David Leonhardt’s SEO and Social Media Marketing

With all the tempting examples of silly things we see on the Internet, not to mention pure stupidity, it is sometimes easy to overlook those who do things right.  Such an example is Bloggeries Blog Directory .  This is a mid-priced paid directory specifically for blogs.

First, they give you a link in the category listings, as 99% of directories do.

Then, they give you a details page, which maybe about 2% of directories do.  This is nice, because it is a page that is totally optimized for your website.  If the page has any link juice at all, it is a good page to have a link from.  This blog is listed here: David Leonhardt’s SEO Marketing Express.

Third, they offer deep links.  Now you have surely heard me expound upon the benefits of deep linking.  Directories I am involved with, such as WV Travel and DevDream, not only feature listings on multiple pages, but also include the option of up to three deep links for each listing.  Well, Bloggeries have outdone me on this.  Look at our listing again, and you will see they offer three deep links, and they also include links to our most recent posts across the middle of the page, thanks to the magic of RSS.

On top of that, they have a forum that is quite busy and one incentive to participate is that they provide backlinks in your signature line plus a link to the post you wrote (which is a great enticement for people to visit your blog, so write provocative titles!)

This really was not intended to be a review of Bloggeries, as much as another chance to talk about deep links.  But I suppose plans change. 

Check out my MySpace blog today at http://blog.myspace.com/happiness_book .  I’ve blogged about YOU. 

Once upon a time, everyone wanted to get into the New York Times.  Today, popular blogs carry the same weight.  They can send a ton of traffic to a website they link to.

Then, with all those readers, some will also blog about the topic, sending a second wave of traffic.  And the permanent links at all these blogs help send more Google and Yahoo traffic for months to come.  Assuming the traffic converts, mentions in http://www.boingboing.net or http://www.perezhilton.com/  can result in overwhelming success. 

Imagine a 4,891% increase in traffic from one Sunday to the next!  That’s what happened not long ago when one of my clients got blogged by a top blogger (I wish I could take the credit, but this happened totally organically, which means that all the efforts of both my client and me to publicize his site opened the door indirectly, and the blogger found the information we have been publicizing ).

Remember how we always hear that content is king…then spend all day begging, buying or bartering links?  Well, it’s a lot easier to get links if you have something free and worthwhile – good content. 

Think of the Internet as a trade fair.  Ever notice how even a non-starter can hook participants into the sales process by offering a free, unique-looking give-away?So spend a little time at http://www.boingboing.net and ask yourself,, “What could I post on my site that would be worthy of a mention here?”  When it comes to content, if it’s good enough for Boing Boing, it will be good enough for anybody.

I just added a plugin to this blog.  It’s great for users and it’s great for SEO.  The  Contextual Related Posts Plugin adds to the bottom of this post a list of related posts based on the content of the post.  If you are reading thsi on a page that incldues other posts, click on the title of the post to go to its own page.

For readers, this is handy, because they can quickly read more on the same topic.

For SEO, this is handy because it creates automatic links between similar relevant content.  This is definitely a tool every blogger who wants to rank well should install. 

And by the way…a blog is increasingly something that every website should have.

Even when one is on vacation, one never seems to be able to escape work.  A case in point is when I had the chance to catch up with an old friend , Karen Hegmann, and we discovered that we are each writing our own marketing blogs.  Hers is Narrative Assets, about — wait for it — marketing.

Of course, I had to check it out and right away noticed this posting about The Human Face of Web Design , which begins with: When I walk into a store, I’m usually there for one of several reasons: 1) I know exactly what I’m looking for 2) I have an idea what I’m looking for, but need more information to make my decision and 3) I have no idea what I’m looking for and just want to browse.  

You can probably guess the rest, and if not, you can read it.  But I did want to share with you this question: is your website designed so that everybody can easily get what they need?  Even those people with no idea if they even want to make a purchase?  Even those who know exactly what they want?

(As an aside, that evening I discovered that Toronto’s Pickle Barrel restaurant, a dive we would often avoid when living a couple blocks away, is now one fancy place to eat, with a really spiffed up menu.  Sadly, two days later we discovered that my favorite Mr. Green Jeans has gutted its menu and taken all life out of the decor in what we were told was a TV broadcast makeover.  Oh well, win some, lose some.)

First, this post is not what you think it it.  By the way, just what do you think it is?

This post os about My Aunt Is Hot, a blog with a stated purpose to manage the reputation of the blogger’s family name.  It seems that his “aunt” stole his name (Ziering) and he wants it back: www.MyAuntIsHot.com – Because Ziering on Google doesn’t have to be porno.

It’s actually a story worth reading.  However, I did a Google search for Ziering and so far the aunt is still hot and the blog is not.  It looks like Mr Ziering could use a fair amount of SEO to reach his stated goals.  In the meantime, at least he is having fun with the concept…and I like that.

You might have noticed a new look for the blog, building on the design of the rest of the site (but more bloggy, less commercial).

You might also have noticed that we are also offering preview snapshots of  and links within the blog posts.  This is cool, although they don’t always work.  There is also the MyBlogLog widget on the upper left side, showing you  your very own face (if you happen to be logged in to your MyBlogLog account when you come a-callin’).

Rick Hendershot, a fellow Canadian has come up with an interesting idea…not just because it is new and innovative, not just because he’s Canadian, not just because it’s a really useful idea, but also because it is something I had thought of earlier (same concept, different business model) but have been too busy to give it any serious thought.

You will find Rick’s self-serve blogging service Linknet2 an attractive alternative to the pay-per-post model, where you have to wait for someone to jump on your opportunity.  Unlike the pay-per-post model, you have very little control over the content and the link text, and even the number of links you garner.  So you control boith your reputation management and your SEO.  This is a great way to build those elusive deep links.

Self-serve blogging means that you write the post, you insert the links, etc.  Right now he has 13 blogs going as part of his system, but he soon will have more.   The key to how valuable this will be is whether he can keep the quality of postings high and get inbound link juice to each of the blogs. We’ll check in again to see how this new service is doing.

With all the talk about Web 2.0, it was refreshing to read a little bit about “What happened to Web 1.0?” (Dead link removed) . I have a theory, some wise guy coined “Web 2.0″, possibly even some wise guy that I admire, as the new interactive Web. 

Everybody thought this was a really cool idea, because there was certainly no interactivity on the thousands of forums, the hundreds of thousand guest books, the blogs that actually preceeded Web 2.0 and all the article submitted to article directories.  And I am sure there was no interactivity whatsoever in all the newsgroups and feedback forms online, nor the javascript feeds that predated RSS.

I’m not sure we really have Web 2.0, as much as Web 1.1 . 

What?  Me?  Sarcastic?  Naw… 

ADDENDUM:

I should have mentioned above Yahoo! Groups, which have been around for at least six years, and I also recall when I first released my book Climb Your Stairway to Heaven: the 9 habits of maximum happiness, I remember setting up my own pages at Author’s Den, Published.com and many other places that gave people free reign over creating content on their websites.

You might have noticed that we have a new page listed at the top called “blog advertising”.  Yes, we do accept advertising or sponsored posts, and we have set up very specific guidelines to avoid potential conflicts of interest, including transparency, relevance and freedom to say “this website simply does not deliver”.

In preparing to accept advertising, I did some research on what others are doing.  Tim Nash recently made a similar decision to mine, and given that he is a well-respected contributor at Webdigity, one of the more interesting forums around, I asked him if he would be willing to be a guest blogger and share his thoughts on paid blog posts.  What follows is his commentary…

I’m a blogger not a journalist!
 

Once upon a time I started a website it had a single page about me, these days I run several websites participate on 2 blogs regularly and guest blog on numerous others. I spend 60 hours a week working on the web one way or another. Why am I telling you this? Well in all those hours across all those sites I see reviews and I meet people and products and I think cool I will write about that, 90% of the time I don’t but occasionally I get beyond the first few lines. So when some one turns up and offers you a few dollars to write a review about their site or product are you going to say no?
 

I consider myself to be an ethical blogger in that I always declare when a post is paid for I only accept “jobs” where they are after my honest review. In many ways I consider myself simply being given a nudge out of the door of course I can already hear the screams from the anti paid per post lobby.
 

“The PayPerPost model brings up memories of payola in the music industry, something the FCC and state attorney generals are still trying to eliminate or control. Given the distributed and unlicensed nature of the blogosphere, controlling payoffs to bloggers will be exponentially more difficult.”
Tech Crunch – http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/10/12/the-payperpost-virus-spreads/
 

This is one of the biggest arguments against pay per post — are you being bribed and if so does it matter? If a journalist on a big paper was found to be on the pay of a company how would we react, outrage, anger certainly the end of their career, but why?
 

It’s down to trust and authority we believe our newspapers to be independent of such things this is of course not true but perception is everything. The journalist may never write a positive review about the company but we perceive our trust has been breached we have been let down.
 

But I’m a blogger! I write in my spare time and if some one says here some money to write about xxx then sure I will write about it. If you don’t like it don’t read it! The problem comes when the personal integrity of the blogger is breached which is summed up nicely by Stuntdubl
 

“If everybody writes positive reviews of CRAP – it’s a surefire way for the whole idea to suck. It’s not a surprise that people will accept money to write reviews or analysis – the big question will be HOW MUCH it costs for a review. “
Stuntdubl http://www.stuntdubl.com/2006/11/10/reviewme-2/
 

Here it is laid out on a plate If I accept $30 for an impartial review that’s cool what if I’m given $500 or $1000 can I really remain impartial when offered larger sums of money; I’ll let you know
 

Advice for Bloggers
So here some advice if you’re going to try Pay per post or similar.

• Set up a disclaimer page discuss which services you use
  
• Offer a way to view the site without PPP
  
• Make PPP very clear and obvious (I use the tag PPP plus disclaimer)
  
• Try to make your posts interesting and on topic, just because its paid for doesn’t mean it can’t be part of your normal blogging cycle.
  

A final cautioning word of warning, some search engines believe Paid links should not be allowed and to steps to prevent these links and pages appearing in the index  Grey Wolf has a great post on this; so is paid per post worth it?
http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/googles-policy-on-no-follow-and-reviews-is-hypocritical-and-wrong/
 

About Me
Tim Nash is a reputation management consultant, co-founder and primary consultant for Venture Skills, a “New media” IT company which specialises in search engine optimisation, reputation management, and technical side of online marketing. When not working at Venture Skills, posting site reviews on forums he can be found teaching at a local university where he lecturers in Search Engine Optimisation and Information Retrieval.
 

http://www.timnash.me.uk
http://ventureskills.wordpress.com