The Online Marketing Guy

You may have already heard about this tool.

I recently gave it a try, and have since installed it across all my blogs.

Tony Conrad, CEO & Founder of Sphere shared this with me via e-mail:

[quote]Sphere is displayed on over 1.5 billion monthly article pages on a number of the best blogs (TechCrunch, All Things D, GigaOM, Captains Quarters, Real Clear Politics, etc) and mainstream media sites (WSJ, CNN, TIME, NYT, etc), so you’re blog is connecting to a nice group of content creators The most important thing is that we’re connecting the voice of the people to that of mainstream media and we’re doing that across the web. As a result, we’re enabling a more mainstream Internet reader to discover blogs - a simple idea but one that is important in broadening the reach of the blogosphere.[/quote]

While Tony’s picture of things is taken from a higher altitude than my own, I still think there’s merit here, down in the weeds.

Essentially it boils down to this:

Provide a good user experience through solid design and useful content, and you’ll build a loyal following.

The Sphere product fits nicely into providing value for users. It’s an excellent way to offer up directly related stories on a hot topic - or any topic for that matter.

Sadly there’s no current way to monetize it for yourself, but it still makes your site that useful place folks want to come back to. In addition, because you’re connected to this network, there’s a chance YOUR posted story could end up under a readers nose on those higher profile sites. In reality, there’s no link love being passed, so there’s little value from an SEO perspective, but I’ll take traffic from the Wall Street Journal any day I can get it!

I’ll caution folks to not see this as way to suddenly rocket your traffic, though. As with most good things, they come your way with work. So you’ll still need to hold up your end on producing quality content.

Grab a copy for WordPress here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sphere-related-content/

Now, go get this thing - it’s one of the hottest downloads for WordPress today.

Tags: Resources, Other Useful Tools, Sphere by searchgeek
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Bill just posted this, and it’s great info:

http://www.billhartzer.com/pages/aol-to-change-name-to-tmz/

Seems that AOL is going to be changing their name to TMZ. If that sound familiar, it’s because TMZ.com is one of the hottest entertainment-related sites extant.

Ah, AOL - even YOU aren’t sure who you really are.

For the brand that is the Internet to millions, and has been described as ‘The Internet for Dummies’, I’m left to wonder how their user base will cope with the change. I mean, AOL makes it so simple for users, they hardly need to know anything about the online world.

Now, will they really wrap their heads around a brand change?

…and what does this mean for TMZ.com? Will they end up marginalized as simply a subsection of the Entertainment area of a new entity? Or will they be watered down and become ‘Entertainment for Dummies’ in the end?

This could really spell a unique opportunity. AOL has been sliding for a while now, and they’re so far gone in the real search race that maybe the time is now for them to look in a new direction.

Could they corner the market as a vertically integrated entertainment-only focused portal?

Tags: AOL, TMZ by searchgeek
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SEL just published this article on in-house networking. Obviously I think it’s worth a read since I wrote it.

It talks about internal networking, external networking offers tips on how to handle them, how to pitch for funds to attend shows and offers some useful online places to check out if you want to grow your network.

Go. Read. Learn. Come back…

Tags: Search Engine Land, Networking, In House Tips by searchgeek
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Google just posted up on their Adsense blog that there is a new feature called site authentication.

The gist of it is that this feature will allow you to set up a user name and password for the Adsense robot.

It can then go in and crawl your password protected pages (much like a registered user) and thus begin showing relevant ads.

This overcomes a major hurdle for many webmasters. Those operating forums can breathe easy now as they can keep their spaces locked down (for whatever reason they choose to do so) and still be assured that relevant ads are being shown to users.

In fact, many sites may see an increase in CTRs as a result of a captive audience now seeing very targeted ads.

This move is a positive one as it shows Google is listening to the needs expressed by Webmasters and doing something to help them achieve their revenue goals. In the larger picture, it also acknowledges the extent to which password protected spaces have grown. Google wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t in THEIR best interest as well. They now have expanded their advertising exposure reach into all those previously dark nooks and crannies folks have locked down.

So, if you’re a Webmaster with anything questionable behind the locked door, better do some cleaning before setting this feature up. No worries, though, because if you don’t expressly set it up and activate it, the spiders stay out as usual…

Good move Google.

Tags: Google, Adsense by searchgeek
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This is still a hot topic these days, despite what we already know:

Spiders don’t really crawl Flash thoroughly.

Flash is seen by many as the indicator of a professional website. Basically, if the site is nice, looks cool and has fancy navigation options - if the company invested lots of money in their site - they must be a good company. Hopefully most people are starting to clue into the fact that this just isn’t so.

In fact, many businesses online rely on a fancy website to cover up for the fact that they are just a coupe of guys looking to make some money online. Fancy site means a real company, and they use this to their advantage.

But, for those who are serious about business online, the debate over to Flash or not to Flash breaks down along different lines.

Do you use Flash to offer a better user experience? Is it used to showcase a particular product or service in a unique way?

It’s easy to get carried away and end up with a killer website built entirely in Flash. The downside being they don’t tend to perform well in the search world. Like most things, your mileage may vary, as I’m sure there are some success stories of sites that are built with Flash doing very well indeed.

By and large, though, most people tend to ask how to optimize a Flash website to do better in organic search rankings, so the trend is as we understand it - Flash sites struggle. And for good reason. Google’s Webmaster Central blog recently had an article on this topic and it’s worth a read - here’s a snippet:

“As many of you already know, Flash is inherently a visual medium, and Googlebot doesn’t have eyes. Googlebot can typically read Flash files and extract the text and links in them, but the structure and context are missing. Moreover, textual contents are sometimes stored in Flash as graphics, and since Googlebot doesn’t currently have the algorithmic eyes needed to read these graphics, these important keywords can be missed entirely. All of this means that even if your Flash content is in our index, it might be missing some text, content, or links. Worse, while Googlebot can understand some Flash files, not all Internet spiders can.”

The bottom line remains the same - don’t bury critical information inside Flash files. Things like navigation, sitemap data and actual content needs to be seen by the spiders so they can not only see links, but determine context. Without this holistic view, the engines are flying blind. Help them, and yourself, at the same time.

Tags: Google, Learn SEO, Flash and SEO by searchgeek
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I’ve read two recent-ish posts on this topic. One was via the IAB from The Washington Post about AOL’s apparent jump to the top of the website pile because page views were no longer the dominant metric being used to track results.

Nielsen Scraps Web Page View Rankings

Back in February, USA Today penned this article on the page view as a dying stat…

New technologies make gauging Web ads’ effectiveness more difficult

Now, as Nielsen was tracking things using time-on-site to determine who’s the most popular site, Google fell, AOL jumped.

Makes perfect sense if time is the evaluator, and not page views. Folks go to Google, do their search and end up, quickly, at a site with the info they were looking for. AOL, on the other hand IS the Internet for millions of users. They know nothing outside the AOL bubble. It’s The Internet for Dummies and many folks like it.

So, does this mean the page view is dead as a metric? [Read more →]

Tags: Reality Check, Metrics, AOL by searchgeek
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Danny, Chris and the crew have done it again. The recent launch of Sphinn shows a continued commitment to the business of search marketing and brings a new space to glean the latest from some of the best in the business.

More of a blog-style joint, thoughtful touches abound.

For example, when you edit your profile, you’ll notice a deep list of information can be filled in. One of the few places that allows for multiple blog/website entries in a profile can be found here (great if you run a couple spaces yourself and want to associate them with your profile). They also allow you to post your user name at many popular forums and social spaces. Danny’s got a suggestion list of what else to add to these resources going here.

Now, this is a small point, but where else can you find a person, view their profile and see the aliases they use at the most popular spots around the web related to search and online marketing? I tried to think of another place and failed last night.

Nice work guys - now I need to edit my Firefox home pages again to include Sphinn…

Tags: Learn SEO, Sphinn by searchgeek
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