Matt says he wanted to create the definitive cloaking video; I think this is a great educational video. You can learn more about cloaking in Google’s Webmaster Tools help section. Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal
Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal
Tags: About, Cloaking, Cutts Video, from, Google’s, Learn, Matt
This guest post is by Jamie Northrup of jamienorthrup.com.
A lot of the keys to being a successful musician are the same as being a successful blogger.
Some of the similarities between these two professionals are that both write a lot, both present their work to an audience, and both can choose to do it for the art or for the money—or even both, like I do!
There are currently three ways to become a successful money-making musician:
Image copyright IKO – Fotolia.com
This is the oldest and most common way to becoming a successful artist. You can either push your demo or get discovered. Either way, you may not have as much control over your destiny, but you usually have some help getting to the top—or as close as possible.
This isn’t the easiest way, but it is probably the most rewarding. You have to work hard, but you get the control over what you do as an artist.
One artist that comes to mind is Master P, who basically sold CDs out of the trunk of his car. He made millions like that, and later founded his own record company. He was worth over $ 400 million, and was on Forbes richest people under 40 list in the late 1990s.
This isn’t new—it’s been around since television has been around with shows like Star Search—but it seems to have exploded in recent years with shows like American Idol, X-Factor, and others.
It’s a great way to become a star and showcase your talent, but it can be hard to even get into the early stages of the competition.
When you look at these options, you can see that attaining blogging success isn’t much different. You can join a “tribe,” do it yourself, or enter blogging contests—but chances are, like me, you fall in the second group of people trying to do it on their own.
Some of the techniques I use to be a successful blogger are similar to the ways DIY musicians gain success.
Think of a song as a blog post, and an album as a blog.
There are several techniques that work for both musicians and bloggers.
The first is guest posting. The same thing happens in music: guest posting is pretty much the same as one artist featuring another one in one of their songs. It’s a great way for either the musician or the blogger to establish themselves with a new audience, and get their name out there.
The second technique, which is quite similar to the first, is remixing a song. Lil Wayne is famous for doing this on his mixtapes (unreleased or non-mainstream albums). This artist would take popular songs and remake them with his own words. Bloggers do this quite often as well—I actually try and do it once a month. My latest attempt was “remixing” a popular post from Think Traffic.
The final link I like to draw between successful bloggers and successful musicians is that both write about what is hot—the trends. There’s no surprise that when you blog or sing about what’s in the news, you’ll get recognition. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s not, but apparently there is no such thing as bad publicity.
Choosing to blog on your own isn’t the easiest way to earn blogging success, but if you don’t quit, you will succeed—just like self-made musicians.
Do you see any other ways that bloggers are like musicians?
This post was written by Jamie Northrup, a web consultant based in Montreal, Canada. Jamie runs several different blogs, and tweets using his web handle DeuceGroup.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
What Bloggers Can Learn From Musicians
Posted by Fryed7
This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.
AdWords folks. They’re the traders of the online marketing world. They spend their time analyzing scoreboards, making little improvements and brainstorming their next ideas. They split-test their ideas, scale the best and ditch the best. In a world where scarce resources force them to make choices over budget, positioning and copy, they’re having to think totally differently to SEOs.
Rand posted back in 2008 about the disconnect between PPC spending and SEO spending. Despite the well documented differences in results, PPC is a science from the outset, but SEO still leaves lots to chance. AdWords folks live-and-die by the following five rules. Today, you’re going to learn how to adopt them as an SEO and win:
Perry Marshall once said that advertising is "one of the world’s most wasteful and deceptive industries" since results from campaigns are so difficult to track. In an online world with universally simple, yet sophisticated analytics available, it’s a totally different ball-game.
Sure, you understand the concept of profit and yes it is the end goal, but not in the same way as AdWords folks where not making money is an unforgivable sin from the word go. SEO and Social Media agencies can still charge $ 5k for a campaign that may or may not affect the client’s bottom line (spending is speculative), but an AdWords account manager can’t spend $ 5 without being accountable for every penny. AdWords clients can see what money is being spent on, and the results – there’s no excuse anymore.
We’re in the business of making money; whilst SEOs can be accountable, PPC folks are always accountable. We need to emulate PPC guys.
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You’ve used Google Analytics, but do you really know how to apply custom filters, advanced segmentation and setup tracking. Take Google’s Conversion University course, take the exam and prove it to yourself.
Get yourself used to regular feedback. Computer games master this regular ‘pat on the back’ – get Geckoboard or some equivalent setup to feedback regular metrics that matter.
Pour through your Google Webmaster Tools, especially the ‘Search queries’ tab which gives similar statistics to what AdWords folks see on their dashboard.
Next up, rule #2…
PPC is still an investment – with each visitor (potential customer) you gain more and more user data. Direct marketers are conditioned to split-test mailings and harvest data to make continual improvements; AdWords and other PPC services make this even easier.
Tim Ferris used AdWords tests to name his book, ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’, knowing he’d get more ‘instinctual’ responses than the perhaps group-influenced results from a focus group (plus, AdWords is so much more scalable).
Yes, we spend our time doing tests, but we need to experiment like AdWords guys do as well, agonizing over their campaigns titles and numbers month on month. We don’t talk about swipe files enough in SEO. When was the last time you tried editing and testing your title tags to improve your click-through rate?
Go through your bookmarks and draw together a list organized by factor of your favourite, most inspirational sites for improving your SEO. Rand’s Head-to-Head Presentation from ProSEO Boston consisted of little more than showing off his awesome swipe file and his concept mashup.
Conversion rate optimizers put together awesome guides like this to help you on your website. Use the same tips and tactics to brainstorm and implement tests on your onpage SEO.
Rule #3 next…
Use words carefully.
In the business of signup forms, calls to action, headlines, sub-headlines, and AdWords advertising copy… few words make a huge impact. As well as being the most viewed pieces content, often the content that most influences your visitors.
Joshua Porter is an interface designer you need to be aware of. His advice – "The fastest way to improve your interface is to improve your copywriting" – applies just as much to your search campaign.
Start with these basics for understanding microcopy.
Look through all your title tags via SEOmoz PRO app or by downloading them with Xenu. Can you make them more relevant to your users? Can you add more trigger words?
Phew! The last-but-one rule…
SEO is like having an unlimited AdWords budget that harvests ~85% of the clicks from a given SERP, but that’s a mixed blessing. Scarce resources, like a PPC budget force you to choose and optimize your input for maximum gain. Economics 101 in action.
Its like the difference between a funded startup and a bootstrapped startup. Jason Fried of 37signals explains the first thing a bootstrapped company has to do is turn a profit – or the owners go hungry – whereas the funded startup needs to spend the money first.
The PPC guy has to figure out and test where the money is, or they go hungry too…
Bad times. Picture via Declubz
Don’t think of SEO as an unlimited AdWords budget, but as an expanded AdWords campaign. The profit discipline has still got to be there. Although SEO doesn’t have direct costs-per-click, but it still is very expensive in terms of time. The trouble is it’s too easy to spend time like you’ve got waiting on the results later. Don’t.
37signals plan on ‘what takes two weeks’. They expect results at the end of that. If something isn’t possible in two weeks, the task is too big (cut it up instead) or focus on something that will deliver results. You need to watch this video like your next meal depends on it.
Apply some 80-20 analysis to your SEO spending (both time and money). Where’s the most money coming from? So if I cancelled 80% of next month’s SEO budget, would you still meet your numbers?
And finally…
"Revenue’s Vanity. Profit’s Sanity." The same principles apply to search – traffic is vanity. Yes, it makes you feel good but you can’t go to the bank with traffic figures. You only need highly-targeted visitors that convert into customers.
When you’re paying for each visitor to your website, boy are you going to try to extract the most value from each visitor. Not every visitor is a "hot" lead, so gaining their permission to follow up is essential. AdWords guys recognize the power of opt-in landing pages and follow-up marketing.
Whilst landing pages used in a PPC campaign might not be the most linkable content, it is still important to build content that engages visitors in the prospecting process.
Brainstorm alternative methods to maximize the value of your current search traffic. How can you capture their email address, and lead them to a sale? Is the offer not right for them? How can you link in alternative offers?
Closing Thoughts
AdWords is not expensive search marketing. It’s direct marketing on steroids, and direct marketers appear to be the smartest guys in the business. It’s a no-brainer to study them and apply what they know to SEO. So I may have accidentally, on purpose, published my public to-do list for getting good at SEO. And it’s not like enough homework has been set already…!
The beauty of SEO is it combines the creative, artistic side of marketing with the rigorous, science that is online marketing; what do you think? Is it worth peaking over the shoulders of our comrades in paid search?
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Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia. It is still one of the leading online information resources, with over 77,300,000 indexed pages in Google. Wikipedia also earned more than 680 million visitors annually by April 2008, according to this source: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Wikipedia-Traffic-Mostly-from-Google-85703.shtml. Also, according to this study, 96.6% of Wikipedia’s pages are ranking on the first page of Google. What is great about Wikipedia is that it is community-generated content, and a non-profit website consisting of writers from all around the world. The massive traffic …
SEO Chat – Search Engine Optimization Tutorials
Tags: from, Learn, Practitioners, Wikipedia
Skip the Backstory and Take me to the Free Video and MindMap!
In 2002 I started my first blog without even the hint that blogging would be anything more to me than a hobby.
Over the years that have followed I began to see the potential of blogging to make money and began to experiment – growing blogging from a hobby, to a part time job to a full time job and beyond.
The evolution of my blogs was wonderful in many ways but meant I ended up with…. a bit of a mess.
A couple of years ago I sat down to do some strategic thinking about my blogging and realised that I’d created something that resembled a house that had had many extensions added to it.
It all worked – but it was far from the strategic business that it could be.
Really what it needed was an Architect.
Today I’m excited to introduce you to someone who in many ways has become the Architect of my business – The Web Marketing Ninja.
The Ninja has literally added 0′s to my blogs revenue with his advice. He’s smart, humble, warm hearted and ethical (and a little shy). Just my kind of online marketer.
Regular readers of ProBlogger already are familiar with the Ninja – he’s been guest posting here for a year or so.
But today the Ninja is stepping things up a notch and is going to reveal an in depth overview of how he approaches helping blogs transition from hobbies to businesses.
I was meeting with the Ninja recently to talk about a product launch that I’m doing and as we chatted I realised this guy has so much great strategy in his head that we just had to capture it somehow.
I issued him a challenge – get your approach down and share it with ProBlogger readers. Off the cuff I suggested he create a Mind Map outlining what he does.
Little did I know that the Ninja would not only create a MindMap – but he’d also go on to create a complete 31 chapter guide to online marketing complete with a heap of other tools for bloggers!
We’ll launch the full online marketing kit that he’s produced in the coming week or so but in the lead up to it I’ve asked the Ninja to share the Mind Map with ProBlogger readers today and to talk us through it step by step in a video.
The free video he’s created is not for the light hearted – it is 30 minutes long and is a meaty overview into the topic of online marketing. You’ll need to set aside some time, make yourself comfy and grab something to take notes with to make the most of this.
The Ninja is a little nervous about presenting it – it’s his first foray into the public limelight – but I love his gentle and yet smart approach and trust you will to.
The video is completely free and we’re not asking for your email address to watch it. We’ve also included the actual MindMap as a free PDF download too.
It is part of the lead up to launching the Online Marketing Kit but I’m confident that it’ll provide value to any blogger wanting to make money from their blog – whether you go on to buy the full kit or not.
Check out the Video and Download the Mind Map here.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Got 30 Minutes? Learn How The Ninja Turns Blogs Into Real Businesses
Tags: Blogs, businesses, Into, Learn, Minutes, Ninja, Real, Turns
This guest post is by Brandon Yanofsky of B-List Marketing.
Admit it: blogging is an overwhelmingly confusing endeavor. There’s so much to learn that, for a beginner, it can literally drive you crazy.
You need to know how to create a blog. How to properly design it. How to write well. How to write persuasively. How to market and promote your blog.
The list of things to know and do is infinite.
Am I stressing you out? Because I’m stressing myself out. There’s so much involved. And yet, all the expert bloggers make it look so easy. How can that be?
They’re actually using an age old technique, made famous by notable porn stars.
Copyright by kylemac, licensed under Creative Commons
If you were to watch porn (which, of course, none of us ever would), you might notice that porn stars make sex look very, very easy—at least, that’s what I’ve been told!
But behind the scenes, so they say, it’s a completely different story. Apparently, life as a porn star is incredibly difficult and demanding. All day long, they’re having sex. The normal person might tire of this particular pursuit after a while, but a porn star might have to keep going for longer than eight hours—after all, that’s his or her job.
Like any actor, these movie stars might have to repeat a scene over, and over, and over again until the exact shot the director wants is captured. And yet, like any actor, the porn star doesn’t look fatigued in the finished work. They push through the exhaustion—again, that’s all part of the job.
As a blogger, you also need to learn how to push through any obstacles you face. That’s just part of your job.
There will be times when you feel like giving up—when everything seems to be going wrong. Maybe you just can’t seem to get your blog past 50 visitors a month. You may start telling yourself, “I’ll never make it. I should just give up.”
You’ll look at bloggers like Darren Rowse, and Chris Brogan, and Brian Clark, and you’ll say to yourself, “Man, they have it so easy. They write a post and it’s a viral sensation.”
But I’ve heard their stories, and they don’t have it any easier than you or I. Every night, they stay up late working on a new article, just like they did when they first started.
On the surface, it seems like success comes easily. But behind the scenes, they are toiling. Instead of spending weekends watching TV, they’re at their computers writing. Instead of going out for drinks on Friday nights, they are meeting on Skype to record a new podcast.
Even successful, big-time entrepreneurs like Richard Branson—who makes it seem like starting a multi-billion-dollar company is as easy as tying a shoe—will admit there were times when they considered completely giving up.
The path to success is paved with hardship. But the successful people push through.
Don’t give up.
I’ve had clients come to me, complaining about their lack of traffic, or telling me they can’t get anyone to join their email list. I ask them, “How many articles have you written?” Their response? “Well, I’ve been writing one a month.”
“Well, start writing one a week, or even one a day. You’ll see a drastic increase in traffic.”
“But it’s just too much work.”
That attitude right there is what separates the successful from the failures. The ones like you and I who are willing to go the extra mile, to push through obstacles and never give up—we’re the ones who will succeed. We are the ones who, in another year, the beginning bloggers will look to and say, “Man, those bloggers just have it so easy.” Remember to think like a porn star, and push through the exhaustion.
As an aexample, it took me days to write this article. I felt like giving up on it, but I pushed through. And now, I have an article published on ProBlogger. I pushed through the obstacle and achieved one more instance of success.
So can you. What obstacles are you pushing through?
If you’d like to read more by Brandon Yanofsky, check out his blog on small business marketing. You can also send him a tweet: @byanofsky.
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
What Bloggers Can Learn from Porn Stars
Digital marketers can learn a lot from traditional marketers. There, I said it.
I know we in the digital space are extremely passionate and like to think of ourselves as the best at everything, and while that’s true in large part, there ar…
While Google has taken action against content farms, from a strategic perspective I still think there are lessons that every publisher can learn from the content farm model. If you haven’t already seen it, please take a look at the leaked AOL document on content farms.
The first slide worth taking note of is slide 15 – content generation process. Basically, the slide goes through the decision process for determining how valuable a piece of content will be and determines if it gets created and who creates it. They use keyword/news tool to determine a piece’s “demand” and, depending on how valuable it is, it goes to low cost, in house, or vetted freelancer. Evergreen content, which will generate long term value as opposed to short term content, gets special consideration and special “SEO treatment.” To be honest, you should be doing this with your posts/content already. The pieces which will generate the most revenue or most links (see building links with encyclopedic content) should be produced by your best writers and be fully optimized with the best SEO Tools.
Slide 17 talks about the day to day creation of content. The key takeaway here is “how much” will it cost to produce this content, how are we going to monetize it, and what is its monetization potential (see adding revenue streams into your website). Slide 20 breaks down the decision process even further. As you are going down this path just be careful you don’t fall into the pageview journalism trap: once you do, you sacrifice quality for quantity, and chances are good that you’ll never make it out.
The next slide worth noting is slide 30, which talks about scaling the content creation process and how to promote the content so it gets maximum exposure. It’s a whole lot less shoot-from-the-hip and a whole lot more planning than you may be used to, but it’s a good starting point for developing your own plan. Slide 36 is the last slide that I think is noteworthy. It goes into detail about recruiting outside writers into the network or promotion strategy and how guest posts are a win-win for both parties.
On the opposite side of the coin, it’s important to see what someone who lived this plan has to say. Paul Miller was an engadget writer who recently left and had this to say about AOL … “AOL sees content as a commodity to sell ads against.” As the bar to becoming a publisher constantly lowers (a concept discussed in some detail in Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky), it becomes easier for low budget publishers to eek out profits, but high cost publishers can’t break even unless they cut production costs to the bone. Or, put another way, a piece of content is going to be a lot easier to monetize than a piece of content, no matter what level of traffic you have.
While it’s easy to blame publishers like Demand Media and AOL, don’t lose sight of the fact that Google is a willing and complicit conspirator in this low budget content creation process. By creating adsense and making it possible for anyone to monetize a website without needing to hire a sales staff, to pick up the phone cold calling advertisers, or to pound the pavement, they brought monetization to great, unwashed masses. No single product has created more pollution on the web as Google’s Adsense program has. They may have started out the with “don’t be evil” mantra but, like so many before them, they have become what they set out to destroy. They are the virtual drug dealers of the 21st century, selling ads wrapped around other people’s content, creating information polluted ghettos, and they will become the advertising equivalent of a drug lord poised to rule the web.
So what should you takeaway from this post?
This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis WordPress Theme review.
Content Farms – What You Can Learn and Apply
For the record, here’s the words I ended up learning this month:
ana: the collection of memorable sayings, writings, or other information of an interesting person.
brumous: misty, foggy
capax: legally competent
daggle: to soil by dragging in the mud
deosculate: to kiss affectionately
dorty: bad-tempered
ensky: to make immortal
eoan: related to the dawn or the east
foss: ditch or canal; an artificial stream
gurry: diarrhea
hwyl: an emotional outburst of eloquence (Welsh)
incondite: crude, unfinished
jehu: someone who loves to drive. a fast driver
kalon: the kind of beauty that is more than skin deep
leal: faithful, loyal, true. Correct, accurate, real. Legal, lawful, just.
lusk: a lazy person
milpita: a little cornfield
nixie: a letter so badly addressed it can’t be delivered
ort: a leftover tidbit
pukka: real, authentic. Superior.
queme: pleasant, agreeable, suitable
rudas: an ugly foul-mouthed old hag
sipid: tasty, flavorful
tiffin: a snack or light lunch
udometer: a rain gauge
vega: a fertile meadow
verbophobia: fear and dislike of words
wanion: a plague. A vengeance
xenium: a present given to a guest
yex: hiccup, cough
zimme: a gem
Also: Happy New Year, everyone!
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