputation Before It Gets Out of Control!
With school teachers, employers, and even people you meet randomly in the bar “Googling” you, online reputation management has never been more important. All it takes is a couple uploaded drunken pictures to your MySpace or Facebook to have them rank for your name (provided you aren’t John Smith) and ruin your reputation to everyone who happens to look.
Listen up students and professionals alike: Who is going to hire someone who has all 200 pictures of them in various stages of undress or drunkenness? Not me, that’s for sure. It seems all in good fun at the time but do you really want everyone you ever meet who has heard of “Googling” to know how hard you used to party?
It seems hard at the time to censor your friends from posting pictures of you, but you CAN un-tag yourself. Sure you may come across as a “buzzkill” – but when your future is on the line…
Your past escapades caught on camera can come back to haunt you, just ask billionaire co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin. On the first page of results in Google Images for “sergey brin” is this beauty of a photo:
My prediction in the next few years we will see a boom of “Online Reputation Managers” springing up. Sadly not all of them will be any good and some will take advantage of people who know less about the web.
My best advice would be to protect yourself while you can… And the next time you are thinking about posting that picture of you smoking and drinking… reconsider – or at least use an alias.
And don’t just assume that because your photos are marked “Private” you’re safe. Your friends still have access to these photos and they can leak your photos to public sites. And sites like Facebook aren’t as secure as you might think, when it comes to private photos.
Two Steps Forward, One Step Back (or Is It the Other Way Around?)
Last night I went to a free screening at Sundance Cinemas for “Big Ideas for a Small Planet,” a new series on the Sundance Channel (and also available via iTunes). They treated us all to free popcorn and drinks, and they brought in some folks for a Q&A afterwards who were involved in sustainable interior decorating and river clean-up (the major topics covered in the two episodes they screened). It was really nice.
Just when I start feeling good, thinking the human race could be ready to turn the corner, I see these two items making the rounds in the twitterverse:
Lower Back Tattoos Now Available at Toys R Us
In some ways, we’re heading backwards not forwards. Ugh. We’ve got a loooong ways to go.
Keeping Clients After the Bulk of the On-Page SEO Work Is Finished
When working with a client, an SEO needs to show them what’s been accomplished. In the early stages this is easy, since there are normally a number of dramatic on-page optimizations. The client can see the results of your work through optimized HTML coding/copy/titles/descriptions etc. This is very easy to report on: a list of what was done and a short description of why it was done and perhaps what is expected as a result. If you are just doing a one time consulting SEO project, this is no problem.
Reporting becomes more challenging when you have a client with a monthly retainer and you have gone through the biggest on-page tactics (the “low-hanging fruit”, in consultant-speak). Now you’re into the link building, fine-tuning and maintenance phase.
Reporting on link building, fine tuning and maintenance is problematic because it’s not usually sufficient from the client’s perspective to simply list new links that you have garnered or the plethora of small tweaks you have made for your client. You have to show them what all these links and tweaks are accomplishing. Since most clients do not understand SEO, you have to show them that you are valuable. This is where accountability metrics come in – proving your value through various ROI calculations and improvements in SEO KPIs.
You have to remember with all clients it comes down to one thing: How is giving you (the SEO consultant) $X per month helping them? To show this, you need to be able to answer the one question they have: “Are we making more money because of you?” If you are unable to explain – in terms they can understand – that what you are doing is valuable, you’re going to lose the client.
A Brave New World Full of Robots (and I Don’t Mean Spiders)
I’ve always been intrigued by robots. The concept of a robot vacuuming your living room seems so enticing. Indeed, I own a Roomba vac and I love it! But these robots designed for the battlefield are enough to put the fear of God into any robot-loving geek:
Our tax dollars at work. Scary as hell!
Write Like You Mean It
The best advice I can give anyone who has started – or is thinking about starting – a personal blog is to write about what you love. When you write about what you are passionate about, it will show through in your writing. The entire process of writing will be more enjoyable as well when you are writing about the things you are passionate about; it will not feel like a chore and you will rarely run out of topics.
If you have no passion for what you are writing about, why are you writing at all? Your entries will come across as boring or flat and you will not gain the readership your writing skills deserve. When you write about what you love, it is a lot easier to sound like an expert in your field.
If you are not sure what you are passionate about, take the time to figure it out. You owe it to yourself, and your potential readers, to know and write about what makes you get out of bed in the morning. If your goal is to make money with a blog, write about what you love and the money will follow… You will have more readers and will write better posts. Great content brings traffic/conversions and when you write about something you love it is difficult to write poorly.
Making Twitter Friends
Wondering how to get new followers on twitter? @people – It’s just that simple. On twitter, just like any other social community, if you want to make friends you have to engage them. You need to speak to them to let them know you are there. Being online is not like hanging out in a bar – people can’t just see you. You have to speak up to attract attention; you have to be social.
An interesting thing about gaining Twitter followers is that the more other people @you the more noticeable you are and the more others want to follow you to see what you have to say. When someone with 100+ followers @’s you 100+ people are going to see your name and wonder what the conversation is about. Of course not all of them will follow you right away but perhaps some will.
That is really all there is to it. The community on Twitter is generally rather nice and will see your @’s and often respond. Follow the people you want to be friends with and spark up a conversation with them. Try @sspencer and just see what happens – when I happen to be on next I will try to say Hi back.
Optimize Your Time on Social Networks
If you’re like me, you’re an active member of many social communities. This is great if you don’t have a real life and you spend all your time on the computer. If you do like to get out occasionally, however, you will not be able to spend indefinite amounts of time equally across all networks and need to be able to optimize your social networking time. The hardest part about doing this is knowing how to prioritize which networks to spend more time on and which ones you can just glance at.
The best way to choose your networks is to compare enjoyment to usefulness – the end goal being able to find the networks that you really like using that give you the most bang for your buck.
You may really enjoy being on Sphinn and find some great articles but you don’t get much traffic to your own sites – even when your stories go hot. Likewise, you may hate using Digg but see server-crashing results when you make it to Digg’s front page.
Finding the right balance will help you focus your time spent so you will still be able to effectively use social media without letting it take over your life. When you prioritize correctly your social networking time will not feel like work and even with minimal time spent you can still see some of the awesome benefits social networking has to offer your sites.
Sitemaps: What are they good for?
Sitemaps of the XML variety and the site maps of the HTML variety: two great tastes that taste great together!
The XML sitemap is the one that you typically use an automated tool to generate (such as one of these) and to upload to your root directory. Humans never see this document and all it really is a simple list of all of your URLs. This XML file allows spiders to “discover” all of your pages and index them quickly. Having an XML sitemap isn’t necessary if you have a good internal hierarchical linking structure and spider-friendly URLs. But if you don’t, an XML sitemap is an easy band-aid. (Note that this doesn’t excuse you from fixing your URLs and linking structure!)
As for the HTML site map, it’s just as important as the XML sitemap – if not more so. The site map page is not just a simple linked list of all your pages – but an easy way to navigate to your most important ones, remember, your human readers WILL see the HTML site map.
If you are not a front end developer and do not know the first thing about usability, fear not – you can still have a very easy way to navigate your pages for your new and returning visitors. Often your returning traffic is looking for a specific page or article, and if they can’t find it quickly, they will go elsewhere to find the information they are looking for.
HTML site maps are also a great addition to your custom 404 error page. When someone makes a mistake while typing in the URL and gets a 404 instead of the page they are looking for, they can navigate to the one they want quickly and conveniently. Without a link to your HTML site map, your users can become frustrated when they find a 404 error, forcing them to press the back button away from your site or just doing another search on Google and likely finding some other site.
SEO Communities and the Echo Chamber Effect
Jill Whalen started a great conversation the other day on Sphinn titled “Have we run out of things to write about?” This same thought has gone through my head a few times as inspiration for great posts comes and goes. Every time I feel this way I remember one thing: I love everything SEO and could talk about it forever.
What happens in a community like Sphinn, or really any niche social networking group, writers and readers get hooked on a specific topic and then write everything about it. People write their opinions on other author’s stories or simply rewrite what someone else has written. Weeks can go by and only one topic has been the center of attention.
This is the nature of a social network – a group of like-minded people all talking about the same things. Naturally, when a topic is so interesting everyone wants to keep reading about it people will keep writing about it. They do this because they are actually interested in continuing and adding their thoughts to the conversation or, and I fear this is what perpetuates being stuck on a topic longer – when a topic is hot, writing about it will make their stories hot and send them traffic.