UPDATE: I’ll try to update this post occasionally as time goes by.

Be The Go-To Blogger for Topical Event Curation

Your blog can become the “go-to guide” for event news curation in your niche. When an event occurs, you can be the one to build a collection of content that is worth a reader’s time. Here are a few tips on becoming a great event curator.

SEO Dojo Radio – the totally Dazzlin edition!

In the second half hour of this SEO Dojo Radio Podcast, I talk shop with David Harry and Terry Van Horne about SEO, making money online, marketing, and various things as we hold an informal industry discussion.

Discover What Google Really Thinks Of Your Pages

What does Google REALLY think of your site’s pages? Determine the rate of importance that Google places upon each of your pages, not by PageRank, but by analyzing crawl rate. Grab a free tool that tracks Googlebot and learn how to massage the data so that you can focus attention on those pages that you think are important, but Google apparently doesn’t.

Exhale Creativity: Inhale Buzz

Sometimes you jut get lucky and buzz spreads about your company, product, or service seemingly out of thin air. While it’s truly exciting when that happens, I wouldn’t sit around waiting for it. Sometimes you have to make your own luck. Buzz usually requires an excellent product or service that just knocks the socks right off everyone. If yours can generate that WOW factor simply because it is so great and solves a problem that everyone has, then you’re definitely ahead of the game. However, even WOW products can be overlooked in the daily stream of our lives. That’s when you need to help get the buzz started, and creativity is the best way to make that happen.

Streamline Your Content Creation Process With Time-Saving Systems

I run sites that are mostly informational in nature, and since informational sites need lots of actual … well … information, that means I spend a good deal of my time creating content. Creating good content takes time, and like most of you, I have very little time, so over the years I’ve created a “system” that helps me shave off as much wasted time as possible during the process. Here’s a glimpse at the content creation system that works for me. Feel free to use any parts of my system to streamline your own content creation process.

Intelligently Crafting Content

I could start off this article by saying that to succeed with SEO, you should create high-quality content, but if I did that, you would immediately think, “same old ‘content is king’ blah, blah, blah”, and you’d probably not read any further. So instead, let’s just start off by stipulating that creating great content is a given. So often, however, no one really goes beyond the phrase “good content” to discuss how to create that content, and just as importantly, how to plan it out, and effectively create a flow throughout the site.

Analyzing Your Text Content from a Graphic Point of View

“You can’t see the forest for the trees” is an old saying that holds much truth when we are trying to analyze our own content. You’ve looked at your own content so much you probably no longer see it the way your visitors do (or the way search engines will). Sometimes I find it useful to look at the words on my site in a completely different way. By viewing your content differently than you’ve ever done before, you open up the possibility of seeing the individual trees within your content forest again. Here’s a little exercise I like to use now and then.

Link Bartering

Link bartering is NOT the act of trading links (reciprocal linking), but is the act of trading services, which usually results in acquiring nice links and recommendations.

Creating Subliminal Connections Between Your Site and Hot Trends

What if you could associate your site, your niche, or your product with a hot new trend? What if the search results showed your site for that popular new gizmo or movie? What if I told you that you can create a subliminal connection between your site and any hot new gadget/movie/song/toy/etc. no matter what niche your site or product is in? And what if you stood a good chance of ranking well for that hot trend?

The Swirling Vortex of Social Networking

Social networking is increasingly becoming a vital aspect of our search marketing efforts. The connections we form amongst our online social communities can provide ever-expanding avenues of awareness of our sites, brand recognition, and ultimately buzz and link-love.

Sadly, however, there is a dark side to social networking. This dark side is one that we’d rather not talk about because we are afraid we might see it within ourselves. What could possibly be so scary? I call it the swirling vortex of social networking.

Using the Science of Social Proof in SEO

I’ve written about Robert Cialdini in the past and how his six persuasion principles can be used in search marketing. Briefly, the six principles are Liking, Reciprocity, Social Proof, Consistency, Authority, and Scarcity. All six are worth spending some serious study time with, but today I want to focus on just one – Social Proof.

Tracking Site Page Importance Via Crawl Cache Dates

A discussion centered around the realization that Google cache dates were the new PageRank and that crawl frequency is an excellent indicator of the importance of a page, which leads to an explanation in how to track this metric.

How To Create No-Fail Hot Content

Would you like your site content to rank well? Would you like your content to draw links like nails to a magnet? There is one strategy you can use to make sure the content you create is almost guaranteed to be a hit – and in the process it gathers backlinks and ranks well. This strategy isn’t some secret ninja tactic that would get your site banned if the search engines found out about it either. In fact, it’s a tactic that the search engines would be happy to recommend to all site owners.
And while the actual creation of the content may take some time and effort, the concept is extremely simple. So what is this awesome strategy?

Blueprint of a Successful SEO Campaign

The surest way to successfully construct a building is to follow a blueprint. A blueprint contains detailed plans and designs that enables skilled personnel to build the structure just from the blueprint. In the same way, a detailed set of plans is the surest way to build a successful search marketing campaign. And just like construction blueprints, while each SEO blueprint may be unique, each will also contain similar details to ensure success. What details should a search marketing blueprint contain?

SEO – Vital Inclusion to the Overall Marketing Mix

Companies are beginning to embrace SEO as a legitimate means of marketing, but they often throw a paltry amount of marketing dollars towards it, or they allocate most or all of the search budget to PPC only. That is a mistake, even for companies that don’t sell products or services online. Let’s take a look at some interesting statistics that will help show how important it is for companies to concentrate significant resources towards ranking well in the search engines’ organic rankings, which are the natural listings returned on the left side of the search results page.

When A Good Idea Goes Wrong – SEO Oopsies

If you search the Internet, you can find at least a few dozen lists that outline the common mistakes a newbie SEO might make. Just to make sure I don’t leave out the obligatory list, I’ll present it below. After that, however, I’ll detail what really happens when a beginner starts to see results from his or her first search marketing experiments.

This next batch is a series of posts I’ve done for SEO Chicks. Keep in mind that the SEO Chicks blog is a sometimes serious, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, sometimes just plain goofy look at the search world, so if some of these posts seem a little “less than professional”, that would be why.

Behavioral Based Ads Bad for Publishers and Scary for Users

Google just announced that it would start providing interest-based Adsense ads. I have a bit of experience with being a publisher that serves ad based on past user behavior and interests. That experience isn’t a very good one. If you are in the mood, follow along as I tell you my little tale of how behavior-based ads can be bad for everyone. (*names changed to protect the guilty and the innocent)

Dr. Phil Would Tell You That Stubborness Won’t Get You Higher Rankings

(A semi-fictional tale)

Despite the many changes, some folks just refuse to let go of the things they long to hold onto. Let’s consider the case of someone I like to call “Mr. Stubborn”.

If Google Is Unable to Remember Its Own Rules

Google, really, you just can’t expect everyone in the universe who owns a web site to follow your rules. You’ve just proven that by not following your own rules.

Finding SEO Inspiration

To be successful with your SEO campaign, you need to see beyond the simplistic ABC’s of search – looking past the typical optimization rules to get inspired. Find inspiration outside of the (chiclet) box, and you’ll likely find ways to improve both rankings and conversions!

Lets Call This Hypocrite Day Shall We?

There’s nothing new about this post. It’s been said before. But for those who still confuse ethics with believing whatever line of bull the search engines might be throwing out for their own betterment, I wanted to just put out a little reminder on this fine April day.

Link Building Ideas for the Link Building-Challenged

Since link building is about as fun as ripping off your own toenails with pliers, I thought it might be useful to spark some creative ideas into the heads of poor, depressed link builders. You know who you are. So without further ado, or maybe with lots of further ado, it depends on my mood …

The Evolution of a Newbie SEO

All the stages a noob goes through while learning SEO

SEO Conferences: Good Deal or No Deal?

I love SEO Conferences, but there’s a good possibility I’ll never attend another one. Why? Well, for one thing, after I tick off all the conference hosts today with this post, the SEO bouncers might block me from entering. But in reality, I may never go to another conference because the prices are just too freaking high. (please bear with me on this long rant, because really, you’ve GOT to read it all – seriously)

The Long Cold Wintery Days of SEO

The long, cold wintery days hold the same lures for SEOs. Trapped inside, bundled in warm, fuzzy pajamas or long-johns, the SEO prepares to strut his stuff. The goal: to seduce a bot into believing he holds the key to its spider-heart. Unfortunately, his mastery of the SEO process can be broken down into the same three primary stages as the lover.

Also, since most of these are SEO related, I thought I’d throw in a few posts that I wrote on my old SEO Scoop blog that might interest anyone interested in the above…

The 5 Goals of a Search Optimized Page

“How do I get my site to rank well?”. Start with understanding these 5 goals of a search optimized page, and then expand your knowledge with the resources compiled in the Beginner and Comprehensive Guides to SEO, Link Building, PPC, Social Media, Affiliate Marketing and Blogging post.

Beginner and Comprehensive Guides to SEO, Link Building, PPC, Social Media, Affiliate Marketing and Blogging

A quick roundup of ebooks and guides, both free and paid, that would be useful for anyone wanting organized how-to info to study on SEO, affiliate marketing, etc.

SEO for WordPress

The HTML version of a presentation I did at WordCamp Birmingham in 2008 which was all about, well, SEO for WordPress.

Finally, you might want to check out some of the back issues of Personal Branding Magazine to read my articles that focus on combining personal branding with SEO, along with fantastic articles from lots of other writers as well. Hope some of those are useful to some of you.

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Post tags: ABC, Birmingham, energy, Google, HTML, king, Link Building, online social communities, player, Robert Cialdini, search budget, search engines, search marketing, search marketing blueprint, search marketing campaign, search marketing efforts, search marketing experiments, search results, search world, SEO, SEOs, social media attention, social networking, Vital Inclusion
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There are probably just as many opinions about what constitutes good website design as there are people on the internet. There are, however, a number of factors that have been proven to make or break a website. If your website is guilty of just a few, it can have a dramatic impact on your business. Fortunately, most of them are relatively easy to correct, but in many cases, the right choice is often contrary to popular opinion because of peoples’ misunderstanding of the internet.

Spend some time studying these six common website design mistakes and see how many you’re guilty of. Then, invest the time to correct them and you’ll find that your website begins to perform better almost immediately.

Not testing on multiple browsers

You probably use Internet Explorer, like most people do, but a significant portion of your website visitors may be using another browser, such as Firefox, Safari, Chrome or Opera. Also, your visitors may have a variety different screen resolution and graphics capabilities. This means a website that displays perfectly on your computer may not on another computer, which is why it’s so important that you test your website to ensure that it displays and functions properly in most major browsers.

Using splash pages or flash intros

When a visitor arrives, they shouldn’t have to click anything to enter your website. Splash pages can turn an otherwise amazing website into a poor website faster than you can click the back button, and flash intros are even worse. Both of these things came about from arrogant designers who decided that showcasing their ability to use a particular piece of software was more important than providing what their visitors were looking for, and unfortunately the phenomenon became fairly common.

The argument in their favor is often something along the lines of ‘Our flash intro gives us a chance to present a mini commercial to each and every website visitor.’ This argument is flawed though, because by the time that they have arrived on your website, they are looking for specific information – not your commercial. Forcing it on them will only encourage them to leave, usually moving on to your next competitor.

Not breaking text into manageable chunks

It’s said that the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. The same logic applies for presenting website copy. Staring at a computer monitor is difficult work for the human eye, and digesting large portions of text can be tough for even the most focused visitor. You can overcome these challenges by breaking your text into smaller, manageable chunks, utilizing headings, subheadings, lists and images. You should also keep the width of your text within a reasonable limit. The longer it is, the more difficult it will be for your visitors to read.

Omitting contact information

A surprising number of companies fail to provide any way to contact them on their website other than through a contact form. This falls into the same category as those annoying automated phone menus. Sure, you’ll save some time and money since you won’t have to talk to all those bothersome people who want to talk to you, but you’re forgetting something important. Those ‘bothersome’ people are actually potential clients who want to buy what you’re selling!

You may filter out some riff raff when you don’t provide your contact information, but you’ll also turn away a lot of potential business. People want that warm, fuzzy feeling that comes from knowing that they’re dealing with a real-life company rather than some fictional Nigerian prince who is willing to transfer his fortune to their bank account. They are looking for a stable company that they can trust and if they know that they can pick up the phone and reach someone, or even stop by your office if they are nearby, you will have a rock-solid foundation.

Putting branding before the user

There is no question that branding is an important, if not critical aspect of marketing, but some companies take it too far, causing a negative impact. I would generally agree that the title tag on your home page should contain your company name, but that shouldn’t continue throughout your entire website. Aside from diluting your search engine optimization campaign, having your company name in the title tag of your internal pages will make them less attractive to potential visitors when presented with a list of search results. Think about it like this; if someone searches for ‘blue plutonium widgets,’ do you think they will be more likely to click on a listing in the search results with the title ‘Blue Plutonium Widgets – $9.99′ or one with the title ‘Acme Widget Company?’

Omitting pricing information

The outdated mentality of only revealing pricing information to prospects on the phone or face to face seems to have made its way onto the Internet. While there are valid reasons to justify the practice, it is counterproductive to your business. When people use the Internet to find information, they expect to find that information without having to call someone. Does this mean that some of your competitors may learn what your prices are? Certainly, but they can get that information even if you don’t make it available online by posing as a potential client. Not all companies can list their prices; for example, while we have a number of standardized prices available, a lot of the marketing work that we do is developed on a case by case basis. Most companies, however, can.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Acme Widget Company, bank account, Internet Explorer, Jeremy Knauff, prince, search engine, search engine optimization campaign, search results, WildFire Marketing Group
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You need a press kit.

In the “old days”, that meant spending a LOT of money to have fancy-schmancy folders and papers printed that you would mail to newspaper and magazine editors. Because it is so costly to create those glossy kits, you and I would be doing without. Luckily, those days are long gone, and the Internet is here to save us. (Yes, you can still get hard copy press kits, and some may opt to do so, but it’s no longer the necessity that it once was).

So what is an online press kit, anyway? Sometimes called a media kit, it is really just an expanded “About Me” section that includes things like images and graphics (like headshots of yourself or images of your ebook cover), and lots of in-depth information about yourself that journalists could use when either writing about you, or quoting you. The more information you give reporters and bloggers in a simple, easy-to-get format, the better. The key is that you want to make it EASY for a reporter to choose you when they are looking for comments and quotes from an expert in whatever topic they are writing about today. Reporters have tight deadlines. They want answers and they want them fast.

If you accomplished all that we discussed in the last few posts, then it’s very likely that a journalist would find your site when he searched for “his current topic expert” or “whatever he is writing about guru”. Once he gets to your site, he’s going to want to:

1. Know more about you.
2. Find quick info that summarizes your expertise
3. Contact information so he can get in touch with you

An online press kit, then, would incorporate all of those elements and more. Journalists are trained to look for press kits. They’ve been relying on company media kits for decades. Just by having your own online press kit, you let them know that you respect them, and you are willing and ready to work with them. You let them know that you are available as a source. That gives you an edge over all the other “gurus” who don’t have an online press kit.

Once you have your online press kit created, you’ll want to be proactive. Let people know about it. Contact editors of relevant newspapers and magazines, or your local news editors, and let them know that you are available in the future as an expert source on the topics of “blah, blah and blah” (your niche expertise). Don’t hound them. Just let them know, give them all of your contact information, and be sure to include the URL to your spiffy, new online press kit. If any are interested, they’ll keep your information at hand in case they need it in the future.

You can also register as an expert source at either ProfNet (a service of PRWeb) or ExpertClick. These services connect journalists with expert sources (such as yourself), so they are great places to network, but the services are somewhat expensive. I would recommend doing everything you can in the first few months to build up your name recognition and have everything in place to position yourself as an authority before registering for this type of pricey service.

I can hear you asking already…how do I set up an online press kit? You can simply add a section to your current web site that gives all the pertinent information on its pages. Keep it simple and clean, with navigation that makes it impossible for a hurried journalist to get lost. Include quotes, testimonials, syndicated articles, suggested questions, podcasts and videos, images and graphics, and lots of bio information. If you want professional help, there are services that you can hire to create online press kits for you. From what I’ve seen, they seem to average around $500, so if that’s in your budget, it may be easiest to let someone else create it for you. Keep in mind, however, that you’ll still need to give them the actual content. You’ll need to spend a fair amount of time telling them about yourself, your achievements, your products, or whatever else would need to be included. After all, they don’t know those things about you – you do.

I looked around, hoping to be able to find a link to some free press kit templates, but didn’t find what I was looking for, so I decided to just go ahead and create some from scratch. I’ve created a new product called Online Press Kit Templates (no longer available as a paid product – see here to get it for free.). It’s not free, so let me tell you that right up front. But I priced it at a “reasonable” amount, so that it would be the right choice for anyone who wants help, but doesn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars. Many of you are old hands at setting up web sites, so you’ll be able to set your own up without any help at all. But if you would rather follow a template, without the actual service of someone creating it for you, then you are the right person to consider purchasing the templates I created. Keep in mind though, that you can absolutely do this yourself for free. I don’t want to mislead anyone into thinking that my product is the only solution, because that would certainly not be true. My templates simply make it a lot easier to get an online press kit up and running with minimal effort.

So that’s it. By the time you’ve covered all the steps in this Authority series, you should be well on your way to being called “the world’s foremost authority on ….”. Good luck!

P.S. If you are planning on hiring me as your ebusiness coach, don’t order my templates, because all my coaching clients get the package for free.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: An Authority, authority, company media kits, e - business, ebusiness coach, expert, guru, hurried journalist, journalist, media kit, online press kit, Online Press Kit Over, Online Press Kit Templates, online press kits, reporter, search results, templates
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Let’s say you are an expert in mountain biking. No, you didn’t take courses in biking, and you never owned a bicycle factory. You simply have been an avid mountain biker over the last 10 years, and that experience has led you to an understanding of the sport that enables you to be considered an expert. You know much about great trails, bike safety, which bikes are best under which conditions, etc. You get questioned often about the topic, as young enthusiasts want your advice.

Now, you decide you want to spread your knowledge worldwide, so you set up a web site to do so. You’ve done your homework, you’ve made the site search engine friendly, you’ve obtained some nice backlinks to the site, and you’ve begun to see some traffic trickling in. You’ve decided that what you really need is to be recognized as an expert, so you tackle the following tasks:

• The “be everywhere” task, in which you participate in as many relevant online mountain biking communities as possible. During this task, you strive to be as helpful as possible, answering questions freely, and being generous with your time in giving advice and tips.
• The “get published” task, in which you write articles for syndication, write guest posts on outdoor enthusiasts blogs, blog frequently on your own blog, and even get published in a few offline publications, such as local newspapers and magazines.
• The “have your voice heard” task, in which you become a guest on podcast stations, and eventually even do guest spots at your local radio station.
• The “have your face seen” task, in which your head shot is your avatar, and that avatar becomes associated with your name in all the places you visit.

After a few months, you realize that you’ve got a pretty solid base of “proof” that you are indeed an expert in mountain biking. You’ve built up a nice collection of articles, blog posts, podcast interviews, etc. that all point to you as being an authority in the topic. The only people who haven’t yet heard of you are the ones you want recognition from the most – the Influencers.

The Influencers are the A-list bloggers, the well-known journalists, and the highly respected publications that reach the masses. If even one Influencer claims you are one of the world’s foremost mountain biking authorities, you can rest assured that it won’t be long before EVERYONE thinks that of you. At that point, every journalist and blogger who has a story about mountain biking will be wanting your comments, your opinions, and your quotes for their stories. And each of those influencers will likely call you an expert, or an authority, or a guru as well. But what if you haven’t been able to get that one Influencer to get the ball rolling? What do you do?

Get their attention (which doesn’t translate into becoming a pest, btw). You can make contact with them, offering your assistance to them in some way. (By giving of yourself to them, rather than asking something OF them, you become an asset and not a liability). You should be doing this whenever it makes sense to do so (again, always keeping in mind that you do NOT want to be a pest or a stalker). There are probably hundreds of influencers you can contact, so you don’t need to make a pest of yourself with any particular one. Make sure that a link to your site or blog is always in your email correspondence with these Influencers. They are curious just like you and I. At least a few of them will certainly click your link just to find out more about you. Simple curiosity can bring you right smack onto their radar. If your correspondence was helpful to them in any way, rather than asking something from them, there’s a very good chance that they will be drawn towards wanting to know more about you.

While you are attempting to get someone’s attention, you should be creating a path that leads straight to you. You see, when a journalist has a story to write about mountain biking, he will probably do the same thing you or I would do if we needed information about a topic we were not already knowledgeable about. We would google it. That journalist might even go so far as to search for “mountain biking expert”, or “mountain biking authority” or “mountain biking guru”. What if your name showed up in the top 10 search results for any of those phrases? How much would you bet that journalist would be trying to find a way to contact you to get your thoughts on his story angle?

You see, you can begin working towards being recognized as a guru in the search results long before the Influencers recognize it. Did your cousin win the local bike rally after you gave him a few pointers? How many social networks does your cousin spend his time in every day? What if he were to link to your site in each of those communities, using “Mountain Biking Guru” as the link text? Did you help your boss decide which bike to buy for his kid for Christmas? Could you persuade your boss to have his kid mention your name when he blogs about how cool his new bike is … using “Dave is an expert in mountain biking” as the link text perhaps? See where I’m going with this? In many areas, it wouldn’t take much to turn a few links into a top 10 ranking for “your specialty guru”.

Now, whether you’ve managed to get the attention of an Influencer or not, you’ll at least get their attention when they google for the experts in your field.

Let’s sum this up:

1. Recognize that you are an expert in whatever you are an expert in.
2. Spread your expertise far and wide using the various tasks described above.
3. Attempt to get the attention of an Influencer (without making a pest out of yourself).
4. Work towards a top 10 ranking for “your topic guru”, “your topic expert”, or “your topic authority”.

We’ve almost come to the final chapter in our journey towards positioning ourselves as authorities within in our niches. There is one final step that you should take, and we’ll cover that next time. Until then, make a list of the top 20 Influencers in your field and begin your journey to Guru-ness.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: authority, Christmas, expert, guru, journalist, online mountain biking communities, search engine, search results, site search engine, social networks
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