SoloSEO

Announcing LiveTwitting.com

Posted by Michael D Jensen on May 8th, 2008

LiveTwitting is a new way to cover conferences, events, and meetings using Twitter and LiveTwitting.com. With the ease and simplicity of Twitter, you can cover sessions just like before but now in real time.

A few simple commands like ON, OFF, and SPEAKER will let you collect and organize the information for reposting on your blog, website, newsletter, etc. Here are the commands that you can use, after you’ve followed @livetwitting.

You can even take the live RSS feed and link to it (or pull from it) on your blog or website. Here is a fake event that shows how it can be organized, all from using the commands above: LiveTwitting of PubCon 2007: Online Reputation Management.

The whole idea was bred on Twitter, starting with @LisaBarone asking if she should do the next session live with Twitter or not. @DannySullivan responded and said she should but there needs to be some tools to collect and organize the LiveTwitting. I (@mdjensen) told @DannySullivan I’d be interested in working on making that happen. Danny had some great ideas and we brainstormed together, and now have LiveTwitting.com! See, Twitter has its usefulness!

We’d love to hear your thoughts, suggestions, etc. Send me (@mdjensen) or Danny (@DannySullivan) an @reply and we can talk!

Add comment Visited 63 times May 8th, 2008 Michael D Jensen

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Feedburner Drop? Don’t Worry, Your Subscribers Are Back

Posted by Michael D Jensen on April 30th, 2008

In case you were concerned with your blog, like I was, with a mass exodus of Feedburner subscribers, @AndyBeal helped me figure it out this morning through Twitter (you can follow me if you want @mdjensen), which I am coming to see its importance more and more.

It looks like Netvibes was undergoing some maintenance and so it was under reporting, and at least from this blog it was from last Wednesday (April 23rd) until yesterday. Here is what it looks like over the last few weeks:

Today is the highlighted green bar with a T (Tuesday). You can see that our overall blog subscribers count when up even higher after the Netvibes result. Maybe they are reporting more accurately now? Usually we only see dips on the weekend, so seeing a mid-week dip (from last week’s Monday and Tuesday down to Wednesday) was unusual.

Andy Beal was saying he lost 1300 subscribers from his count based on that, and for us it looks like NetVibes makes up 32% of our subscriber base.

1 comment Visited 182 times April 30th, 2008 Michael D Jensen

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Google Helps You With Mother’s Day

Posted by Michael D Jensen on April 30th, 2008

I was trying to figure out for sure if Mother’s Day was this Sunday or the next, so of course I went to Google. Thankfully Google knows when holidays are, albeit they use Wikipedia. So now I know, Mother’s day is May 11th. And you know too (so get her something!).

One of Google’s more well known features is related searches, and these suggestions seem right on for helping people like me gear up for Mother’s day (for my wife and my Mom). There are mother’s day poems, mother’s day cards, mother’s day crafts, and mother’s day ideas.

Of course you could make her smile by following this Adwords ad:

Or if you really want to wow her, get her a TIGER!

Whatever you do, just don’t forget it’s Mother’s day on May 11th!

Add comment Visited 104 times April 30th, 2008 Michael D Jensen

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Content is Forever

Posted by Michael D Jensen on April 24th, 2008

Although I’ve known it all along, these three words sunk into my mind during a business meeting last night: “Content is Forever“. I thought of all the investments you can make in SEO, your site design, site organization, links, etc. Those things can change and “die”, but your content can live forever.

Content is such a personal and sensitive aspect of your interaction with your customer because IT IS your interaction. The difference between so-so content and great content is HUGE. Yes, you can write your own content. From our experience in web content writing, great content comes from talented writers. Seeing what our writers can put out in a matter of hours compared to my own writing is night and day.

With content you pay for it once and then its done. Compare that to link building, where if you are buying links you may pay every month for those links and if you don’t, they go away.

Your content is what sells your product, your service. Your content is what engages your customer, keeps their eyes and mouse on your site. Your content is what defines you and your company.

And content is one of the only SEO investments that can live forever.

Add comment Visited 142 times April 24th, 2008 Michael D Jensen

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International SEO in 1 minute

Posted by Michael D Jensen on April 7th, 2008

International SEO has been a topic at recent SEO conferences, and one that we’ve discussed here before. One aspect of doing International SEO is having your content available in other languages. Hiring a translator to translate your blog is cost prohibitive for most bloggers, running $50-$250 for each language per post.

Although no automated translator is perfect, Google has come up with a great translator, perfect for translating your blog. Of course the translation won’t be as accurate as a real translator, but if you can’t afford that, this service is better than nothing at all.

Lucky for all of us, there are several Wordpress translator plugins. The best one I have found and implemented (see the flags on the right sidebar) for our own blog is the Global Translator Plugin for Wordpress by Nothing2Hide.net. Some of the advantages are:

1) Easy to install, just unzip, upload the folder, turn it on, and check the settings (under Options).

2) SEO Friendly URLs! For example, http://www.soloseo.com/blog/it/ goes to the Italian version of our blog, and http://www.soloseo.com/blog/it/2008/04/07/international-seo-1-minute/ is the URL to this post (notice just the /it is added). Your blog posts will start to show up on other versions of the search engines, and hopefully start generating some traffic, subscribers, and conversions!

3) Caching - Instead of going out to Google Translator every time the post is viewed, it will cache the translation.

Of course there is more to do than just getting content into different languages, but it is certainly a great place to start with International SEO.

So if you want to take that first step into International SEO, start with getting your existing content translated into several other languages!

Update - 403 Forbidden Errors

After posting this and letting it go overnight, it appears that Google does not like its translation service being used every hour! (we were getting 403 Forbidden Errors for all translated pages) Luckily the service has several options built-in, and so I opted for using AltaVista’s Babelfish service. The translation works fine and I don’t get the 403 Forbidden Error page instead of my translated blog pages. Hopefully Google will let us use their service more, I will probably try it again and change the interval to every 24 or 48 hours.

3 comments Visited 623 times April 7th, 2008 Michael D Jensen

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Announcing LeaveFeedback.org, Free Service for Local Businesses

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 26th, 2008

I’m excited to announce a new free service I developed for local businesses, LeaveFeedback.org. Local Search is one of the newest verticals in the search industry bringing with it the convergence of offline (local) businesses and online search. LeaveFeedback.org has a real solution to one of the biggest problems facing local businesses: online customer reviews.

Problem: Local businesses have difficulties getting online reviews from offline customers.

Solution: LeaveFeedback.org helps local businesses to get authentic, online reviews from their customers by giving a coupon for leaving feedback at a review site, and pointing the customer directly to one of the review sites.

Benefits: This service not only helps local businesses to increase online customer reviews, but it also gives motivation to local businesses to create business listings at popular local search sites and helps local businesses rank better on sites that use customer ratings as a part of their local search rankings algorithm (like Yahoo! Local).

Businesses with multiple locations or Local Search Marketers can manage multiple businesses from one account.

How LeaveFeedback.org works:

1) Local business fills out sign-up form

2) Local business finds or creates their business listings at local review sites (Yahoo! Local, Google Maps, Yelp.com, etc.)

3) Local business creates a coupon with a code for customer to enter

4) Local business gives customer the coupon (or sends in an email)

5) Customer enters code at LeaveFeedback.org and is directed to one of the review sites of the local business

6) Customer prints off the “thank you page” or actual review and redeems coupon

As a result, local businesses will see an increase in customer reviews, ratings, and local search rankings. And ultimately, more customers!

Some other features of LeaveFeedback.org you’ll find helpful and interesting, but not shouted from the rooftops:

- Print off an actual coupon (4 per page) from an auto-generated PDF
- Create a direct link to a randomly selected local review site for your business
- Keeps track of how many times the coupon was entered and customer went to review site
- Quick links to search for or add your local business to popular local search sites and directories

Some links about Local Search that may help you learn more about it:

10 Likely Factors in Google’s Local Search Algorithm
Mike Blumenthal interview about Local Search
Local Search Marketing Tactics (SES San Jose 2007 Session)
Why Local is Different (SMX West 2008 Session)
Extreme Local Search Optimization Tactics

Thanks for the feedback and testing by Mike Blumenthal at Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo! Local, Matt McGee at Small Business SEM, Andy Beal at MarketingPilgrim.com, David Mihm, Miriam at SEO Igloo and Solas Web Design, William Scott at SearchInfluence.com, and Tim Coleman at ConvertOffline.com.

10 comments Visited 1138 times March 26th, 2008 Michael D Jensen

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SearchMe.com Breaks the Search Engine Mold

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 18th, 2008

With the SearchMe beta announced last week, and my invitation to participate arriving today, SearchMe.com has arrived to change up the playing field of Search Engines. Will it be successful? I think its new and fresh search engine interface will make a lot of heads turn. Here are 3 areas where SearchMe has broken the traditional mold of a search engine, and may add some new areas of emphasis in the SEO industry.

1) Site design, not page title
For most users, the page title that Google et al. display in the search engine results page (SERPs) is the first “eye-catcher” to draw in a reader and attract attention. Second comes the “description” which is pulled either from the meta tag or content on the page around the search term.

SearchMe.com makes your site the number one focus. Emphasis in terms of search engine optimization now has a design element.

Pages that are spammy (lots of ads), have little content, or an overwhelming menu structure will most likely be skipped. Optimizing your page for SearchMe might include making important text (like a heading) readable at that size to garner attention.

I found myself considering the following: (1) my first impression (good or bad), (2) is the content type what I expected based on my search (lots of product images, lots of content, a video, etc.), and (3) from what I can read does it address what I am looking for (including the page title when that pops open at the bottom of the screenshot).

2) No more Page 1
Instead of having a next page button, you can keep on scrolling for forever (I didn’t get to any end of results after 2 minutes of scrolling, so that’s assumed). This seems inconsequential, but it no longer gives us a “top 10″ results. Obviously the first listings will be seen more, but there is no more defined line.

3) Assumed verticals
Google et al. have different verticals like web search, images, blogs, maps, shopping, books, finance, etc. SearchMe also has verticals, but automatically generate what verticals they assume you are searching for if you would like to narrow your search. When I type in “pizza, st george ut” (a local search type of query), for example, I get “Lodging & Hotels”, then “Restaurants”, “Sales & Bargains”, “Skiing”, and “Dentistry”. Of course they have more verticals than this, and each set is based on what you are typing. Very slick. The other thing I might mention too is that the verticals are actually centered on what I am actively seeking, rather than just having a defined set of verticals that you have to make a decision of relevance on.

I think SearchMe has a great product, and I’m looking forward to the refining of the algorithm, speed, and total index.

3 comments Visited 520 times March 18th, 2008 Michael D Jensen

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Free SEO Tool: XML Sitemap Ping Tool

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 10th, 2008

All the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Live, and Ask) use the XML Sitemaps protocol for getting URLs from websites. Of course they all still use good old-fashioned crawling, but the XML sitemap can be helpful for getting new content indexed quicker and also helping spot errors using other tools the search engines offer. Simply put, if you don’t have an XML sitemap already, we suggest you get one. XML-Sitemaps.com offers a free service that works very well, and you can also download (not free) a version to run on your own server.

As the major search engines all agreed to a protocol (basically Google’s protocol), they also made it easier to let them know when a sitemap has been updated. They let users “PING” them with the URL for the sitemap. This makes it easy to build into software and such, but not necessarily easy to do. So, we thought we’d make it easy to do for you.

Just put in the URL of your sitemap, and then we’ll send it on to all 4 search engines in one big swoop. If there happens to be an error, you’ll get an error message.

You can also check out our other Free SEO Tools like the LinkSearch Tool and IndexRank.

5 comments Visited 814 times March 10th, 2008 Michael D Jensen

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Blended Search… Should We Care?

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on March 5th, 2008

Michael and I had the opportunity to attend the SMX (Search Marketing Expo) last week in sunny Santa Clara, CA. It was a shame to spend those 60-degree days inside, especially since I come from the cold, white Rocky Mountains, and we spend as little time as possible outside this time of year. But for the good of our readership, my poorly educated mind, and to get our money’s worth we suffered through some questionable meals (sorry guys, most of it was inedible), and overly well air-conditioned conferences rooms (where’s my parka?) to gather all the information we could.

From the get go, it was obvious the conference was going to spend much of the time discussing what Danny Sullivan and others are calling “Blended Search.” I am not a big fan of the term “blended search,” it isn’t an accurate descriptive term. In my mind when something is blended, a bunch of ingredients are taken and acted upon to create a new product, with the ingredients of that product not being individually identifiable from that point forward. What we are talking about here is not a blended new search results page, but more like a new look, and a re-organization of information from sources, which were not previously utilized, but where the data remains very much identifiable. Google is calling this mega- results page Universal Search, which is a better term as far as definitions go, since Google is essentially universally searching all their database silos for all the results possible. Essentially, the search engines are now able to draw from more databases at one time and return results from all those queries to us on our results pages. The database sources used by search engines can now include blogs, books, catalogs, programming code, online directories, stock quotes, images, maps, news, video and standard web searches.

So on a so-called blended or universal results page, the searcher could see data from anyone of the above listed sources, organized by relevance, instead of just the page of links and snippets we are used to seeing now. In the past if we wanted to search specific data silo, we had to select Images, Maps, News, Shopping, etc, from the top of the search page, now all those silos can be automatically included.

I personally wonder how much this sort of mega results page will benefit us. My biggest complaint with search now is the shear volume of superfluous garbage we still seem to receive in our SERPs today, so I worry that unless the search algorithm gets drastically better, all these new search results possibilities could potentially just turn out to add to the useless noise and clutter plaguing us now. We shall see.

The most important question to us small business owners becomes, what does this mean to our sites, and how does it change the way we SEO? In short, for now it doesn’t change one thing. In two different sessions representatives of Google made it clear that good, proven SEO strategies are still as important as ever whether is be in web search or universal search pages, so we do not need to change what we are doing (assuming we are doing our SEO right). I think that is the best way to play it, just keep adding the rich content, building natural links, adding popular keywords, and our sites will continue to grow and do well. However, I am concerned with the prospect that we are now going to now need to compete with large companies and other media types for position on the SERPs. For example, if I am an online advertiser for my plumbing services, I don’t want the listing I worked hard to achieve to be replaced by some absurd YouTube plumbing mishap video, or by an image of Miss Plumber America, scantily clad holding a pipe wrench. I want my listing to rightfully stay put… I hope good SEO practices and a more defined and appropriate algorithm protect small business owners, our site’s position, and they continue to provide us with the opportunities to still do well online as Integrated Search becomes more mainstream. We will need to keep a close eye on it, and if we must, we will figure out how to make the new changes work best for us. I am sure Michael could make us some sort of another helpful tool. ☺

Add comment Visited 481 times March 5th, 2008 Aaron R Stewart

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What’s New with Yahoo! and Google

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 4th, 2008

Some exciting things have been happening in the world of search.

At SMX West last week, Yahoo! announced their Open Search Platform. This was the talk of the town at SMX, and a novel idea from Yahoo. Basically, instead of just being able to somewhat control your search engine snippet with your title tag and description meta tag, later this year you will be able to customize what is shown, such as ratings, reviews, site links (like Google does now), an image, address, contact info, and more. Here is an example from the Yahoo Search Blog.

Before

After

Obviously if you are on the front page we’re going to see a skewing of what the normal percentages of users click on, because it’s going to stand out and be very functional and user friendly. Great move for Yahoo! too in empowering even the small business to stand out from the crowd and take search to a new level. Obviously Microsoft hasn’t taken over Yahoo! yet.

On the Google front, several sites have reported Google adding another element to their Universal search, with a site search box right in the SERPs. Check this out:

Pretty handy and pretty interesting. I couldn’t duplicate it myself interestingly, it’s probably a limited data center roll out. I do find it interesting seeming Amazon has their own search, A9 search, which I haven’t heard mentioned for a long time. Of course it’s not really a search engine, more of a search aggregator.

I’ll put together the highlights of SMX and post that later this week, in case you missed it or don’t want to read through the liveblogs (they’re actually pretty good).

Add comment Visited 811 times March 4th, 2008 Michael D Jensen

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