Archive for April, 2009
Swine Flu coming? Get out your Neti Pot!
Thursday, April 30th, 2009
5 Basic SEO Techniques for your CMS Site
Wednesday, April 22nd, 20091. Avoid the seduction of using Flash animated headers on your site if they can’t be indexed on a search engine. (Only the newest versions of Flash are okay). A meaty, informative site is best and positions your business well. Imparting or sharing information or solving problems that others have is a great way to garner influence. You are more likely to receive SEO-friendly link backs if you’re communicating something important. Or entertaining. Or compelling in other ways.
2. The more your site’s content is relevant or unique, the better. Assuming you have a CMS site, add blog posts, press releases or news bits– especially on your landing page — and change them frequently. Add correctly-spelled, grammatically-sound keywords or phrases relevant to your industry. When it’s not a stretch to do so, offer unique content within these posts — words or phrases that are uncommon and therefore stand out in the competitive web environment. Start by thinking of the obvious keywords, then sprinkle in a few synonyms (if appropriate.) The more relevant text you can include, the better—especially on your landing page. Keywords should be placed high in the text block and to the left. If at all possible, place unique (or just standard) keywords as follows: In the 1st sentence of the 1st paragraph; in the last sentence of the 1st paragraph; once in every paragraph after; in the last sentence of the last paragraph. Know that anything more than 5% in what is referred to as “keyword density” may be flagged as spam. How do you determine “keyword density?” Use a free, online keyword analytics tool.
3. Post blogs, articles and e-newsletters, or post others’ material to which you have added your own comments and a link. If you can summarize material first and add the summary, too, that’s even better. For a lengthy article, summarize it in a few lines on your site, and then add a link to the full article.
4. Add related links within your web content pages, but only if they’re authentically relevant. If possible, include links in the first paragraph of your blog posts, press releases and news stories. If your material is meaty and informative or in other ways important or entertaining to browsers, you will receive those all-important link backs.
5. All the above may change tomorrow, so stay on top of the action. Gogglebots rule!
You’re Invited to Something You’ll Really LIKE!
Wednesday, April 8th, 2009This “Marketing Matters” column by Paige Henson ran in The Telegraph (Macon, GA) today. Read to the end to find the special invitation code to an awesome new social media website!
What’s Not to Like
With the vast sharing capabilities now available online through social bookmarking, tagging and syndication, the way we promote products has changed dramatically.
The very colloquial nature of word-of-mouth advertising and online information sharing with friends, relatives and others lends an astonishing level of credibility and power to marketing messages.
Think about it this way: You are much more likely to visit a new restaurant if a friend recommended it than you would if you merely read a review about it.
One promising new Web site rising out of this word-of-mouth phenomenon is Likaholix.com, developed by a young married couple once employed at Google, where they worked on the development of high profile projects that include Gmail, Google Docs, AdSense and Google Video.
Since launching the beta site in March 2008, Likaholix has seen a whopping 3,000-percent growth in registered users, a startling testament to the wave of interest that sharing sites like this can generate.
Likaholix is super easy, fun and intuitive, allowing members to share, comment on and visually depict “likes,” and passions — old or new — be it a movie, a book, a brand, a hand tool, a particular blog, a hotel, a classic poem, a geographic site … you name it.
Creating “likes” is quick and psychologically satisfying.
Just begin typing in the letters of a “like,” and a prompt will finish the word(s) for you. It will then allow you to choose from several photos and videos to post that depict your “like.” Your comments about your “like” are personal expressions about it that create a kind of cathartic effect.
Like the popular NetFlix site, personalized recommendations for new “likes” based on your existing, posted ones are pushed to your Likaholix homepage for consideration, and the likes of others, which are visible to you, can also be added to your own list with a mere click.
If you want, your Likaholix choices can be displayed on your FriendFeed, Facebook and/or Twitter pages, creating an even greater reach.
Consider the marketing potential of sharing at this level.
One of the site’s founders, Bindu Reddy, tells me: “We hope to enable discovery and recommendations for pretty much any type of thing.”
The words “discovery” and “recommendations” used in this context herald in a new era of dynamic, word-of-mouth advertising.
One of our staff members accepted an invitation to the Likaholix site in early March and, soon after, all of us had joined and became addicted, finding it in many ways more satisfying than any social media experience to date.
Because the site is currently in a limited private beta stage, Likaholix founders have allowed me to give readers of this column a special invite code to join: http://likaholix.com/signup?token=PH
Enjoy! And let me hear from you.
