SoloSEO

Twitter & SEO Keyword Research Tools

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on March 13th, 2009

As some of you know, I have recently been trying to get into Twitter. It has been a very interesting ride. I have met many incredible people, and learned much about a variety of business models and ideas. The Twitter community is growing rapidly with Mashable reporting an astounding 752% increase in 2008. Many project 2009 will be even higher. Who uses Twitter is a question I had in my mind when I first dove in. The best explanation of Twitter I have ever heard, was from twitter user @wisekaren who tweeted to me the following:

“FB (Facebook) is for people you used to know; Twitter is for people you’d like to know.”

Which is a comment I have learned to be absolutely true.

As I see it now, Twitter is a social media platform that provides opportunity for real business growth, understanding, learning, and networking. In social media realm Twitter is like the infamous lunch date tactic all we young executive types use(d) when we were expanding our careers, working 80 hours a week, but still wanted to meet someone worthwhile, without blowing a whole evening and serious $$ on someone who was not quite right. Twitter gives everyone the opportunity to sample ideas, musings and knowledge of others, not only in your same area of expertise, but in areas of expertise where you have great interest, but lack knowledge.

There are some great Twitter help aides out there, that assist in getting the most out of Twitter data. Some of the Twitter tools I am now using include: TweetBeep, created by my biz partner Michael Jensen. TweetBeep allows you to save keywords and keyword phrases, then the TweetBeep service will email you tweets containing your keywords at predetermined times. Imagine putting in some important keywords for your business and receiving the resulting tweets with those keywords every morning. You can easily see emerging trends, and pick up other related keywords that should probably be considered in your SEO keyword strategies. It is a marvelous SEO tool.

I have also been using TweetGrid. This is a web based tool/system, which allows the selection of 6 topic keywords, and then streams all tweets containing these keywords. If you want to learn about a topic quickly, pick a keyword you are interested in and watch the data fly by. This is also a great way to find and engage Twitter users directly who have similar interests, and perhaps strike up a relationship for future work together, or at least someone we can bounce ideas off. It is an excellent tool to leverage Twitter.

For folks on the go, there are many amazing Twitter tools that provide the benefits of Twitter on the road. I personally use Tweetie on my iPhone to tweet, but there are many others, including: Twittelator, Twitterrific which offers all of Twitter’s functionality and TwitterFon, which is a free, but very basic iPhone Twitter client.

Some other cool Twitter tools for the iPhone include Fastweet, which allows for quick reading of many tweets. GeoTweeter which adds GPS coordinates to your tweets, GPSed, lets you share maps of your travels to Twitter and Twitter Trend which gives you a snapshot of what topics are really hot on twitter for the last 24 hours. Very cool.

I know many of those that use SoloSEO are small business owners, and are working diligently to get their online business screaming. We can see how much work is being done through the use of the SoloSEO SEO tools. Please also consider using Twitter to bolster your online exposure, and knowledge about your online market, it will make a difference.

Just a quick note on some Twitter rules of engagement (suggestions really). When someone “follows” you on Twitter, it is a good idea to follow them back. How many followers you have is a big deal to many. It doesn’t indicate exactly if you are a good Tweeple, but does show how popular you are on Twitter. Following people who show interest in you makes good sense, as many will have something in them you will be interested in. I have learned this tidbit over time, and am now in the process of ditching those I follow that don’t follow me, and following my followers. Its just good Karma. Also, on Fridays there is a custom of recommending good Twitter users others should follow. You simply list the user’s usernames with a hashtag (def. a keyword with # at the beginning of the word, which allows organization a group of tweets) of #FollowFriday somewhere in your tweet. For example, I tweeted earlier today the following:

#followfriday @brucecarlson @tamar @mattlaclear @chrisbennett @mdjensen @wisekaren @LoriLeavitEvans. Great folks, great follows.

Which essentially tells those that read my tweet that I recommending these 7 users as worthy to follow.

Those are just a few things on Twitter. The best way to learn and love Twitter is to just jump in and get going. Sign up for Twitter here. At anytime, if you have a questions about how to use Twitter, just tweet about it, and you will find just how helpful and responsive the Twitter Nation can be. Hope to see (follow) you soon.

Finally, we would sure appreciate a follow once you get up and running. @mdjensen & @aaronstewart

Twitter graphic above provided by AddDesign

Add comment Visited 7287 times March 13th, 2009 Aaron R Stewart

Related Posts:

Ding Dong Digg is Dead

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on May 2nd, 2007

There have been many discussions over the recent problems at Digg, Andy of Marketing Pilgrim, Muhammad of Pronet, and Michael of Wolf-Holf have all commented. I have made my less than glowing opinion of Digg known in a previous post. In general, I don’t find the articles typically found on the front page of Digg to be of any particular use to anyone over the age of 20, or with interests outside video games and the latest hack. There are some which claim the traffic Diggers can drive to your site is worth pandering to the Digg clique, but I have never agreed. The traffice is short-lived, and Diggers don’t buy.

In the present situation, we have been provided a clear view of the true nature of the Digg beast. Recently Digg management chose to remove an article posted on Digg, which revealed the decryption code required to unlock copyright protected HD-DVDs. To any business person, who has been around the block and understands the severe problems one can face when messing with copyrighted material, especially from a very wealthy and notoriously litigious industry, the move made perfect sense. But the move was seen as censorship by the Digg asylum and they promptly began flooding the Digg site with story after story containing the same decryption code. Eventually Digg gave up, and issued a statement they were no longer going to remove any articles, despite the potential ramifications. By giving so much power to individuals who don’t care about Digg, nor have the cognitive abilities to comprehend the purpose of law, Digg signed its own death warrant long ago, it is only now they have to suffer it. Lesson learned by all.

This reminds me of the Wizard of Oz in a way. We all remember those creepy flying monkeys, (they used to scare the living be-dangles out of me), as they would fly around doing the Wicked Witch’s work for her. Well the Witch always assumed she had total control over these monkeys, then one day a hack of a monkey showed up with some of the Wizard’s treasure, he just decided to grab it on his own accord and share with the other monkeys. The Witch was furious. She didn’t want the heat of the Wizard focused on her, so she promptly returned the treasure and hoped trouble would be avoided. Well this miserable hack monkey didn’t like being disgraced in front of the gang, so he and all his flying monkey friends started stealing everything they could from the Wizard coffers, and quit paying attention to the Witch’s warnings at all. In fact, Doe-Doe, the talking, flying monkey, told the witch exactly where she could stick her flying broom, and the delicate balance of Oz crumbled. Predictably the Wizard crushes the Witch and her castle in the near future. Now the monkeys have little treasure, but no power or place to live, which was previously provided by the witch. Stupid, stupid flying monkeys (even Doe-Doe), and what are flying monkeys going to do with treasure anyway. Think it through monkeys.

1 comment Visited 2520 times May 2nd, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

Related Posts:

Nobody Logged Into MyBlogLog Anymore?

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 15th, 2007

From all of my daily blog browsing, as well as watching our own blog, I don’t think many people are logged into MyBlogLog anymore. I know several blogs that used to have MyBlogLog on their sidebar, but don’t anymore.

I disabled MyBlogLog a few times early in January because it was dead slow, but that seemed to get resolved for the most part.

Then after the Shoemoney incident MyBlogLog fixed the authentication issue and in order to be logged in you had to go back and log in again. TechCrunch has a great round-up about the whole thing, including our second debut on TechCrunch (first).

I ran some tests earlier this week using one of our Missing MyBlogLog Tools, the Show All Visitors tool. I looked at several different blogs I read that are still using MyBlogLog on their site (graywolf, yaro, lonelymarketer, and andybeard). I know the traffic varies significantly between the sites, but even the high traffic sites had nowhere near the MyBlogLog turnover I would expect. On our blog, I used to be able to refresh every hour or two and have a whole new set of 10 pictures of people that came to our blog, but now I’m lucky if one or two new avatars shows up every hour or two. And it’s not our traffice, because since then our blog readership has increased more than 50%.

I think Yahoo is going to need to promote MyBlogLog a bit more with some integration efforts before they convince more of us to put it back on our sidebar. I loved seeing the faces of my readers, but now if only 3 or 4 of them are actually logged into MyBlogLog and the sidebar has very little turnover, I have little interest in watching it (it’s like watching a snail race) when I know by our analytics we have a ton more people actually visiting our blog.

Sorry MyBlogLog, you’re going to have to win me over again. Plus, you can’t say I never helped, I created a whole tool set for MyBlogLog (and still no trip to Yahoo or 1%).

9 comments Visited 4173 times March 15th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

Related Posts:

Meet your Local SEOs

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 8th, 2007

If you don’t already know SEOs that live around you, use your search engine superpowers to find them, then contact them and meet up for an hour and get to know each other. It’s fun!

I live in a small college town, so for a while I thought I was the only one doing SEO stuff around here. I fell upon SEOThursday.com, now EnviSEO.com (a great SEO blog by the way), and noticed Nathaniel lived in the same city as me. After corresponding a few times we finally got together for a nice chat of SEO this evening. We met at a cafe downtown with an SEO buddy of his, Jay, and had a great time just talking SEO. Thanks guys!

The neat thing about meeting people is you never know what will come of it. So get outside your box and meet some people. You’ll have to take the initiative to set it up, but the perspective you can get from others, even on just life itself, can be priceless.

UPDATE:

I didn’t have Jay’s blog when I first posted, so I wanted to include that here. It is a search engine optimization and marketing blog called SEOFoSho and it contains some neat insights from a true SEO. Jay and Nathaniel of EnviSEO are both excellent SEOs I would recommend working with anytime and I’m following both their blogs now. They’ve got quite a client list and are two of the nicest guys you could ever meet.

Add comment Visited 3411 times March 8th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

Related Posts:

Small Business Ingenuity with a Wok

Posted by Michael D Jensen on March 1st, 2007

A television station who couldn’t afford the $20,000 commercial link for their station enlisted the help of a wok and saved $19,990. The story goes beyond the pringles can wireless antenna because it’s not just hobby anymore, they actually use this for their business.

There are obviously some things you don’t want to go cheap on (anything that protects life…and data?), but when you’re a small business you have to make it with what you have. If all you have is time, then your time should be spent in things that will promote the success of your business.

This television station didn’t even need to hire the guy (it says volunteer). There are many opportunities to network and gain help from others without paying a dime in consulting fees. We don’t want to be bottom-feeders, but rather be resourceful and glean what you can from your surroundings. Luckily the Internet makes our surroundings quite expansive.

Add comment Visited 3046 times March 1st, 2007 Michael D Jensen

Related Posts:

SEO vs. Paid Search Marketing Clash

Posted by Aaron R Stewart on February 13th, 2007

If you have not gone over and read about the tussle between Dave Pasternack and SEO pros, you must take a minute to review it, it has been quite entertaining. Our friend Michael Gray has jumped in with both feet, and his post called Dave Pasternack of Did-it.com - How to Fix Your Problem is an excellent place to get a good overview of the feud. Essentially Dave Pasternack has come out saying SEO isn’t “rocket science,” and it has caused a bit of a stir among the SEO ranks. Pasternack claims he gave up SEO years ago, and now considers himself a PPC expert, and co-founded a company that consults and assists firms with their paid search campaigns. It is his opinion that SEO is a “Fix-it-Once” Task, not an Ongoing Service. It is this statement where Mr. Pasternack loses credibility. It would be nice for all of us small business owners if SEO really was a quick, one-time fix, but instead it is an ongoing and unrelenting pursuit. Not only to keep our sites optimized to do well in SERPs, but also to stay ahead of our competitors, competing for the same keywords in the same marketplace. I think this point gets glossed over by many discussing SEO. As a business person first, I personally don’t care if I show up as #1 on a SERP, I just want to show up above my nearest competitor for the same or similar products and services. Some markets will be more volatile than others, but keeping an eye on competitors, and their movements in the SERPs will always be important, and most likely a moving target. The importance of competitor watchdogging will continue to increase as more firms figure out the benefits of online marketing, and begin to implement SEO and Paid Search techniques.

So personally, I have no problem with the use of well researched, and wisely created PPC campaigns, and well managed SEO techniques; there is a place for both practices, and using one without the other doesn’t make much sense. The first step however is to SEO your site and get it optimized for the traffic which the PPC ads will hopefully drive to it. I have noticed Paid Search only gurus occasionally suggest SEO pros use “scare tactics” to encourage long-term service contracts, but unfortunately the Paid Search guys do the same thing, making site owners nervous about doing PPC campaigns themselves, and perhaps blowing their opportunity to do well. PPC isn’t too tough either, don’t let either of the two groups scare you, just realize both take some expertise, and some patience to LEARN. The main reason there is demand for these two services is they both can be overwhelming if you don’t understand them, and they are both work.

As an example, 5 years ago I use to sit down and do my business and personal taxes myself, I even used TurboTax a few times. Even with all the Turbo Tax tools it took quite a bit of time, it wasn’t rocket science, and I got the job done, but frankly I did not enjoy it, even though a sizable refund was my eventual reward. Now with a dozen different business running, and less time, and no patience for our screwed-up tax system, I love the fact I can pay someone, an expert, to do all that work for me. I could do it, but I don’t want to, I have other pressing matters more important to me. There is the SEO and Paid Search services in a nutshell. The tools, advice to do both are out there to learn, but whether someone has the time or desire to learn and do them on their own, is completely another issue. I will also admit there is some increasing art to the SEO process when we consider link baiting, creating a buzz and social marketing aspects into the online equation.

Finally, there will be times when all the SEO and Paid Search in the world isn’t going to get you anywhere, as marketing results will depend on the industry you are marketing within. One of our companies has a very nice site, it is SEOed well, and we have been running solid PPC campaigns for the most appropriate keywords in the industry, but we have gained little traffic and only a few leads a month. We know the industry well, we know our service is widely sought after, we know we are priced nicely, but we still don’t have the business we know we could have. So last week we headed Orlando to exhibit at a large trade show in this industry. The results were amazing, our service was highly sought after and well received. We heard comments like “where have you guys been?” or “we have been looking for something like this for years,” from booth visitors. So the golden question… where were our potential clients looking when they couldn’t find us? The answer… obviously not online. Make sure you know your potential clients, and where they are most likely to be searching to find you, if it isn’t online, then adjust to help them find you some other way.

The world continues to move online, and will continue to do so in an ever increasing pace, but not everyone is there yet. Marketing is the art of getting the firm’s message to potential clients, wherever they may be, even if it is offline. So getting your site’s SEO in line now will pay dividends in the future, but it may not be the end-all, be-all marketing home run you want it to be right now, especially if your future clients just aren’t online yet.

Add comment Visited 3519 times February 13th, 2007 Aaron R Stewart

Related Posts:

Starting Your SEO business: Tapping into Local Business with Local Search Tools

Posted by Michael D Jensen on January 23rd, 2007

Two important things come together that make local business a great opportunity for finding SEO clients. First, there are tons of local search tools and directories (online) that are used by millions of people every day to find local shops and services. Second, most local businesses have no idea about most or all of these tools and directories. A good way to start or grow your SEO business right now is to approach local businesses with your expertise and know-how of these local search tools, and how to get them listed and start getting traffic.

Let’s go through local search engines and PPC together, to help you know what to say and do for your new clients.

Local Search Engines and Directories

As we discussed last week about getting new clients, the first place to start is to start a list of local businesses you want to approach. Pick businesses that would have a clientele that could potentially find them via search, and choose 5-12 of them. You’ll need to do some prep work for each one, including making a keyword list and checking rankings, as well as some investigation into their status (are they listed??) in the local search engines. You may want to provide a simple report that shows them some keywords, any rankings, and a list of local search engines and directories and a big NO if they don’t have a listing (my guess is most won’t, depends on your area of course). The next part is to educate your client.

By being listed in local search engines, a local business can easily be found through both local search and regular search (like google.com). Search engines like Google will often integrate local search into their search results. It is thought that 10-20% of searches actually use “local modifiers” such as a city, state, or region. Most of us are probably pretty computer savvy, but even for those less savvy, the search engines are becoming our address book, our yellow pages, and our map. If I want to find a plumber, it takes less time for me to get to Google and search for one, even if its just the phone number, than to pick up a phone book and thumb through it. Plus, I get a map and a website (if any) which is an extra step if you’re just hitting a phone book. Take the opportunity to get this into their heads, as more and more this is how everyone is going to find them.

The local search engine relationship chart can give you a good idea of who the main players are in local search. infoUSA and Acxiom are the two main sources for other local search engines, so having a listing with both of these companies is vital to local search exposure. You can also list individually with other local search engines (read on for links). Two companies make it easier to manage your information in these listings and also directly with local engines: Relevant Ads and Register Local. You can manage your listings separately for less, it just takes a bit more time.

Here are some quick links to a few of the main local engines:

Yahoo! local listing
Google local listing
TrueLocal local listing

Offering other Services

Just because you are doing SEO does not mean you can’t offer other services, such as web design, content writing, and PPC management. You may find that most of these local businesses have done nothing, so they are starting from scratch. If you can package multiple services together, not only do you have a more complete solution that maximizes your SEO strategy, but it’s almost like getting two clients for the sales work of getting one. If you don’t have other complementary skills, then you’ll want to make some business relationships with other trusted individuals or companies that provide such services. By offering multiple services you can offer a complete service that truly accomplishes the goals of SEO. Worst case is they just want to focus on one part of it right now.

Targeted Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Local businesses can benefit very quickly by a targeted PPC campaign. Even if you don’t do PPC (pay-per-click) advertising right now, it is something you can learn in a few days to a few weeks (not necessarily being a super expert in that short of time, but good enough to go on). PPC advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry. Why? Because people use Google and Yahoo! as a dictionary, encyclopedia, white pages, yellow pages, and address book (and many more things). One of the features of PPC advertising is local market targeting. You can pick regions and cities where your ads should be displayed, to market your site just to those specific areas. This, coupled with an SEO strategy, will give a jump start to your new client to gaining the traffic, branding, and traction.

Local search is an exciting and growing area of search marketing, and now is a great opportunity to find companies, even in your own backyard, that are in need of SEO for their business.

For more reading, here’s a great article about local search.

8 comments Visited 6323 times January 23rd, 2007 Michael D Jensen

Related Posts:

Using Social Networks like MyBlogLog for Marketing

Posted by Michael D Jensen on January 17th, 2007

Social networks are amazing from a “data mining” perspective. I’ve had a few posts about MyBlogLog recently, uncovering an easily exploitable flaw and announcing the Missing MyBlogLog Tools. As I’ve looked in depth into the MyBlogLog “network” that is accessible by the public, I’ve realized how much potential there is for doing so much more than what most social media companies do with their networks. A recent research paper (actual paper; thanks to here for blogging it) discusses this in detail, how social networks like MyBlogLog and MySpace create an opportunity for network-based marketing. It’s an interesting read for any entrepreneurs and social media marketing lovers out there.

MyBlogLog’s network is made up of specific reader communities, visitors, and member contacts. With the Missing MyBlogLog Tools I was able to determine, almost in real-time, users who are visiting the same blog. I have thought of other ways to use the network, that I don’t dare program or make available, such as tracking how often specific users come back to your blog, or how often they frequent other related blogs. Now combine this with a public profile, though hopefully most people share very little, and you’ve got yourself quite a number of marketing characteristics.

How about showing content based on their MyBlogLog communities and contacts? I think it could be determined, with a bit of programming work, when a new visitor arrives that is logged into MyBlogLog. You could show an article, ads, or whatever based on who they are as defined by their network in MyBlogLog. Cool, maybe scary, maybe both.

It will be interesting how social media operations actually capitalize on their own networks, as they are the ones with the real access to the data. All we get is what we can see, and often even public data is hard to get to reliably.

Your thoughts on mining data from social networks for marketing?

2 comments Visited 3833 times January 17th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

Related Posts:

The Missing MyBlogLog Tools - Get More from MyBlogLog

Posted by Michael D Jensen on January 16th, 2007

The Missing MyBlogLog Tools, created by SoloSEO.com, give you a new way to harness the power of MyBlogLog. These tools let you compare and find contacts and communities in a new and powerful way. Our tools go beyond the basic searching and browsing available at MyBlogLog by relying on the networks created between MyBlogLog users and Blog communities.

These tools will help you to find contacts to add and communities to join, plus compare visitors and community members of your blog with other blogs. The following tools are available for your enjoyment:

Compare Blog Visitors
Ever wondered what other blogs your visitors are reading? With this tool you can compare your visitors with another blog’s visitors. Up to 130 of the last visitors are compared from each blog, and MyBlogLog members in common are displayed. Go »

Compare Your Contacts
See what other contacts your friends, industry leaders, and fellow blog readers have that you share and that you don’t have added yet. Just plug in your screen name and someone else’s. Go »

Compare Community Members
With this tool you can compare your MyBlogLog Community members with another community, and view members common between both blogs as well as members unique to each blog. Go »

Common Communities between Contacts
If you need help finding communities, see what communities your contacts share! This tool lets you choose up to 20 contacts to compare common communities, and gives you a link to quickly join the communities! Go »

Show All Visitors
Most blogs just show 5-10 MyBlogLog visitors, so usually that’s all we look at. This tool lets you see the last 130 visitors to all of your communities, all at once! Go »

Add Missing Contacts
Even with 20 or 30 community members, it is hard to keep track of who you have added as a contact. This tool lets you quickly see who in your community have not been added as a contact yet. A link to add them quickly is included! Go »

We hope you enjoy The Missing MyBlogLog Tools and that you can find some interesting comparisons, new contacts to add, and new communities to join.

If Yahoo/MyBlogLog is reading this, these tools would be great to implement as a part MyBlogLog. All we ask is for 1% of your acquisition price or a free trip to Yahoo headquarters.

If you have suggestions for other “missing tools” for MyBlogLog, please leave a comment or send us an email. We also have a poll to vote for your favorite Missing MyBlogLog Tool. Enjoy!

19 comments Visited 10958 times January 16th, 2007 Michael D Jensen

Related Posts: