The Online Marketing Guy

WOW! The first day it’s really felt like spring around here.

I’m on the deck, dogs wandering around panting, enjoying the building mid-day heat. I was going through some missed e-mails form earlier this week and figured I’d offer a bit of a news round up for folks, so here goes.

Here’s a great little item I’ve been enjoying lately. The Hawthorne Videoactive segment. It runs daily to keep you up to date on all things online marketing, Interactive and such. This yesterday’s stories included the following items:

Other stories covered on their site included:

Visit them here - it’s worth it

A book update.

Some of you who’ve been reading this site for a bit may recall I’m writing a book. Well, it’s coming along. In fact, the first manuscript draft is due next week to the publisher. This doesn’t mean it’ll be out soon, it simply means we’ve got to have our stuff into them to begin the editing process. It’s still slotted for a fall release.

Good Music

If you like 80’s music (which I do), here’s a tip for a great station heard through iTunes.

Go to the International section
Scroll down a bit
Look for the station labeled Hot Mix Radio 80 - 100% années 80 - Hot Mix Radio 80’s - Live from Paris France - http://www.hotmixradio.fr

It’s one of the best 80’s stations I’ve found online so far - very good mix an decent depth, too, so you’re not hearing the same songs every hour.

Well, I’m going to leave this post at that. I’m off to get something cold from the fridge and get started on many more hours of content creation for the book.

Tags: Blog Books, Book Deal, Industry News, Hawthorne Videoactive Report, Interactive News by searchgeek
No Comments »

Man, this burns me.

A guy who apparently is someone in the world of search - there are too many “someone’s” to keep track of - writes this article and gets it on MSNBC via Entrepreneur.com.

OK, so MSNBC gets a pass, because they’re just syndicating content as they do.

Even Entrepreneur.com can have a pass, because really, should they know about SEO and articles?

But the author - claimed to be someone - should certainly know better - or at least have his facts straight.

Here’s the article over at MSNBC.

Now, let’s discuss some of it’s main points:

LSI: latent semantic indexing - at least he gets it right by saying its been around a while. Not so sure it’s a big deal to point out that most folks don’t understand this. After all, most webmasters today are savvy enough to include relevant content - so you’re selling cars, maybe you have a page on trailer hitches too…

This isn’t that big a deal and most people naturally end up addressing this one anyway. It’s a bit like explaining to people what the egress is. They’ll figure out its the exit on their own.

Google contains more than 100 algorithms that make it the world’s most popular search engine. - I call BS - maybe 100 variables in the algorithm, but 100 individual algorithms? I’m not buying it personally - and even if there were, who cares? Cover the basics, build the content and users/links shall follow. It takes work and time. Bringing up “100 algorithms” is simply a way to “look” like you know what you’re saying - it’s a parlor trick to include useless info that doesn’t matter.

“Context” is the new buzzword for SEO in 2007. - LOL, the concept of “context” has been around since day one in the world or search optimization. It goes hand in hand with relevancy, which, as even the greenest SEO knows, is critical to making it in Google’s world. Nice to see the author catching up with what’s “new” in 2007…

He goes on to suggest a method of keyword research, using Google’s Site Related Keywords tab in Google Adwords, that I’d say is a bit off the mark.

While certainly it’ll give you keyword suggestions related to your content, this work should have been done before the content was even built, using keywords you know are actually searched on - massive hole in the info here Jon. Sorry, but that’s borderline misleading to those new to the space.

Finally, the whole point of his article is this: articles help SEO. Umm, I’ll have to disagree to a degree. I’ll concede that as an author, distributing articles might end up netting you some inbound links from decent sites, but in actual practice, most sites using article services are new and trying to skip a step to rank well. They aren’t interested in creating unique content, hence their use of articles - articles that many other sites will also use. So, in the end, those new sites do nothing other than throw a pointless link your way.

Now, if you’re a publisher - you should not use articles as a way to boost search rankings. In fact, they simply won’t help in the long run. If you and one other person are using it, one of you will be dropped from the index for having duplicate content. So, you have to ask yourself this:

Do I really believe, across the whole of the internet, I’m the first person anywhere to put this content live? Wake up - you weren’t.

There are no shortcuts to long-term success. Build unique content or die, I say.

Tags: Learn SEO, LSI, Latent Symantic Indexing by searchgeek
No Comments »

Beyond just the SEMPO research mention, this vid has some interesting info. The presenter, while attractive, is maybe trying a bit too hard for some ‘funnies”, but hey, she’s still delivering the goods.

Tags: SEMPO, Video on Net, Hawthorne Videoactive Report, Interactive News by searchgeek
No Comments »

Well, I’m into it now big time.

The contract have been signed, sent back and the writing has begun.

…now to find 50,000 words and about 100 image son the topic…hmmm - seems I have some work to do.

In truth, since I’m co-authoring this puppy, the work-load gets split. Still, it’s a lot to due before the June 1st first draft deadline. Looks like we’re still shooting for a Fall 2007 launch of this gift to the literary world.

WOW! 50,000 words. Seems like a lot, doesn’t it? In truth, I’m more concerned about finding 100 related topic images to go along with all this content. Well, I suppose that’s where SnagIt comes in. And since I run a couple of blogs/sites myself, it’s easy enough to find “locations to shoot” as it were.

Working title is still Blogonomics, but it’s hardly written in stone at this point.

Tags: Uncategorized, Blog Books by searchgeek
No Comments »