Blogging

Social media marketing is a process that requires great ability from the user and from the platform. One that I am most fond of is Twitter. The reason that I use it often is its simplicity, which creates amazing flexibility.
Twitter is an uncomplicated platform. Users have 140 characters to describe their thoughts to their followers. […]

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Social Media Marketing: Using Twitter as a Traffic Driver

“SEO is dead.” Making a statement like that is a great way to generate lots of traffic, and comments, as Micah Baldwin and Mike McDonald have recently demonstrated. But it’s still nonsense. As I noted in my comment to comment Michah’s post on Learn to Duck, articles like this have been appearing since at least 2003, so if SEO is dying, it’s an awfully slow death.

It is changing, however, as Google’s plans for search personalization are rolled out. Using factors such as geographic location, “preferences” as indicated by your search history, and even integration of tools like SearchWiki and Google Friend Connect (nicely explained by TechCrunch), Google will customize search results for each user.

This means that, very soon, your site may show up at #1, #5, #12 or some other spot for any given search term depending on who is doing the searching. Already, automated position-checking tools like Rank Checker and SEO Chat produce erroneous results with Google; that soon won’t matter as there will no “right” answer as to where your site appears on Google for a specific search phrase anyway, other than “it depends.”

But again, none of this means that SEO is dead, only that it is changing (as it constantly does). Considering Google’s move to make more of universal search and personalized search, here are some important points to keep in mind:

• The basic principles of good SEO (proper use of on-page factors like title, meta tags, headlines and quality content with sufficient keyword density, along with building high-quality external links) principles still apply. Although your precise search position will vary depend on the searcher’s location, demographics and other factors, it won’t rank highly for anyone if it isn’t well-optimized.
• The changes may help local businesses. With more of an emphasis on location, even small company sites may appear more prominently in searches on broad, highly competitive phrases such as CRM consulting services in their local area. In the b2b realm, this could raise the profile of value-added resellers, systems integrators and managed service providers relative to software developers and hardware manufacturers, making strong channel relations more important than ever.
• If Google’s changes actually succeed in making search results more relevant, it could help both searchers and site owners. If you’re the owner of Ace Dry Cleaners, for example, you really don’t want traffic from people who are searching for Ace Insurance or Ace Hardware any more than those searchers want to find you. So, the end result could be less traffic, but more relevant traffic.
• Google’s moves are likely to have the greatest impact on broad, highly competitive, ambiguous words and phrases. There will be much less variation in search results between users for long tail and specific niche phrases—which is, again, why SEO is far from dead.
• Since there will no longer be a reliable measure of search engine position for any individual site and search phrase, other metrics will become more important: overall search traffic, quality measures such as bounce rate, and SEO page grade as measured by tools such as HubSpot’s Website Grader, the search engine optimization analysis tool from SEO Workers, or Traffic Travis. There will also likely be more emphasis on search-driven conversions, though this is, strictly speaking, more of a website optimization than an SEO issue.
• SEO requires a mix of skills—coding, design, copywriting, link building, PR, social media optimization—that most organizations don’t have in-house. Larger companies may be able to form internal SEO teams, but SMBs will still need to rely on outside agencies that can provide this mix of skills on an affordable, as-needed basis.
• Search algorithms are constantly changing. One day the meta keywords tag is critical, the next it doesn’t matter. First you should get linked in as many online directories as possible, then you needn’t bother. A tactic that is white hat one day becomes gray hat, or even black hat, the next. Only specialists can keep on top of the constant change and assure that current best practices are being utilized.

Finally, SEO will gradually morph into web presence optimization (WPO)—a term so important I’m giving it its own category. There will be more to come on this soon. For now, rest assured that reports of the death of SEO have been greatly exaggerated.

*****

Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

Read more here:
SEO Is Not Dead, Just Changing: What This Means

This week in the Web publishing industry has been a little bit of everything: from blogs to online content, from social media to online visitors. We have also learned that 95 of the top 100 newspapers have blogs. As far as the numbers go, it was a great week to be an online publisher.

Go here to read the rest:
Web Publishing Roll-Up: More Traffic, More Blogs

Blog optimization is critical to building a successful readership. By making small changes here and there, you can increase your traffic significantly.
Start by looking at your titles. Are they clever and witty, but not search engine friendly? Keep in mind that search engines will notice not just what is said, but the order of […]

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Blog Optimization: Making Small Changes Increases Traffic

Thursday’s news about the upcoming 250 GB monthly cap for Comcast data subscribers left some questions unanswered. I shot a few of my own, as well as some from readers over to Comcast to get them answered. These are mostly items that did not appear in both the post about the amendment, or the otherwise comprehensive FAQ page.

Update at 5:05 p.m. PDT: In a bizarre twist, the previous answers to my questions were answered by someone named Bill G., who Comcast says is not an authorized spokesperson for the company, despite answering my e-mail sent through the company’s press contacts page. Charlie Douglas, who is Director of Corporate Communications for Comcast’s Online & Voice Services, wrote me back to let me know the “correct” answers to these questions. I’ve highlighted where the previous unofficial answers differed for the sake of continuity, although the only major differentiation from the unofficial contact is the mention of Comcast developing its own bandwidth monitoring and notification service for its customers, which is apparently not happening.

Q: Will people who go over for the second time be able to challenge the account suspension, or is the two strikes and you’re out policy the standard?

Charlie Douglas: If a customer receives a call that he/she has exceeded 250 GB in a month, then we ask them to please moderate their usage. The vast majority of customers do so voluntarily. During that first call, however, we also explain that, per our Acceptable Use Policy, if they are among our heaviest users for a second time in the following six months, that we reserve the right to suspend their account for 12 months. Again, this is an extremely small number of customers–far less than 1 percent–and is a policy that does not affect more than 99 percent of our customers.

Will there be a usage meter available on Comcast subscriber’s online account information?

Douglas: There are numerous free or fee-based meters that are widely available on the Internet to anyone who wants one.

(Editor’s note: This differs from our unofficial contact who said “Comcast is developing a meter to track your bandwidth.” We’ve got a write-up of ways to do this using various software tools.)

Will you be offering larger bandwidth packages for home businesses or “excessive users?”

Douglas: Our excessive use policy is only for residential service customers. As of today, this policy does not apply to our commercial services customers.

How does this factor in with users of your Digital Voice service? On average how much bandwidth does that service take up?

Douglas: Comcast Digital Voice is a completely separate service and is not a factor.

We’ve also had some questions about the bandwidth averages cited on this page. 2-3 GB median monthly bandwidth seems incredibly low, as does the figure for how large an e-mail is (0.05KB/e-mail). Most messages in my inbox hover between 10-50k. Was it a typo for 0.05MB?

Douglas: 2 to 3 GB/month is the median monthly amount used by our residential high-speed Internet customers. The examples we provided at www.comcast.net/networkmanagement are illustrative of how much activity would be required to reach 250GB in a month. More than 99 percent of our customers do not come close to using more than that amount.

Got any other questions you feel are unanswered? Leave them in the comments and we can send out a second round.

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More tidbits on the new Comcast cap (updated)