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You’re On Facebook So Now What?

By on September 6, 2010 in facebook, General Interest, SEO, social media

I just read a great book called I’m On Facebook, Now What??? with a lot of good information you can apply immediately. It covers all points from profile optimization to leveraging the Facebook platform for business. Here are a few points that stood out to me.

The book explains that the demographic for Facebook is mostly GenY. This is where the under 35 crowd hangs out.

It also talks about organizing friends into Friends Lists on your own profile as well as joining groups of interest to you. If you have a subgroup of friends that you want to consistently send particular types of info to then you can choose the list name without needing to select a bunch of individuals each time.

One of the nice features are advertising apps written by creative programmers. You can also use Facebook’s add creation button. Business apps are populating Facebook’s space daily. It’s worth your while to spend time investigating some of them to aid business generation.

I learned a completely new term, Social Network Optimization. Including specific search terms (a Search Engine Optimization technique) in the application you create can push it higher on search engine results pages when Facebook users are looking for something new to add to their profiles.

Great chapter on privacy including pros and cons of various settings. I’ll leave it to you to read but suffice it to say you  can restrict your friends access to specific pieces of information on your profile, your feeds etc. Everyone doesn’t have to know everything. You can also restrict their ability to comment. These features are particularly helpful if you have colorful friends you want to keep up with but don’t necessarily want to have all your other FB friends scratching their heads about who you hang out with online (smile).

Great book. Check it out from your library or buy it soon.

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Inbound Marketing University Class 2

By on June 30, 2010 in Blogging, General Interest, Google, Google Analytics, SEO

SEO Crash Course to Get Found

Lee Odden of TopRank Online Marketing was the leader of this class. The homework assignment this time was to “Write a blog article that explains why a marketer would want to include SEO in his or her web marketing”. Since it worked so well for me on the first assignment I’ll stick to the three-takeaways format. The presentation was loaded with great Search Engine Optimization tips but here is what I settled on.

  • When it comes to ensuring that your posts are found and indexed by Google’s search spiders text is the key. Search engines look for words not images so you don’t want your site too picture or Flash heavy if automated ranking is important to you. Don’t restrict yourself to word of mouth only and bells and whistles to grow your blog readership. Consistently writing solid keyword intensive content is still the key.
  • Inbound links also help elevate your blog’s position on search engine results pages. Mores specifically, links from authoritative sites are the key here. Good content again is how you make that happen. Be a thought leader that people want to save and fave.
  • And key point number three for me involves search analytics. Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics are must haves. The Webmaster Tools help optimize your site. The analytics code helps you track and analize readership traffic on your site. HubSpot has an analytics tool that Lee recommends as well. It also has a bunch of other tools that I wasn’t aware of. I will definitely begin incorporating more of each into my blogging and social media repertoire.

Here’s the lecture from class number 2. Take a look and listen for yourself and see what else you may find useful.

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Great Amazon Associates Tools to Monetize Your Site

By on March 25, 2009 in Amazon.com, Blogging, Business, SEO

If you haven’t tried Amazon.com’s associates system you should consider creating an account and trying it out. They have some really good tools that could possibly help your monetization efforts pay off if you have good readership on your site. For the uninitiated, monetization is blog-speak for making your blog site an income generator.

I’ve been toying around with some of the simpler and more advanced Amazon features today and I think I’ve come up with an arrangement that I like. There’s an assortment of Widgets and Links & Banners you can install on your page. Then there’s the aStore. It’s the shopping cart that you can customize and add to your site in either of three configurations.

In fact my aStore is the Marty’s Amazon Store tab at the top of the page. I chose the standalone option that links out to a separate browser tab and gives you a full page shopping cart to push around the virtual store. When you go to the Marty’s Amazon Store tab you’ll see the link that you can click to actually go to the store. Go ahead and try it out. Tell me what you think.

I also added a customized book widget, a gift card banner and a vertical banner. Here’s how they work.

The customized widget option allows you to pick from a set of pre-sized widgets or you can customize the size and the recommended selections that show in the box. You’ll see a couple of good choices that I’m recommending initially from Steve Harvey and Voddie Baucham, Jr. Since it’s a file that’s saved in my Amazon account I can go in and add or delete book selections as I choose.

Then I’ve made life easy for my readers who are bad shoppers like me. Have no idea what your gift recipient would like? No problem pally. Send them a gift card. You’ll find this option under Links and Banners -Banners-Add Banners Now-Gift Cards. Pick your favorite banner link and drop the code into your site.

And you can add a scrolling banner too. I added a vertical banner that makes recommendations based on the content of the site. Amazon obviously has a serious artificial intelligence algorithm that feeds in its suggestions to the banner to pique your readers interests.

Of course you’re not limited to the category of books. Amazon sells just about everything online. It just happens to be what I like to focus on. Should I be more expansive? Tell me what you think. I really am open to suggestion, especially if you’re already good at monetization. For those of us who are just now truly trying to get on the good foot with this I don’t think you can go wrong trying some of these suggestions for starters.

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How’s Your Personal Google Search Rank Looking?

By on March 13, 2009 in Blogging, facebook, General Interest, LinkedIn, SEO

By that I specifically mean, how close to the top of the search are you when someone Google’s your name? My bloginess and virtualness is improving. As of this day, Friday, March 13, 2009, here’s how I’m looking.

My URL www.martinlindsey.com is #1. Even got somebody specing me a price to work on giving it some updated content in the near future. It’s going to become a practical tool for me once again. I bet there are a bunch of other Martin Lindsey’s out there who were slow purchasing the domain wondering, “Why is this guy blowing a perfectly good URL?!?!”. To that I say, Dr. Evil style, “muwahaha!, whahaha!, muwahahahaaa!!!”

My blog, MartyBLOGs, is #3. Not posting on my own site or commenting on others nearly as much as I should. Maybe when I get back into full time school mode again in the fall I can throw in some more consistent bloggy activity during the school day. Social networking is taking up the majority of my online time these days in prep for the big move of course.

My LinkedIn profile is #4. Not surprising since I’ve been doing a considerable amount of networking with it including building up my contact list to 250+ and making some actual practical contacts. I’ve mostly focused on fellow computer scientists, digi-artists and arts patrons many of whom will comprise my next professional life.

Actually there are a bunch of us Martin Lindsey’s from around the world at that #4 LinkedIn position. So if you want to be sure to nab my profile on a search, it’s the indentation under the general listing. (So does that really make me 4-1/2? O.K. I’m thinking too hard now.)

I assume my facebook account is helping too since we can add web links to it. Hopefully people are clicking those links and finding out what else I’m into. And similarly on my LinkedIn profile. The only link I’ve neglected is my amazon.com seller’s account Legacy Book Sellers so I’m adding that where ever there’s space in all those other spots.

These are just a few ideas that seem to be working for me. Try them out for yourself for practical effect. Network your networks and see if you can’t make all your web ships rise together.

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Let Your Blog Chew on Some Chicklets

By on March 7, 2008 in Blogging, SEO

I found a link that lets you add RSS feed reader buttons (a.k.a. “chicklets”) to your site. Go to Top Rank Online Marketing’s blog site and create an account. It will let you check the brands of feeds you want to have for your readers. Then it generates an HTML script based on your selection that you can copy and paste into your site.

For those of you who already have a chicklet library give me some feedback. Which ones are the most popular or recommended to have? They all look good. I was going to cruise thru some of you guys sites that I read regularly and see what you have. Any thoughts on web sites with articles on the subject or is a random selection of 5-10 a good way to start?

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Time to Get Hot and Put Some Life Back into the PageRank

By on December 21, 2007 in SEO

Now that the needle is moving in the right direction again I’m targeting particular mileposts once again to grow my readership back to the point were we were this time last year. Currently on Technorati I have an Authority of 15 and a rank of 550,426.

Here are the particular goals I’m shooting for in the first quarter of 2008; no more than 500,000 by the end of January 2008; 350,000 by the end of February; 100K by the end of March. Other than continuing my writing and commenting streak into next semester I need you you guys to friend/fave me on Technorati too.

Copy and paste my base URL into the favorites register on your side while I figure out how to install the fave button please. Gonna have to push the programming part of this bad boy off on someone else so I can focus on scribing.

Until I get there though I could use your help. What’s a good site describing how to add Amazon, Kontera and Technorati widgets to a WordPress.org platform? If I have to ftp files what folders should I put them in? If I only need to cut and paste a hunk of code what file should I paste it into? I’m putting my ducks in a row to have a break out blogging year in ’08. MartyBLOGs is going yard!

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Technorati Search and Rank Theory OR Can Ron Paul, Britney Spears and DevPay Really Pull Traffic for You?

By on December 20, 2007 in SEO

This is a fun research post for my own purposes folks. You may actually want to try this at home and see what comes of it for you. What am I refering to?

I’ve been curious to delve more deeply into how effective Technorati’s own search metrics are in drawing traffic for us blogger types if we use the most popular keywords and search tags that they catalog.

For instance I put Ron Paul, Briteny Spears and Amazon’s new program DevPay in my title. Just for kicks I’m going to see if putting some of these “Top Search” terms in my post header generates any attention for MartyBLOGs.

I wonder if just a mention of nuffnang which refers to itself as Asia’s first blog advertising company will create any curiosity flow or will I have to write something substantive for the search engines to register my reference to them?

I think it goes without saying that iphone doesn’t need a lot of help because people are talking about it all the time. Can I yank some electrons without a weblink to the product? Let’s give it a try.

Ron Paul is getting a lot of attention for good reasons with negligible results. People who aren’t his official staffers are raising record amounts of funds online but he’s still non existent in the polls. It’s almost like the Ross Perot effect, but on someone else’s wallet.

John Edwards on the other hand is being accused of not being able to keep his penis in his pants. A staffer, Rielle Hunter, apparently is six months pregnant and claims that he’s the man. Can just a mention of two candidates names and a “chick on the side” in the text body create attention for MartyBLOGs? We’ll just have to wait and see won’t we?

Myspace and Google round out the first page of the list. I’ll link them since I’ve dabbled in each. Maybe I’ll get some backlink juice flow.

Here’s a copy of the first page of top tags (“frank rich” “ron paul” authority bacn barcampcologne2 britney facebook fashion galilea montijo google hot huckabee hurricane dean iphone life melayu bogel music myspace nick lachey pantyhose paris hilton photos skype sylar turzi utube vanessa minnillo video johana cardona video noelia web 2.0 yahoomail you tube). Considering that I’m still WordPress tag cloud illiterate I’m really curious to see what happens with this copy-paste right off of Technorati’s site.

I’m going to look into some of the assorted channels on Technorati one day to see what’s hot in different categories and see what I can toy around with search wise. So tell me readers how have you been using key words and phrases strategically to give your blog a boost?

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Staking the Technorati Claim

By on June 2, 2007 in SEO

Today I’m working on the Teachnorati post claiming process so that you guys can find the new main blog profile in the rankings system.

Nothing major here. Just their line of code Technorati Profile to kick things off. But hey, the old page did finally break the 200K barrier. It’s at 138K and change this morning. Keep up the love so we can make this one a fast mover from the 2 million dungeon.

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